Srpski Film / A Serbian Film (Srđjan Spasojević, 2010) generated a remarkable amount of publicity when it was included in the schedule for the London genre festival Frightfest in 2010. It quickly became the most widely recognised Serbian film in the UK and subsequently the most heavily censored film in sixteen years. Produced in Serbia without the constraint of government interference, it is the first independently funded film to be made in the country.^[1] A Serbian Film is a visceral, highly impactive piece of work that tells the story of Milos (Srdjan Todorovic), a porn star lured out of retirement by a large sum of money and the dream of escape from Serbia. Milos agrees to participate in an unscripted reality-porn art-movie, directed in real time through an ear piece. As he becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the director’s requests, Milos attempts to resign but instead finds himself drugged, abused, and duped into committing violent sexual atrocities including rape, necrophilia, paedophilia and incest. The film persistently uses excess and taboo in order to push boundaries by juxtaposing images of children with violence and sexualised violence, incorporating snuff, and depicting the rape of a newborn baby.

Despite the disturbing content, the film is a stylish and accomplished directorial debut. Shot over sixty-one days on location in Belgrade, director Srđjan Spasojević uses a Red One high definition digital camera to create a distinctive aesthetic finish which is characterised by his use of colour. The director over-exposes external scenes making the sequences seem surreal and uses the impossibly bright Serbian sunshine to evoke a sense of disorientation. This is intensified by a soundtrack that alternates between eerie silence and frenetic electronic dubstep. In contrast, the scenes inside the mansion and the other buildings where the porn film shoot is located are heavily saturated. Rooms are dominated by dark shadows with little gradient jarring against vivid red blood. The most graphic scenes of the film are located in acentre for abused and orphaned children or in stark, concrete rooms. These off-white rooms are clinical and ‘wipe clean’, echoing the disposable nature of the porn film’s cast.

Serbian born director Spasojević describes A Serbian Film as a “family drama that descends into hell”, and states that it is a political allegory designed to illustrate the plight of the Serbian people during the disintegration of Yugoslavia.^[2] This article argues that despite Spasojević’s endeavour to delineate the plight of the Serbian people, it is evident within the UK critical reception that the film’s heavy reliance on “self-Balkanisation” is antithetical, reiterating Orientalist constructions of the Balkan region.^[3] The article will begin by considering the development of genre cinema in Serbia, with a particular focus on horror. This will be used to contextualise an analysis of the UK critical reception of A Serbian Film in order to illustrate the ways in which reception, censorship, and the informal digital distribution of the film shaped, and in some cases exacerbated, negative perceptions of Serbia.

Perceptions of Serbian national identity in the West are influenced by a number of factors but can partially be attributed to the choices made by film distributors which have implications for the way that Western audiences “interpret and understand”national cinemas and, by extension, entire nations.^[4] Ivana Kronja argues that Western perceptions of the Balkan region are Orientalist and are rooted in the literature of the Ottoman Empire, when the Balkans appeared to be an “extension of the East, towards which […] Western culture traditionally nourished exotic fantasies and ambivalent feelings”.^[5] For Kronja, Yugoslavian directors receiving critical acclaim in the West in the latter half of the 20^th century reflected these Orientalist attitudes and satisfied the Western fascination with, and rejection of, communism,^[6] thus bolstering the perception of the region as the “wild and murky fringes of Europe”.^[7] This impression was reinforced by the British media during the Balkan wars. The UK played a pivotal role in a seventy-eight day NATO bombing campaign against Serbian forces in 1999. In order to maintain public support for military action, the UK media portrayed the Serbian people as aggressors and equated Milošević’s quasi-nationalism with the Second World War Nazi-regime.^[8] The media failed to “address the issue of possible Serb victims”, emphasising instead the “peace-enforcing objective of the NATO involvement”,^[9] instigating Western resentment towards Serbia and the Serbian people for their role in the conflict.

A Serbian Film is arguably one of the most conspicuous films to emerge from Serbia. The country has produced fewer than twenty films that could be generically classified as horror.^[10] This area is under researched, with only a handful of scholars publishing on the subject.^[11] Outlining the development of the horror genre in Serbia facilitates an exploration of the socio-political context within which the film was produced. It is essential to establish this framework before analysing the UK critical discourse as it is impossible to understand the film without such a background.

