{"id":32,"date":"2014-09-10T08:12:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T08:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/?page_id=32"},"modified":"2014-09-13T08:27:47","modified_gmt":"2014-09-13T08:27:47","slug":"manu-yanez","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/frankfurt-papers\/manu-yanez\/","title":{"rendered":"MANU Y\u00c1\u00d1EZ"},"content":{"rendered":"

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THOUGHT, ACTION AND IMAGINATION<\/strong><\/h2>\n

[toc]<\/p>\n

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By Manu Y\u00e1\u00f1ez<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Translated by Adrian Martin<\/em><\/p>\n

The following essay on audiovisual criticism, which I first delivered as a paper at the Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory International Workshop in Frankfurt in November 2013, is divided into three parts. The first of these, which I have titled \u201cDialectics of the Audiovisual Essay\u201d, will focus on the exploration of a series of theoretical approaches \u2013 taken from the works of the philosopher Walter Benjamin and the art historian Georges Didi-Huberman \u2013 that, in my opinion, trace a certain horizon of possibilities for audiovisual criticism.<\/p>\n

Then, in the second part, titled \u201cThe Technological Factor\u201d, I will establish a chronology with which to try to understand the technological context from which audiovisual critique has emerged, and how that context has given shape to the interests and the idiosyncrasies of this new criticism. And finally, in the third part, entitled \u201cIn Search of Limits\u201d, I try to articulate a response to one of the questions that resonates with particular intensity in the emerging practice of visual essays: is there a point or a border at which the audiovisual essay ceases to be film criticism?<\/p>\n

As a further preliminary note, I would like to emphasise that what follows is marked by an air of uncertainty, and by a great number of intuitions \u2013 a consequence of the fact that audiovisual criticism seems to be still going through a period of construction, of embryonic development; and it is precisely this, on the other hand, that makes this a fascinating situation, one very open to the formulation of questions and hypotheses, as well as fertile in relation to its possibilities.<\/p>\n

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  1. \n

    Dialectics of the Video-Essay<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I would like to begin\u00a0with a fairly well-known quotation from the great French critic Andr\u00e9 Bazin, in which the founder of Cahiers du cin\u00e9ma<\/em> reflected upon the role of the film critic. It is a quotation, by the way, made famous when Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut used it in the preface to the anthology of Bazin\u2019s texts titled The Cinema of Cruelty<\/em>. Bazin said the following:<\/p>\n

    The critic\u2019s function is not to present a nonexistent truth on a silver platter, but to prolong to the maximum the shock of the work of art on the intelligence and sensibility of his readers.[1. Cited by Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, \u2018Introduction\u2019, The Cinema of Cruelty: The Cinema of Cruelty: From Bu\u00f1uel to Hitchcock<\/em> (Skyhorse Publishing, 2013).]<\/p>\n

    In this lucid statement \u2013 which, in my opinion, all film critics should recite every morning upon waking \u2013 I am keen to highlight the dialectical vision offered by Bazin of the reader of film criticism: an individual whom the critic should stimulate at an intellectual<\/em> level, but also on the level of sensibility<\/em>. Could we also accommodate in Bazin\u2019s idea \u2013 his appeal to sensibility, referring to the emotional world of the reader\/spectator \u2013 a further step: why not extrapolate that he was referring equally to the sensory<\/em> realm of this same reader\/spectator? Might not the conquest of the sensory<\/em> constitute one of the goals of film criticism?<\/p>\n

    A response to this hypothesis can be formulated by reviewing some helpful episodes in the history of film criticism, where we can find clear examples showing that this drive towards sensory stimulation has always existed \u2013 even if, until quite recently, it was content to articulate this sensory approach using exuberant prose and poetic sensuality: let us say that the art of written<\/em> suggestion<\/em> prevailed.<\/p>\n

