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The mobilized virtual gaze in Russian Ark. PDF

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The mobilized virtual gaze in Russian Ark. According to Walter Benjamin, the flâneur, wandering through urban space in a daze of distraction - a mood yet to be propagated by motion pictures- was the quintessential paradigm of modernity. Cinema, arising in the age of mechanical reproducibility, would diffuse this new mode of perception among the modern urban dwellers. Thus, the development of cinema and the formation of the space of modernity became processes closely intertwined. A detailed study of this historical interrelation leads us to extrapolate this connection into a hypothesis with regard to Post-Modernism. In other words, it is unavoidable to wonder if such an entangled relationship persisted between the Post-Modern paradigm and the cinematic gaze of that period. This question has been tackled by several authors, among them Anne Friedberg, whose approach is the object of analysis in this paper.1 In this regard, Friedberg describes the transition between Modernism and Post- Modernism as “a gradual and indistinct epistemological tear along the fabric of modernity, a change caused by the growing cultural centrality of a 1Therefore, for our purpose, we will accept her understanding of Post-Modernism, acknowledging that it does not necessarily refer to its conventional use in human sciences, literature or architecture, but with its use within the theory of visual arts. “The debate on postmodernism has by now produced a vast literature. Roughly, we might distinguish three positions: one elaborated with reference to the human sciences and literature […]; one concerning the visual arts [..]; and one related to the discourse of and on architecture.” Giuliana Bruno, “Ramble City: Postmodernism and "Blade Runner". October, Vol. 41. (Summer, 1987), pp. 61-74 1 feature that is integral to both cinema and television: a mobilized virtual gaze.” 2 According to Friedberg’s theory, it should be feasible to identify this mobilized virtual gaze (and to diagnose the symptoms associated with this definition of Post-Modernity) within a visual text of this period. Conversely, it should be possible to point out the marginality of those symptoms in equivalent visual texts belonging to the modern epoch. Consequently, this paper will consist not only in a dissection of a fragment of Russian Ark, but in a comparison with other analogous modern precedents (Voyage in Italy, La Jetée), in order to demonstrate how Friedberg’s mobilized virtual gaze is fully manifested in the post-modern production, whereas only germinal in the modern condition. To begin, it is necessary to dissect the idea of a mobilized virtual gaze: a compound concept essentially formed by the association of two phenomenological experiences of cinema. Firstly, it refers to the mobilized gaze as the perceptional mood of the cinematic eye, epitomized by the flâneurs and closely related to the experience of modernity. Secondly, it introduces Friedberg’s understanding of cinema as a virtual threshold that transfers “the isolation produced by the plate glass window onto a virtual register”3, implying that through cinema we experience a space and time embedded in the plane of representation, perceiving a mediated reality that actually is a “delimited virtuality”. Combining these two ideas, Friedberg 2 Friedberg, Anne. “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition”, in Williams, Linda, 1946-. 1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60 3 Friedberg, Anne. 2006. The virtual window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. P. 138 2 defines the mobilized virtual gaze as “a gaze that travels, in an imaginary flânerie, through an imaginary elsewhere and an imaginary else-when” 4 This idea of an imaginary drift is, as a matter of fact, essential to the conception of Russian Ark. In this film the gaze of the spectator - embodied in the narrator’s character - strolls the salons of the Hermitage along different periods of Russian History. The spectator becomes, inadvertently, a virtual flâneur who travels space and time through the rooms of the Winter Palace. That is to say, via the virtual threshold of the screen, the spectator’s mobilized virtual gaze detours5 in a virtual museum, in a virtual time sequence. In order to study and systematize this parallelism we can analyze, for example, the scene in the neoclassical sculpture salon. In this particular moment of the derive, the unseen protagonist (/camera/spectator) follows “the European” into the salon of XIX Century sculpture. The “subjective” protagonist, embodying the gaze of the camera (/spectators), tracks the “objective” protagonist, the European, who directs the mobilized gaze. As in the rest of the film, there are no visible cuts delimiting this scene, otherwise clearly demarcated by the spatial structure of the museum. The first aspect to point out is that, while in the beginning the European monopolizes the frame, he promptly shares the composition with the sculptures, only leaving the centrality of the frame to allow the mobilized gaze of the audience to wander over the pieces of art. 4 Friedberg, Anne. “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition”, in Williams, Linda, 1946-. 1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60. Although these imaginary temporal and spatial dimensions refer to the virtual window, it is not difficult to point out the connection with post-modern theory: if Foucault’s heterotopia is the space of post-modernity, the mobilized virtual gaze is the mode of strolling through it. 5 Here we refer to the Situationists, to whom we will return later. 3 Shared framing The pronounced use of the zoom and the changes of field of view (the lens- angle) accentuate an odd dreamlike sensation, as the camera follows the European meandering between the statues. After approaching Antonio Canova’s Three Graces, he disappears from the image, while the camera tours across the masterpiece. This revolution around the statue conveys to the spectator a particular spatial reading of Beauty, Charm and Joy –the graces of the classical myth. Interestingly enough, Canova’s other version of the statue – owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland – has a rotating pedestal designed to convey the same effect registered by the camera. The singularity of this moment is further signaled by the dramatic lighting used to render the sculpture – as opposed to the predominant emphasis on the natural illumination of the museum. 4 The Three Graces. The cinematographic recording of sculpture puts this scene into dialogue with Rossellini’s visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Voyage in Italy. In both films, across the threshold of the screen, the gaze of the spectator wanders around a gallery of statues. Thus, through the artifice of cinema the embedded spatial diegesis of the sculptures becomes apparent, assuming protagonism in the scene. Blind woman. 