State media control was established in Serbia after World War II when Tito’s committee for cinematography instructed that films were to be used for propagandistic purposes. The committee looked to the Soviet film industry to guide the development of a Yugoslavian cinema that offered an effective communication of a unified society. Consequently, genre cinema was barely recognised. Seen as a preserve of the West, in particular the USA, genre had little to do with a “society of self-management”.^[12] Most genres were considered threatening to Serbian ideologies and subjected to an outright ban. Fantasy was outlawed due to its perceived capacity to celebrate the freedoms of life prior to communist rule.^[13] Thrillers and science-fiction were similarly disallowed and “there was no place for horror within the parameters of the bright present and the rosy future”.^[14] This left family comedies, social drama and war films to reflect communist ideologies. Even so, Greg de Cuir, Jr traces the blending of selected Hollywood genre tropes with dogmatic Serbian genre conventions as far back as the Partisan war films of Tito’s regime.^[15]

Ideological supervision by political authorities continued on some level until the end of the 20^th century, but strict artistic doctrine gradually relaxed. By the late 1980s filmmakers began to openly imitate elements of American cinema as the “struggle to free film from the confining tenets of socialist realism […] took the form of expanding the range of permissible genres”.^[16] However, the American embodiment of genre was still considered “inherently alien” to the Serbian world view and directors continued to combine previously outlawed genres with locally acceptable ones.^[17] This is evident in the catastrophe-horror, Variola Vera (Goran Marković, 1982) and horror-comedy, Davitelj protiv davitelja / Strangler Vs Strangler (Slobodan Sijan, 1984). Both were initially met with scathing criticism. It was believed that “the presence of genre […] turned the authentic, creative auteur into a vampire and reduced everything to clichés”.^[18] Then in 1987 the horror-thriller Vec vidjeno / Deja Vu (Goran Marković) was released to positive critical reception, indicating a slight change in attitude despite a poor performance at the box office.^[19]

The development of the horror genre was hindered by the outbreak of the Balkan war. As Milošević rose to power in 1989, a decade of bloody ethnic conflict ensued leaving a million people dead and many more displaced. Civil uprising, the aforementioned three month NATO sanctioned bombing campaign and newly enforced nationalist policies left ordinary Serbian people victimised and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia politically, culturally and economically isolated. National film financing collapsed and cinematographers began to seek funding abroad, relying on the “visibility potential of the conflict to secure foreign financing”.^[20] Many of these films explored the political chaos surrounding the break-up of Yugoslavia. In their investigation of war, ethnic conflicts and everyday violence, the directors “made a whole series of stylistic and thematic choices” uniting them “in a coherent poetic phenomenon”.^[21] These films embraced the presentation of Yugoslavia as reflected in the eyes of the West and can be categorised using the term ‘self-Balkanisation’. They emphasised the savage, untamed nature of the Balkan region by “staging stories full of unmotivated violence, hatred, betrayal and cruel vengeance” and became popular on the art house circuit, carving out a niche for Serbian cinema.^[22] As Marković points out in TOL Magazine, “stereotypical violence has proven a formula for success”.^[23]

As the war ended, Serbia experienced rising unemployment and the proliferation of serious crime. Everyday life became a violent, hyper-real “devastating social and moral crisis”.^[24] The abolition of nationalist rule and the establishment of a liberal democracy saw a “fraught transition from a politics of nationalism to one of Europeanisation”.^[25] Mechanical changes to film production in Serbia and the Europeanisation of the industry manifested thematically in Serbian cinema. Balkanisation became an undesirable form of self-expression and cinematography entered a period of “normalisation”^[26] as filmmakers reconnected their national film culture to worldwide developments.^[27]

Nevertheless, the Western manifestation of genre is still rare in Serbia where generic tropes derived from Hollywood continue to be blended into the Serbian milieu in order to make them meaningful, a trend that Ognjanović hypothesises is more important now than ever in order to obtain domestic box office success in Serbia following the Balkan conflict.^[28] This is illustrated by Dejan Zečević’s T.T. Sindrom / T.T. Syndrome (2002), the first Serbian slasher. The film was critically acclaimed^[29] and was a popular choice for international genre festivals including Brussels IFFF^[30] and Puchon,^[31] but did poorly at the domestic box office. Director Zečević believes that the two genres best suited to the portrayal of Serbian life are either black comedy or horror, but notes that the “general cultural climate has always required a strong rationale for using such motifs: fear for fear’s sake was not generally accepted as particularly entertaining”.^[32] Serbian cinema is already a “story about the defeated, horrified and terrified individual”,^[33] without also being a horror film. This is reflected in the sporadic use of the horror genre in the last decade. In 2006, Stevan Filipovic directed Šejtanov Ratnik / Sheitans Warrior;an absurd, low-budget, horror-comedy. This was followed in 2009 by Mladen Djordjevic’s Zizot i smrt porno bande / The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, a snuff road-movie,and eventually by A Serbian Film in 2010. Both The Life and Death of a Porno Gang and A Serbian Film represent a movement away from films that straddle domestic and Westernised genre boundaries. Spasojević cites 1970s American director William Friedkin and Canadian David Cronenberg as influences. A Serbian Film also has parallels with the more modern, cruelty laden Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)and a sense of despair similar to that found in extreme European films such as Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008). The film struggled to secure a domestic distributor until it achieved international notoriety, illustrating the lack of demand for such a provocative and visceral film in Serbia.