    An art that was perfectly palpable in the methodical \u2013 and sometimes equivocal \u2013 approximations by Bazin of Chaplin\u2019s gags; or in Manny Farber\u2019s and Patricia Patterson\u2019s approach to Martin Scorsese\u2019s formal artifices in Taxi Driver<\/em> (a famous article published in Film Comment<\/em> magazine); or again in the work of Nicole Brenez in France or Kent Jones in North America, related to the concept of cinematographic physicality<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    However, with the arrival of the audiovisual essay, the sensory realm moves to occupy a position in critical discourse that is no longer only accessory<\/em>, but clearly privileged<\/em>. Thus is broken the hierarchy that placed sensibility as the minor sibling of intellect in critical labour. With the levelling of this dichotomy, there arise other dialectics which, potentially, can enrich the landscape of criticism. To begin with, I believe that the emergence of the sensory as a critical tool can open a door for the interrogation of the dialectic formed between certainty<\/em> and uncertainty<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    Historically, film criticism has been afflicted by a certain overdose of sureness<\/em>. In critical texts \u2013 and even more in academia \u2013 certainty and conviction have been perceived as certifying traits of quality: a practice that, in populist territory, has led to the caricaturing of criticism as a matter of giving scores, \u2018rotten tomatoes\u2019 or \u2018thumbs up\u2019! However, doubts have always been present, circling the minds of those critics who resist the siren call of ultra-dogmatic criticism. A fine example can be seen in the work of Carlos Losilla \u2013 also, a presenter at the Frankfurt event at which I gave my paper[2. See Carlos Losilla, \u2018The Absent Image, The Invisible Narrative\u2019, The Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies<\/em>, September 2014. Online at: http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/frankfurt-papers\/carlos-losilla\/<\/a>.]\u00a0\u2013 a critic who has turned doubt and self-interrogation into veritable tools of critical thinking, and upon them built a rhetoric<\/em>, based on the use of the first-person, that is clearly at cross-purposes with the critical orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

    At this point, I believe that the relevant question runs as follows: can the visual essay help the critic reflect the state of relative uncertainty in which she or he works? On a superficial level, the answer would seem to be: no. Audiovisual critics have the ability to prove<\/em> their arguments in an empirical way. Their insights into the geometry of a frame, the duration of a shot or the recurring use of a formal strategy by one or more directors can be demonstrated<\/em>, thanks to the citation of various fragments from one or many films. At this level, the critic can reduce uncertainty to a minimal level, as has been demonstrated by the work \u2013 of a decidedly didactic nature \u2013 by visual essayists such as Matt Zoller Seitz or Kevin B. Lee.[3. Also see the essay at this website by Kevin B. Lee, ‘On The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots’, The Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies<\/em>, September 2014. Online at: http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/reflections\/intransition-1-3\/kevin-b-lee\/<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

    However, there is another current of essayists who prefer to work with more abstract or poetic discourses \u2013 audiovisual critics unafraid of hermeticism, who prefer suggestion<\/em> to evidence<\/em>, or intuition<\/em> to certainty<\/em> (I shall henceforth refer to these critics as the intuitive-essayists<\/em>). Within this stream, we find the majority of such works published in the Spanish on-line magazines Transit: Cine y otros desv\u00edos<\/a><\/em> and Cineu\u00e0<\/a><\/em>, or the pieces made by American critic-filmmaker Gina Telaroli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Looking more closely at the visual essays of this latter group, it is particularly intriguing to note the way in which they articulate the connections between different fragments of an auteur\u2019s work, or between films by several auteurs \u2013 connections that, while occasionally seeming too obvious, can end up becoming markedly opaque or cryptic. In any case, the remarkable thing is that, to a greater or lesser extent, these works propose a quite unorthodox dialectic between the different times of past <\/em>and present<\/em>: here, I am referring to the relation between images from the past and images of the present from where the former are observed.<\/p>\n

    In film criticism, as in art history in general, the concept of causality<\/em> has been made the solid backbone of the narrative of the past: with the intention of writing an easily comprehensible history, it opts for the construction of linear accounts, in which the relations between \u2018masters\u2019 and their supposed heirs are presented as indisputable facts, irrefutable \u2018blood ties\u2019. And it is precisely against<\/em> such a conception of art history that Georges Didi-Huberman places himself in his book Before Time: Art History and the Anachronism of Images<\/em> \u2013 in which this art historian borrows some fundamental principles of thought from Walter Benjamin. For example, in relation to the concept of the dialectical image<\/em> suggested by Benjamin, Didi-Huberman proposes the following:<\/p>\n

    The dialectical model \u2013 in the non-Hegelian sense that Benjamin gives it here \u2013 should make us renounce all oriented history: there is no \u2018line of progress\u2019, only omni-directional series, bifurcating rhizomes.[4. Georges Didi-Huberman,\u00a0\u202aIm\u00e1genes pese a todo:\u00a0<\/em>\u202amemoria visual del Holocausto<\/em>\u00a0(Barcelona: Editorial Paid\u00f3s, 2004). Translation into English by Adrian Martin.]<\/p>\n