5 Nevertheless, the contrast between those two scenes is noteworthy. The haptic condition of the experience in Russian Ark takes the topic of “art in film” to a dimension absent in Voyage in Italy. The introduction of the character of the blind woman (who is “reading” a statue) immediately after this fragment, emphasizes the intentionality of this sensorial quality. The use of a single point of view moving through the gallery, as well as other minor issues6, confers a “tactile” expressiveness to the The Three Graces (and to the space of the Hermitage). Hence, the mobilization of the gaze introduces a further degree of complexity in the distortions of perception produced through the “virtual window”, making the eyes of the spectator seem to function like organs of touch. The diegesis overcomes and deflects the visual spectatorship, involving a tactile, corporal way of relating with the space in the virtual window. The mobilization of the gaze and its effects (this haptic activation of space) reflect the change of paradigm from modernism to postmodernism. Ironically, where Rossellini could play with elements such as the montage, the length of the takes, etc., in order to manipulate the narration of the sculptures, Sokurov faces the same challenge with one only shot, but supported by digital recording. Whereas the technique of montage is quintessential to cinema of the modern period – i.e. Voyage in Italy -, the “single shot” used in Russian Ark apparently excludes it. Nevertheless, if we leave aside the technical resource and tackle the idea behind montage from Eisenstein’s point of view - as the narration of a sequence through space – then we could claim that Russian Ark not only 6 The digital effects added in post-production (in particular the changes of the field of view and the zooms), the rhythm and slight oscillation produced by the Steadicam, the framing, lighting and the narration. 6 comprises but emphasizes it. The aforementioned fragment, for example, contains a specific version of the statues’ spatial diegesis, registering a particular sequence of the many possible. A person visiting the Hermitage would have multiple alternative paths to walk through and read the sculptures. He would have to analyze each group in order to decipher it, whereas in the virtual nature of the cinema screen Sokurov already has chosen a particular choreography in space. Thus, the elements underline the “link between mise-en-cadre and mise-en-scène”, gathering “a certain sequence into a single meaningful concept; and these diverse impressions pass in front of an immobile spectator.”7 Moreover, in Russian Ark the transition between rooms substitutes part of the narrative role of montage, while the digital post-production replaces montage as a technical centerpiece. For example - only during the scene in the statues room - the aggressive modifications of the field of view of the camera (paying with a wide-angle “lens”) and the extensive use of zoom create a noteworthy visual variation. 7 Bois, Yve-Alain, and Eisenstein, Sergei. 1989 “Montage and Architecture” Assemblage, No. 10 (Dec. 1989), pp. 121 7 Zooming at the threshold. Manipulation of field of view/ lens. The use of a Steadicam and the absence of cuts suggest that those effects, repeated during the scene, in combination with the travelling of the camera 8 around the statues, have being added in post-production. In this sense, the use of digital technology does not lead to a lack8 (but to a different kind) of editing. Thus, the absence of a modern montage-based coding produces a distinct visual language. If Post-modern cinematic spectatorship “changed, in unprecedented ways, concepts of the present and the real”9, then Post- production –an editing method relieved from the use of discrete fragments of time and space – reflects this mutation, as a new mode of composing visual language. From another point of view, in Cinema and the Postmodern Condition, Friedberg dissects this unprecedented change of the concepts of the present and the real. She identifies the “most profound symptoms of the postmodern condition” as the disappearance of a sense of history, entrapment in a perpetual present, and the loss of temporal referents. In this sense, it is not hard to identify that “disappearance of a sense of history” in Russian Ark, with a narration shifting between disjointed historical times without apparent difficulty. For instance, only within the context of the sculptures salon we notice the transition from the current time, before entering the room, and 191310 after leaving it. Another example of this distortion of the temporal line - within the same fragment - is the European’s claim that Canova almost married his mother at the time of sculpting The Three Graces. A fact obviously impossible, were it not for the virtual window, given the span of time between 2002 and 1814, when Canova 8 As Sokurov may have wanted to claim. 9 Friedberg, Anne. “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition”, in Williams, Linda, 1946-. 1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60 10 This is the date of the last grand ball of the Tzars, which took place in the same ballroom of the recording. This event is present both in this scene –when the guests are entering the Winter Palace – and, later in the movie, the final ballroom dance itself. 9 made the sculpture. This post-modern disappearance of a sense of history, only implied in Voyage in Italy11, is explicitly expressed and incorporated into the visual language of the film throughout the whole length of Russian Ark. In addition, the “entrapment in a perpetual present” is also embedded in the figure of the European, a character that, for an unknown reason, travels through time caught up in an enduring present in which the meaning of past and future collapse. The “loss of temporal referents” as a result of the two previous points, is clearly part of the spectatorship experience of the film. The continuous shift of the temporal timing of the narration, while the spatial placement and the works of art –the Hermitage- seem to be perennial, introduces a sensation of discordancy among time and its referent, the space of the action. Moreover, not only are all of Friedberg’s symptoms of post-modernity encompassed in the film, but there are a number of other references that we can evaluate that also support the direct presence of the Post-Modern sensibility in Russian Ark. In his essays12 Frederic Jameson establishes an analogy between schizophrenia (as a language disorder caused by a break in the relations of signifiers) and post-modern subjectivity, which he characterizes by “the collapse of temporality, the failure of the ability to locate or fix events historically, and the mise-en-abîme of referents lost in the labyrinthine chain of signifiers”. Jameson’s understanding of 11 Katherine comments that the men that existed two thousand years before were identical to the men of today, and that one would understand them perfectly 12 “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”. 10

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The mobilized virtual gaze in Russian Ark. According to Walter Benjamin, the flâneur, wandering through urban space in a daze of distraction - a mood
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