Despite Spasojević’s insistence that A Serbian Film should be generically defined as a family drama that descends into hell, the UK press repeatedly referred to the film as torture porn, a sub-genre of horror.^[34] The conjunction of “horror, torture and ‘pornographic’ excess”^[35] in the film could indeed be interpreted as being for the purposes of “audience admiration, provocation and sensory adventure”,^[36] and therefore deserving of the label ‘torture porn’ – re-worked as ‘spectacle horror’ in Adam Lowenstein’s article.^[37] However, this narrow definition is problematic. The filmcan be understood in a number of complex ways that do not fit the fixed parameters of torture porn / spectacle horror. Lowenstein likens spectacle horror to Tom Gunning’s ‘cinema of attractions’, in which theatrical display dominates “over narrative absorption, emphasising the direct stimulation of shock”.^[38] The narrative of such horror is characteristically propelled only by the need to tenuously connect one extreme scene to the next and is primarily concerned with audience affect. By choosing the subversive world of underground pornography as a metaphor, Spasojević implements a more coherent narrative, providing either a structural or metaphorical rationale for each gruesome scene. A Serbian Film certainly exhibits some of the conventions and iconography of spectacle horror, but it alsoblends genre codes, using elements from family and social drama and post-war crime thriller. It is more fittingly categorised as ‘ordeal cinema’: a group of films that “challenge codes of censorship and social mores, especially through the depiction of sex and violence”.^[39] For Horeck and Kendall, ordeal cinema places an emphasis on the role of the spectator, as they commit to going through a horrific experience with the character.^[40] This spectatorial dynamic fits with Spasojević’s vision that the film should inspire sympathy for, and understanding of, the Balkan region. It is also evident in his blending of genres as Spasojević spends almost half the film developing his characters, allowing the audience to build an empathetic relationship with the protagonist. It is, however, important to recognise that a prior knowledge of Serbia’s history is necessary in order to fully undertake and interpret this ordeal as a political allegory.

Common themes can be traced in the critical dialogue concerning A Serbian Film, though there is a clear polarisation of opinion. Surprisingly, the UK red-top tabloids almost completely failed to engage with the film, with the exception of one article printed by The Sun labelling it a “vile movie”.^[41] The paper used emotive language: “the brutal rape of children”,^[42] to both articulate and inspire disgust. Time Out expressed a similar point of view, Nigel Floyd found the film to be both “reductive” and an “insult to our supposed lack of moral intelligence”.^[43] Some reviewers adopted a more neutral and analytical tone but still made use of descriptive language. Geoffrey Macnab asked, “Is this the nastiest film ever made?” and declared the film a “quite repellent” mixture of “pornography and ultra-violence”.^[44] Total Film described it as an “ultra-shocking”, “unsettling tale” with “graphic scenes of sexual violence”.^[45] Even the most tolerant reviewers found the level of sexualised violence in the film “genuinely disturbing”, but suggested that it might offer “more than just shock value”.^[46] The Independent argued that as “disturbing as it is […] everything that happens in the movie happens for a purpose”.^[47] However, the majority of the mainstream publications seemed intent on deterring potential viewers through the use of provocative language loaded with incriminating disapproval. For example, David Cox’s editorial published in The Guardian suggested that for a potential viewer interested in “torture porn, rape porn, incest porn, paedo porn, snuff porn, necro porn and (a bit of a breakthrough here) newborn porn, A Serbian Film has much to offer”.^[48] Cox’s language contains the tacit assumption that an audience motivated to view this film would also be an advocate of the listed transgressions. Conversely, this press reaction also provided extensive marketing for the film, making it “an absolute must-see for some”.^[49]

Discussion of censorship formed a key component of the critical reception. The extreme subject matter of A Serbian Film meant that it was subject to cuts in the UK, resulting in the film being withdrawn at last minute from the Frightfest 2010 festival programme. Ordinarily the festival benefits from an agreement with the local licensing authority allowing the exhibition of unclassified films. In this case, A Serbian Film’s reputation preceded it and the council received complaints when the programme was announced. They ruled it could not be screened without classification. The film was submitted to the BBFC for review and four minutes and twelve seconds were removed.^[50] The BBFC felt that Spasojević’s film contravened guidelines around juxtaposing children with the depiction of violence and the presentation of sexualised violence. A Serbian Film had become the “most censored film in 16 years”.^[51] It went on to create more controversy when it was screened uncut in October 2010 at Raindance Film Festival on an invite only basis. The audience was entirely comprised of students and members of the press, enabling critics to see the uncut version of the film.