    So this means that the past \u2013 history \u2013 is something that is in perpetual motion<\/em>, something that is rewritten, restarted in each new present. And I have the impression that the work of the intuitive-essayists is involved, consciously or not, with this idea of a history in motion<\/em>. An idea that is particularly visible in the use of split screens, especially when there is no explanatory voice-over. In sharing the same frame, the dialogue between different images \u2013 two or more \u2013 becomes more complex, more ambiguous, than when it is neatly presented within a written text.<\/p>\n

    On the one hand, the correspondence between two images, or between two films, can seem obvious, thanks to the audiovisual evidence; however, the nature of that correspondence, the dialogue between the images, can be shrouded in uncertainty. Is this a \u2018transmission\u2019 between Master and Disciple, and thus a hereditary gifting? Or are we witnessing, rather, a less direct link: perhaps a recurrence encouraged by similar social contexts, or maybe even similar responses to the same formal problem? Here, it may be necessary to point out that I am not presenting this terrain of ambiguous relationships as something entirely new; in fact, it is very present in works like Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s Histoire(s) du cin\u00e9ma<\/em>, or in most of the film-essays by Jean-Marie Straub and Dani\u00e8le Huillet. However, I believe that we need to assess the assimilation of this new conception of art history by audiovisual critique.<\/p>\n

    To go on with the study of this terrain of historical ambiguity, I would like to dwell on the dreamlike, almost phantasmagorical aura that is embodied in so many of the audiovisual essays that draw my attention. This is an issue that Didi-Huberman also highlights in Benjamin\u2019s work on art history:<\/p>\n

    It is not history to imagine \u2018returning to the past\u2019 to collect its facts and its knowledge. The movement is far more complex, more dialectical: it is made up of leaps, which must ceaselessly conform to the essential tension of things, of times, and of the psyche itself. Since this phenomenology concerns memory (\u2026) it should not surprise us to see the same historicity constituted, in Benjamin\u2019s work, as a dialectic between the conscious and the unconscious: in a dialectic of sleeping and dreaming, between dreaming and waking.[5. Ibid.]<\/p>\n

    This last dialectic of which Didi-Huberman speaks \u2013 dreaming and waking \u2013 alludes to a particular state of \u2018light sleeping\u2019 in which intuition seems to be in command of reason. In this state of semi-consciousness, images and reflections circulate in a playful manner, free of dogmas and rigid theories. In fact, I have the impression that, in the work of the intuitive-essayists, images and films almost never tend to function as examples or illustrations of a preconceived theory; rather, they always have their own voice, which the critic can relate freely to others, without fearing the rupture of some established model. As Didi-Huberman again points out in relation to Benjamin, it is in the invocation<\/em> of historical images that we find the ultimate expression of imagination.<\/em><\/p>\n

    If, for Benjamin, the image constitutes the \u2018originary phenomenon of history\u2019, then imagination, according to him, designates something other than simple, subjective fantasy: \u2018Imagination is not fantasy \u2026 Imagination is a faculty (…) that perceives secret and intimate relations between things, their correspondences and analogies\u2019. Imagination, that editor<\/em> par excellence, dismantles the continuity of things with the aim of making structural \u2018elective affinities\u2019 emerge.[6. Ibid.]<\/p>\n

    \u2018Elective affinities\u2019: the uncertainty as to their very nature (as I previously indicated) is what the audiovisual critic fearlessly sets out to reveal. An uncertainty that, moreover \u2013 and this is crucial \u2013 is expressed in the visual essay without undue rhetorical exertion \u2026 as is often the case in written criticism. In audiovisual critique, as Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez<\/a> has remarked in an article in the journal Frames<\/em>, images and their uncertainty are invoked<\/em>, not evoked<\/em>.[7. Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez, \u2018Double Lives, Second Chances\u2019, Frames Cinema Journal<\/em> Special Issue: “Film and Moving Image Studies Re-Born Digital?”, 1.1, July 2012. Guest-edited by Catherine Grant.Online at:\u00a0http:\/\/framescinemajournal.com\/article\/double-lives-second-chances\/<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

    And so now to invoke, at last, some images, I would like to present a piece that, in my opinion, brings together most of the issues discussed so far. It is an audiovisual essay titled Double Lives, Second Chances<\/a><\/em>, made by Cristina \u00c1lvarez and originally published in Transit<\/em>;[8. \u2018Dobles vidas, segundas oportunidades\u2019,\u00a0Transit. Cine y otros desv\u00edos<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>August 12, 2011. Online at:\u00a0http:\/\/cinentransit.com\/inland-veronica\/<\/a>.]\u00a0it meditates on the relation between the films The Double Life of V\u00e9ronique<\/em> (1991) by Krzysztof Kie\u015blowski and Inland Empire<\/em> (2006) by David Lynch.<\/p>\n