Seminar Syllabus
"Freeze-Frame: Technology, Narrative and Time" with Carolyn Guertin,
carolyn.guertin@gmail.com
Readings From:
David Campany, Ed. The Cinematic: Documents of Contemporary Art. London and
Cambridge: Whitechapel/MIT Press, 2007.
Mary Ann Doane. The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, The
Archive. Harvard UP, 2002.
Laura Mulvey. Death 24X A Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London:
Reaktion
Books, 2006
Martin Reiser and Andrea Zapp, Eds. New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative.
London: British Film Institute, 2002.
Recommended advance reading: Chapters 4, 5 and the conclusion of Anne
Friedberg’s, The Virtual Window: From Alberti To Microsoft, MIT Press, 2006. It
provides useful background and history that will contextualize the course material.
Reading Diary: Your reading diary should focus on the Mulvey and Doane readings
and on the films we will be discussing (Day Watch, Night Watch, Vertigo, La Jetée,
Memento and The Matrix.)
Films and New Media Works
Timur Bekmambetov, Day Watch (Dnevnoi Dozor, 2006)
Timur Bekmambetov, Night Watch (Nochnoy dozor, 2004)
Toni Dove, Artificial Changelings (1992-98)
Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958)
Shelley Jackson. Patchwork Girl, Or A Modern Monster. Eastgate Systems. Software.
(1995) – I will make this available to you when we are at Transart in the summer
Chris Marker, La Jetée (1963): Error! Hyperlink reference not valid."
target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RvmJan17q8
Christopher Nolan, Memento (2000)
Jill Scott, A Figurative History (1996-97)
Wachowski Brothers, The Matrix (1999)
Course Goals
This course will lead to an understanding of the fundamental paradox of film, the
embedding of motion in still images. Through an historical exploration of social,
cultural, scientific and technological issues, you will read photography, film and
digital media through five different thematic clusters: Stillness and Motion; Time
and the Moment; Dreamspace, Other Times, Traumas; Space, Time and Bodies; New
Media, Time, Narrative and Possessive Subjects. Through examining different
narrative techniques (slow-motion, the instant replay, repetition, the freeze-frame
and the hyperlink to name a few), you will gain a deep understanding of the complex
evolution of these interconnected and distinct media.
Day 1: Stillness and Motion
An overview of visual perspective, the camera obscura, Marey, Muybridge, Freud,
Dynamism in Painting, the Window
Doane, Chpt 1 and Chpt 2, 1-68
Tom Gunning “Never Seen This Picture Before: Muybridge in Multiplicity” The
Cinematic 20-24
Anton Giulio Bragaglia, “Futurist Photodynamism” The Cinematic 25-29
Roland Barthes “The Face of Garbo” The Cinematic 48
Jean Baudrillard, “Cool Memories” The Cinematic 67
Gaensheimer, “Moments in Time” The Cinematic. Pp. 68-79 (optional)
Friedberg: Chpt 3: The “Age of Windows” + “Bergson’s Virtual” 101-145 (optional)
Chris Marker’s La Jetée
Day 2: Time and the Moment
Eisenstein and montage, time travel, the paradox of film,
Sergei Eisenstein, “Montage is Conflict” The Cinematic 30-32
Michael Tarantino, “A Few Brief Moments of Cinematic Time” The Cinematic 33-37
Carlo Rim, “On The Snapshot” The Cinematic 40-42
Henri-Cartier Bresson, “Images à la Sauvette” The Cinematic 43-47
Jonas Mekas, “Movie Journal: Warhol Shoots Empire, 30 July” The Cinematic 50-51
Deleuze, “Beyond the Movement-Image” The Cinematic 64-65.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, “Image Sequences/Series” The Cinematic 83
Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Observations on the Long Take” The Cinematic 84-87
Friedberg, “The Screen” + “Virilio’s Screen” 150-189 (optional)
Bekmambetov’s Night Watch (2005) and Day Watch (2006)
Day 3: Dream Space, Other Times, Trauma
Laura Mulvey, “Preface,” Chpts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, 7-103
Doane, Chpt 3: The Afterimage, the Index & the Accessibility of the Present pp. 69107
Thierry de Duve, “Time Exposure and Snapshot: The Photograph as Paradox” The
Cinematic 52-61
Agnès de Varda, “On Photography and Cinema” The Cinematic 62-63
Nan Goldin, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” The Cinematic 66
Wim Wenders, “Time Sequences, Continuity of Movement” The Cinematic 88-90
Blake Stimson, “The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation” The Cinematic
91-101 (optional)
Catherine David, “Photography and the Cinema” The Cinematic 144-152 (optional)
Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958)
Nolan’s Memento (2000)
Day 4: Space and Time and Bodies
Friedberg “The Multiple” and “The Future of Windows” 192-247 (optional)
Regis Durand, “Melancholic Mutations in Cindy Sherman’s Film Stills” The Cinematic
153-157
Uriel Orlow, “Photography as Cinema: La Jetée and the Redemptive Powers of the
Image” The Cinematic 177-184
Doane, Chpt 5 “Dead Time, Or the Concept of the Event” 140-164 (optional)
Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl (1995)
Day 5: New Media, Time, Narrative, and Possessive Subjects
Victor Burgin, “Possessive, Pensive and Possessed.” The Cinematic. 198-209.
Toni Dove, “The Space Between: Telepresence, Re-Animation and the Re-Casting of
the
Invisible.” New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative. 208-220. PDF:
https://mavspace.uta.edu/guertin/freeze-frame/Dove.pdf
Jill Scott, “Crossing and Collapsing Time.” New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative.
195-207. PDF: https://mavspace.uta.edu/guertin/freeze-frame/scott.pdf
Doane, Chpt 7 “The Instant and the Archive” 206-232 (optional)
Wachowski Brothers, The Matrix (1999)