Regarding censorship, Sight and Sound cynically referred to the “the snip-snip-snip of the censor’s scissorhands”,^[52] and The Independent highlighted the “frenzied debates about censorship and freedom of speech”^[53] prompted by the film’s release. The Daily Mail’s Christopher Tookey openly scorned the BBFC’s decision to grant a film he regarded as wallowing in “extreme sexual torture”^[54] any certificate at all. Kim Newman adopted a more liberal position, hypothesising that even if the “political element is spurious justification for a cynical exercise in attention-getting [and] taboo-busting […], it ought to be viewers, not censorship bodies, who make that decision”.^[55] Total Film and Sight and Sound approached the censorship debate from a different angle. Total Film asked readers; “will you be hunting down an uncut copy online?”,^[56] and Sight and Sound suggested that censorship would:

boost the film’s notoriety but wreak havoc on its chances of making money in regions where it is cut: no transgressive film fiend wants to see a neutered film, and everyone knows where they can find intact copies.^[57]

Both publications made overt references to film piracy. The growth of the internet download market has enabled film fans to entirely bypass UK censorship in many cases. It is simpler than ever to obtain a film uncut through streaming media (via various free to access virtual private networks) and peer-to-peer file-sharing, despite attempts at government interference.^[58] This has facilitated the expansion of fan communities. The burgeoning long-tail of distribution allows fans to participate as easily as they can congregate without having to purchase and import DVDs. A Serbian Film found a niche audience amongst fans of extreme cinema, partially expedited by UK distributor Revolver’s decision to stream the film at IndieMoviesOnline^[59] simultaneously to its theatrical release, and their sponsorship of a dedicated discussion / promotion forum at Cult-Labs.^[60] A Serbian Film was released across a range of platforms, subjected to differing levels of censorship and subtitled in various languages. A number of internet forums (including Cult-Labs) accommodated discussions concerning the acquisition of uncensored copies of the film, providing evidence of demand.^[61] At DigitalSpy, forum user Ultros points out that the Swedish DVD is uncut but without English subtitles. He then suggests that “you can download a 1080p or 720p version (of the Swedish Blu-ray) on line and then just download an English subtitle file for it”.^[62] BitTorrent files found on open access sites such as The Pirate Bay, through linking sites such as Torrent Tree and also private torrent communities, do not include the director’s introduction found on the UK DVD.

This is a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government […]. It’s about the monolithic power of leaders who hypnotise you to do things you don’t want to do. You have to feel the violence to know what it’s about […].^[63]

A version of Spasojević’s explanation (quoted above from The Sun) featured as part of the introduction to a selection of the festival screenings and in most UK publicity interviews for the film. Similarly, the promotional website includes a ‘director’s note’, a detailed breakdown of the film’s inception designed to assist audiences and news media in understanding the film. The UK DVD also includes a director’s introduction. This lengthy segment opens to reveal Spasojević seated in front of a dark background featuring a blood red image of Milos’ face. Initially he directly addresses the audience, but after around forty seconds he turns to look off camera which, he informs the audience, is to create “the impression of an interview made for such purposes, so you can take me more seriously”.^[64] Just prior to doing so, the director takes a sip of what appears to be whiskey. Whilst still addressing the camera, he attempts to pass the liquid off as iced tea like “we used in the film”,^[65] but his face appears to indicate that he is lying. Interestingly, whilst he is doing so, he will not meet the gaze of the camera and instead looks away to the right. This is the same direction in which he then turns to look whilst detailing his rationale for the allegory underlying A Serbian Film. It seems unnecessary that he should lie about or even mention the drink, but doing so appears to be a veiled communication to the audience that he finds this whole process unnecessary and / or ridiculous. This is further reinforced by the explanation itself which sounds particularly well-rehearsed and is organised in a systematic fashion, punctuated by cuts to a plain red screen which are reminiscent of inter-titles. This is then emphasised again as the introduction concludes. Spasojević turns to address the camera once more but he is cut off mid-sentence, just as he is expressing his desire that the interview should not be censored as the film has been.

Spasojević’s opening line, “this film you are about to see, or you have already seen it and you are now just exploring the contents of your DVD”^[66] suggests that he is also unaware of the final placement of his introduction on the DVD at the time of recording. This intimates that he regards the audience as intelligent enough to understand his metaphor without intervention from himself, and that to him the introduction is in fact surplus to requirements, a sentiment that correlates with the irreverent tone of the monologue. It is noteworthy that this introduction went on to form part of the main feature and is not an optional DVD extra suggesting that the UK distribution company believe that the film must be viewed within its socio-historical context in order to justify the transgressive content and to be interpreted as a political allegory.

