LATE FALL READINGS: EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA IN THE DIGITAL AGES

(Previous Spanish version posted on 12.14.06).

My second bibliographic explanation from late fall (even if I’m traslating it in the bleak midwinter) revolves around Experimental cinema in the digital age (BFI, London, 2001), a compilation of articles published by English experimental filmmaker Malcom LeGrice between 1972 and 1999 about these kind of movies and the structure and aesthetic modifications they are undergoing due to the digitalization processes.

The work can be divided among the historical texts, those about other artists, discussions, general theory and digital theory. This is probably why the most appealing parts for me (and those I have thoroughly been over) are the last two of them. Experimental cinema can be of interest inasmuch as it could constitute one of the possible filiations of digital narrative, although is not that clear how we would define “experimental”, that is to say, if the differences from conventional cinema lay on its ability for abstract representation, on its questioning of linear narrative, or on both aspects.

Despite Le Grice reflects on these two qualities (abstraction and lack of linearity), he is compelled to focus the debate mostly on the second aspect. As a great beliver of antiHollywood ways of creation, the author emphasizes in one text after another (see particularly Towards Temporal Economy, pp. 184-209) the criticism of the required narrativity attributed to cinema, and accuses narrative of becoming an authoritarian voice without any chance of replication (just submission or identification from the viewer) that generates univocal causalities.

Although it is true that most of commercial movies are not precisely characterized by encouraging critical thinking from the viewer, I believe Le Grice goes too far in his statements by assuming that experimental cinema has to be the right alternative. Any questioning of language is desirable because it implies questioning the unidirectional feature of (some kind of) discourse, but the ideas of making visible the role of the director or manipulating the speed, color or editing of the cinematic image do not guarantee a dialogue by themselves that rises consciousness in the viewer (even less if we take into account the ability of current design or advertising to absorb such experiments).

Likewise, the fact that there is commercial narrative cinema doesn’t necessarily imply that all the answers from the viewer stem from a sheer subjugation to what (s)he receives. It doesn’t seem to be no longer in fashion to talk about reception theories, and despite media have changed a lot since the first talks on resistant readings, the fact is that people, no matter how much media saturation they have to stand (or precisely, because of that) still haven’t become empty vessels ready to be filled with contents. They might consume more images, and the might get absorbed by addictive relations with the Internet or their cell phones, but people still give unexpected uses to media, educate each other by sharing music or video files and ask themselves about the reason to have so many television channels if none of them is actually to satisfy their interests.

What I mean is that the overview on experimental cinema provided by Le Grice is enlightening to understand a sociopolitical criticism of the historical notion of narrative whose echos approached me before without being able to give it a specific shape, but I think that his Marxist hint, if it could be considered like that, doesn’t apply for the current context. The old articles by Le Grice actually had a visionary quality, as they went ahead of the definition of abstract subject matters which would later appear on computer art or net art, or of the modular structures presented in digital narrative, but I don’t think that the frame in which those elements are currently developing is that of being able to put branching and interactivy on a level with freedom.