Erika Balsom
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231176934
- eISBN:
- 9780231543125
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231176934.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Images have never been as freely circulated as they are today. They have also never been so tightly controlled. As with the birth of photography, digital reproduction has created new possibilities ...
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Images have never been as freely circulated as they are today. They have also never been so tightly controlled. As with the birth of photography, digital reproduction has created new possibilities for the duplication and consumption of images, offering greater dissemination and access. But digital reproduction has also stoked new anxieties concerning authenticity and ownership. From this contemporary vantage point, After Uniqueness traces the ambivalence of reproducibility through the intersecting histories of experimental cinema and the moving image in art, examining how artists, filmmakers, and theorists have found in the copy a utopian promise or a dangerous inauthenticity—or both at once. From the sale of film in limited editions on the art market to the downloading of bootlegs, from the singularity of live cinema to video art broadcast on television, Erika Balsom investigates how the reproducibility of the moving image has been embraced, rejected, and negotiated by major figures including Stan Brakhage, Leo Castelli, and Gregory Markopoulos. Through a comparative analysis of selected distribution models and key case studies, she demonstrates how the question of image circulation is central to the history of film and video art. After Uniqueness shows that distribution channels are more than neutral pathways; they determine how we encounter, interpret, and write the history of the moving image as an art form.Less
Images have never been as freely circulated as they are today. They have also never been so tightly controlled. As with the birth of photography, digital reproduction has created new possibilities for the duplication and consumption of images, offering greater dissemination and access. But digital reproduction has also stoked new anxieties concerning authenticity and ownership. From this contemporary vantage point, After Uniqueness traces the ambivalence of reproducibility through the intersecting histories of experimental cinema and the moving image in art, examining how artists, filmmakers, and theorists have found in the copy a utopian promise or a dangerous inauthenticity—or both at once. From the sale of film in limited editions on the art market to the downloading of bootlegs, from the singularity of live cinema to video art broadcast on television, Erika Balsom investigates how the reproducibility of the moving image has been embraced, rejected, and negotiated by major figures including Stan Brakhage, Leo Castelli, and Gregory Markopoulos. Through a comparative analysis of selected distribution models and key case studies, she demonstrates how the question of image circulation is central to the history of film and video art. After Uniqueness shows that distribution channels are more than neutral pathways; they determine how we encounter, interpret, and write the history of the moving image as an art form.
Erika Balsom
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231176934
- eISBN:
- 9780231543125
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231176934.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Film theory has largely overlooked the fact that film and video are founded in an economy of the multiple. In this chapter, I outline a theory of the moving image as a reproducible medium that ...
More
Film theory has largely overlooked the fact that film and video are founded in an economy of the multiple. In this chapter, I outline a theory of the moving image as a reproducible medium that considers the way an image may be copied repeatedly so as to facilitate circulation across distribution networks. By moving into this domain, one confronts not the questions of indexicality, documentary, and realism that so often get asked in relation to the image’s status as a copy of the profilmic; rather, issues of authority, originality, and authenticity become paramount. This chapter unfolds what is at stake in approaching the moving image in this way and will examine how its reproducibility has been conceived of as both a utopian promise and the site of a dangerous inauthenticity since its emergence in the late nineteenth century.Less
Film theory has largely overlooked the fact that film and video are founded in an economy of the multiple. In this chapter, I outline a theory of the moving image as a reproducible medium that considers the way an image may be copied repeatedly so as to facilitate circulation across distribution networks. By moving into this domain, one confronts not the questions of indexicality, documentary, and realism that so often get asked in relation to the image’s status as a copy of the profilmic; rather, issues of authority, originality, and authenticity become paramount. This chapter unfolds what is at stake in approaching the moving image in this way and will examine how its reproducibility has been conceived of as both a utopian promise and the site of a dangerous inauthenticity since its emergence in the late nineteenth century.