This article would agree that it is difficult to interpret the metaphor from the film text alone, obscured as it is by shock value, sex, and highly stylised bloody violence. Spasojević’s choice of such an extreme genre to illustrate his frustrations further complicates this, placing his UK target audience between the ages of eighteen and thirty.^[67] Despite a lingering perception of Serbia as violent, initiated by the extensive UK reporting of the break-up of Yugoslavia, it is realistic to suggest that this alien context, combined with the elapsed time (since the conflict) and the physical distance (between the UK and Serbia) mean that the metaphor underlying A Serbian Film would be outside of this audience’s direct frame of reference and therefore require the explanation to be effectively understood. The UK censorship of the film drove a percentage of its target audience to seek out uncut versions. The lack of director’s introduction on BitTorrent files deprives these consumers of the necessary context required to understand the film’s metaphor without further research. The film is recognised and sought out largely for its transgressive qualities and has routinely been included in ‘top ten most extreme’ film listings.^[68] This has resulted in an arbitrary interpretation of Serbian national identity, not only on fan forums but also within the wider population. BodyBuilding.com user Whytchapel posited, “I thought the movie was pretty **** until I read the director’s reasoning and the metaphor the film represents”,^[69] and another asked, “I heard most Serbian people are sick fuks [sic] like the people in that movie, is that true? Apparently most are rapists/child molesters and terrorists”.^[70] In fact there is a pervasive negative view of Serbia. Forum user Horrorreject at Horrormoviefans.com explained, “Serbia looks like a beautiful country but these movies lead me to believe that it’s a hell hole”,^[71] and many forum users were of the opinion that “films with such content emanate from that region”.^[72]

Representations of national identity are an issue also evident throughout the critical coverage of A Serbian Film. The majority of UK reviewers quote or paraphrase the allegorical explanation in an effort to provide context and facilitate understanding.^[73] One thing that Spasojević does stress in the UK DVD introduction is that even though life in Serbia was a point of inception for his film, he considers this a universal story. This is not something he is heard repeating for festival publicity very regularly and the UK press fail to acknowledge the transposable nature of the film, perhaps because they are unwilling to admit that this could ever be applied to a Western nation. In doing so, each of the publications ‘others’ the film. They fixate upon it only as a representation of Serbia. Writing for The Guardian, David Cox asked, “so just how does the film’s story manage to tell Serbia’s?”^[74] Cox concluded that cinema may not be an effective medium for “parables”^[75] and acknowledged that A Serbian Film would leave viewers with a questionable understanding of Serbia. The New York Times shared this view, interpreting the film as a “piece of corrosive social criticism, exposing a national psychology of sadism, misogyny and self-pity”.^[76]The metaphor informing the film is further skewed by existing Orientalist notions of the Eastern Bloc evoked by film’s title. For Macnab, the film has “a feeling of nihilistic self-loathing” running through it.^[77] Despite the target audience not necessarily witnessing the UK media coverage of the Balkan conflict first-hand, Serbia remains a “symbol for tension, conflict and, ultimately, warfare”.^[78] A Serbian Film attempts to subvert Western notions of Serbia by virtue of exaggeration, but achieves the opposite. Macnab surmised that the West may perpetually deem Serbia a “pariah state”.^[79] The film invokes dated tropes of self-Balkanisation through the use of extreme violence, bloodshed and a pervasive atmosphere of hopelessness in order to attract an audience. This creates normative difficulties. Spasojević embarked upon a project to “communicate the political, moral and psychological downfall of Serbia”^[80] as experienced by the everyman. In the UK, the outcome of his ambition was largely received as a “violent, revolting shocker” in which “the horrors are merciless”.^[81] The press reacted primarily to the visceral impact of the film, finding it difficult to disentangle the moral and political message from the sexual sadism, the cruelty and the hatred. This film is “irremediably caught up with […] aesthetic and cultural forms, with [the] already existing signification”^[82] of ordeal cinema. Whilst it is arguably successful in helping the viewer to feel the extremity of the situation, it does not and cannot directly explain the Serbian condition. Featherstone and Johnson conclude that A Serbian Film leaves the audience “in no doubt about the true horror of the sadistic state machine”,^[83] but this article would argue that A Serbian Film actuallyleaves the UK press in no doubt about the true horror of Serbia. To the UK press, A Serbian Film represents both Serbia, and the Serbian people as barbaric. Further to this, it indicates that they are unchanged by time and beyond reprieve.

Conclusion

Originating from a small national film industry, A Serbian Film raises questions about how Serbia defines itself in an international context. This is complicated by the unusual circumstances in which the film was produced. The source of funding is not completely transparent. Spasojević claims to have funded the film primarily using his own money, with the cast and crew also contributing. Besides making the film entirely independent of the Serbian government, it also means that the Serbian production most widely recognised in the UK is a vehicle for the agenda of a very limited number of people. The film cultivates negative perceptions of a country that, for the most part, had no hand in its making.

With A Serbian Film, Spasojevićaspired to challenge Orientalist perceptions of Serbia but simultaneously employed dated tropes of self-balkanisation to secure a Western audience. In doing so he evoked the spirit of the Balkan wild man, a concept which has been largely abandoned by domestic Serbian productions.^[84] Spasojević adapted and amplified the atmosphere of cruelty and violence exhibited in 1990s Serbian film. Severely testing the boundaries of taste served to increase the success of A Serbian Film on the international genre festival circuit, an environment where organisers actively pursue films which will generate maximum publicity. However, the political message of the film is obscured by the director’s use of ordeal cinema requiring a socio-historical framework to confer meaning. Despite acknowledging and in some cases attempting to contextualise the political metaphor, the UK press classified the film as torture porn. In the case of A Serbian Film, this combination of sensationalist media reporting coupled with limited understandings of the Balkan conflict led to a reinforcement of the very reductive understandings of Serbian national identity the film set out to subvert.

The censorship of the film in the UK exacerbated this misconception as extreme film fans sought to discover uncut versions of the film online. The ability to contextualise such material is crucial when negotiating meaning, but this has become increasingly difficult in a world where access to film is unlimited, and uncensored. Even Christopher Tookey admits that “the BBFC’s powers are of limited effectiveness. The two recent films it has refused to certify […] are available on the internet.”^[85] The diametrically opposed relationship between digital distribution and classification requires more extensive investigation. Whilst legal streaming platforms begin to routinely make use of BBFC classifications, the expansion of the illegal download market has witnessed an increase in the availability of world cinema. Extreme horror films like A Serbian Film or The Bunny Game (Adam Rehmeier, 2010), recently rejected in the UK, are easily obtainable. Ongoing research in this area is vital as we seek to understand the ways in which increased illegal dissemination of extreme films impacts upon UK audiences, industries, and censorship policies.

[1] The film received no funding from either Eurimages or the Serbian Ministry of Culture. Instead, director Srđjan Spasojević set up his own production company Contra Film to raise money.

[2] Dejan Ognjanović, “The Art of Atrocity,” Rue Morgue 106, (November 2010): p. 18.

[3] The tendency of post-Yugoslav directors to embrace self-Balkanisation, the self-perception of ‘Balkan’ as ‘other’, was initially observed by Maria Todorova. She describes the Western view of the Balkan male as “uncivilised, primitive, crude, cruel, and without exception, dishevelled”. Tomislav Longinović notes that self-Balkanisation manifested within films produced during the Yugoslavian ethnic conflict of the 1990s. These films were made by auteurs exhibiting in a global theatre and seeking to overcome the “domination / submission dichotomy” that defines the relationship of Western cinema to cinema at the periphery. These films “represent the post-Yugoslav space as a zone where distortions of extreme passions strive to satisfy the imaginary demand for violence coming from the Western Eye”. See Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 38-61, and Tomislav V. Longinović, “Playing the Western Eye: Balkan Masculinity and Post-Yugoslav War Cinema,” in East European Cinemas, ed. Anikó Imre (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 35-48.

[4] Ramon Lobato and Mark D. Ryan, “Rethinking Genre Studies through Distribution Analysis: Issues in International Horror Movie Circuits,” New Review of Film and Television Studies 9, no. 2 (2011): pp. 188-203.

[5] Ivana Kronja, “The Aesthetics of Violence in Recent Serbian Cinema: Masculinity in Crisis,” Film Criticism 30, no. 3 (Spring, 2006): pp. 22-23.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Nevena Daković, “Love, Magic, and Life: Gypsies in Yugoslav Cinema,” in History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, eds. Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer, Vol. 5: Types and Stereotypes (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin’s Publishing Company, 2010), p. 393.

[8] Stig A. Nohrstedt and others, “From the Persian Gulf to Kosovo – War Journalism and Propaganda,” European Journal of Communication 15, no. 3 (2000): p. 391.

[9] Ibid., p. 400.

[10] This count includes a number of films made for television. See: Dejan Ognjanović, “Serbian Horror Film,” The Temple of Ghoul (2010), <http://templeofghoul.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/serbian-horror-film.html> [Accessed 20/08/2014].

[11] See Mark Featherstone and Beth Johnson, “’Ovo Je Srbija’: The Horror of the National Thing in A Serbian Film,” Journal for Cultural Research 16, no. 1 (2012): pp. 63-79, and Dejan Ognjanović, “Genre Films in Recent Serbian Cinema,” Kinokultura Special Issue 8 (2009), <http://www.kinokultura.com/specials/8/ognjanovic.shtml> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[12] Ibid.

[13] See Ognjanović, “Genre Films in Recent Serbian Cinema”, and Daniel Goulding, “East Central European Cinema: Two Defining Moments,” in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, eds. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 471-477.

[14] Greg de Cuir, Jr, “Partisan ‘Realism’: Representations of Wartime Past and State-Building Future in the Cinema of Socialist Yugoslavia,” Frames Cinema Journal Winter, no. 4 (2013), <http://www.framescinemajournal.com/article/1421/> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[15] Ibid.

[16] Goulding, East Central European Cinema, p.472.

[17] Ognjanović, “Genre Films in Recent Serbian Cinema.”

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Longinović, “Playing the Western Eye: Balkan Masculinity and Post-Yugoslav War Cinema”, p. 36.

[21] Jurica Pavičić, “’Cinema of Normalization’: Changes of Stylistic Model in Post-Yugoslav Cinema After the 1990s,” Studies in Eastern Europe Cinema 1, no. 1 (2010): p. 44.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Sasa Marković, “Success is Violent,” TOL Magazine, 5th September 2003, <http://www.tol.org/client/article/10596-success-is-violent.html> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[24] Kronja, “The Aesthetics of Violence in Recent Serbian Cinema”, pp. 7-37.

[25] Nevena Daković, “Europe Lost and Found: Serbian Cinema and E.U. Integration,” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 4, no. 2 (2006): p. 93.

[26] Pavičić, “’Cinema of Normalization’”, p. 43.

[27] Goulding, East Central European Cinema, p. 472.

[28] Ognjanović, “Genre Films in Recent Serbian Cinema.”

[29] Herceg Film Festival, “16th Film Festival – Programme and Awards,” <http://www.hercegfest.co.me/newsarticle/16-FILMSKI-FESTIVAL> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[30] Frank Lafond, “’Don’t Go in There!’: European Films at the 20th Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival,” Kinoeye: New Perspectives on European Film 2, no. 10 (2002), <http://www.kinoeye.org/02/10/lafond10.php> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[31] Unknown, “Filmografia – Dejan Zečević,” <http://www.dbdaab.com/IIIIcovek/filmografijaHTM.html> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[32] Ognjanović, “Serbian Horror Film.”

[33] Kronja, “The Aesthetics of Violence in Recent Serbian Cinema,” p. 21.

[34] See: Pete Cashmore, “Will this New Movie Kill Off Torture Porn for Good? ” The Guardian, 28th August 2010, < http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/aug/28/torture-porn-frightfest-quiz> [Accessed 20/08/14] and A. O. Scott, “Torture Or Porn? no Need to Choose,” The New York Times, 12th May 2011, <http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/movies/a-serbian-film-directed-by-Srdjan-spasojevic-review.html?_r=0> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[35] Adam Lowenstein, “Spectacle Horror and Hostel: Why Torture Porn Doesn’t Exist,” Critical Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2001): p. 42.

[36] Ibid.

[37] For further definition see: David Edelstein, “Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn,” New York Magazine, 6th February 2006, <http://nymag.com/movies/features/15622> [Accessed 20/08/14] and Lowenstein, “Spectacle Horror and Hostel: Why Torture Porn Doesn’t Exist”, pp. 42-59.

[38] Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, its Spectator and the Avant-Garde,” in Early Cinema: Space-Frame-Narrative, eds. Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (London: British Film Institute, 1986), pp. 58-59.

[39] Annette Kuhn and Guy Westall, Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 52.

[40] Tanya Horeck and Tina Kendall, “The New Extremisms: Re-Thinking Extreme Cinema,” Cinephile 8, no. 2 (2013), p. 7.

[41] FilmBiz, “Sick Serbian Film Hits London,” The Sun, 10th September 2010, <http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/film/3128497/Sick-Serbian-film-hits-London.html> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[42] Ibid.

[43] Nigel Floyd, “A Serbian Film (18): Time Out Says,” Time Out, 7th December 2010, <http://www.timeout.com/london/film/a-serbian-film-2010> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[44] Geoffrey Macnab, “A Serbian Film: Is this the Nastiest Film Ever made?” The Independent, 19th November 2012, <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/a-serbian-film-is-this-the-nastiest-film-ever-made-2137781.html> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[45] George Wales, “FrightFest Drops A Serbian Film.” Total Film, 26th August 2010, <http://www.totalfilm.com/news/frightfest-drops-a-serbian-film> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[46] Macnab, “ASerbian Film: Is this the Nastiest Film Ever made?”

[47] Ibid.

[48] David Cox. “A Serbian Film: When Allegory gets Nasty.” The Guardian, 13th December 2010, <http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2010/dec/13/a-serbian-film-allegorical-political> [Accessed: 20/08/14].

[49] Shaun Kimber, “Transgressive Edge Play and Srpski Film/A Serbian Film,” Horror Studies 5, no. 1 (2014): pp. 107-125.

[50] BBFC, “A Serbian Film – Srpski Film,” Case Study (ND), <http://www.bbfc.co.uk/case-studies/serbian-film-srpski-film> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[51] Catherine Shoard, “Serbian Film Becomes most Censored Film in 16 Years,” The Guardian, 26th November 2010, <http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/nov/26/serbian-film-most-censored> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[52] Mark Pilkington, “Frightfest: Return of the Censor?” Sight and Sound, Festival Postcard, (September, 2010), <http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/newsandviews/festivals/frightfest-2010-nasties.php> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[53] Macnab, “A Serbian Film: Is this the Nastiest Film Ever made?”

[54] Christopher Tookey, “It’s Not just the Internet That’s Full of Violent Porn – so are Cinemas,” Daily Mail, 1st November 2011, <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055937/Christopher-Tookey-Its-just-internet-thats-violent-porn–cinemas.html> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[55] Kim Newman, “A Serbian Film: Take Your Grandma. It’ll be Fine…” Empire Online (ND), <http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=137038> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[56] Wales, “FrightFest Drops A Serbian Film.”

[57] Pilkington, “Frightfest: Return of the Censor?”

[58] Mark Langshaw, “UK ISPs Under Pressure to Clamp Down on Illegal Downloaders,” Digital Spy, 2nd September 2013, <http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tech/news/a511827/uk-isps-under-pressure-to-clamp-down-on-illegal-downloaders.html> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[59] “IndieTalk Forums.”, 2010b, <http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=26988> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[60] “Cult-Labs Forums.”, 2010a, <http://www.cult-labs.com/forums/euro-horror/3960-i-love-serbian-film.html> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[61] “IndieTalk Forums” and “Cult-Labs Forums.”

[62] “A Serbian Film.” Digital Spy, 2011a, <http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1569883> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[63] FilmBiz, “Sick Serbian Film Hits London.”

[64] Srđjan Spasojević, Srpski Film / A Serbian Film (Serbia: 2010).

[65] Ibid.

[66] Ibid.

[67] It is possible to draw similarities between a UK Asia Extreme audience and the potential UK audience for A Serbian Film. The following study found the Asia Extreme target audience to be primarily aged 18-30. See Emma Pett, “People Who Think Outside the Box: British Audiences and Asian Extreme Films,” Cine Excess Launch Issue (ND).

[68] See for example:

“Truly Disturbing,” <http://www.trulydisturbing.com/2013/05/27/disturbings-top-10-disturbing-movies-time/> [Accessed 20/08/14], and “Bloody-Disgusting,” <http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3217429/exclusive-top-10-horror-movies-that-you-wouldnt-watch-with-your-girlfriend/> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[69] “A Serbian Film: Uncut.” Body Building Forums, 2011b, <http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=139201903> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[70] Ibid.

[71] “Serbian Shock Cinema.” Horrormoviefans.Com 2013, <http://www.horrormoviefans.com/message_board/view_topic.php?id=16599&forum_id=47> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[72] MrKingFisher. Digital Spy.

[73] David Cox, “A Serbian Film: When Allegory Gets Nasty,” The Guardian, 13th December 2010, <http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2010/dec/13/a-serbian-film-allegorical-political> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[74] Ibid.

[75] Ibid.

[76] A. O. Scott, “Torture Or Porn? No Need to Choose,” The New York Times, 12th May 2011, <http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/movies/a-serbian-film-directed-by-Srdjan-spasojevic-review.html?_r=0> [Accessed 20/08/13].

[77] Macnab, “A Serbian Film: Is this the Nastiest Film Ever made?”

[78] Featherstone and Johnson, “Ovo Je Srbija”, p. 64.

[79] Macnab, “A Serbian Film: Is this the Nastiest Film Ever made?”

[80] Srđjan Spasojević, “Directors Statement – A Serbian Film,” Contra Film, <http://www.aserbianfilm.co.uk/statement.html> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[81] Nigel Andrews, “Film Releases: December 10,” Financial Times, 8th December 2010, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9c2c7a44-02ee-11e0-bb1e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2eJfWS6Lu> [Accessed 20/08/14].

[82] Dean Lockwood, “All Stripped Down: The Spectacle of ‘Torture Porn’,” Popular Communication 7, no. 1 (2009): p. 47.

[83] Featherstone and Johnson, “Ovo Je Srbija”, p. 72.

[84] Referring to films made throughout the 80s and 90s, Frederic Jameson posits that “movies are pre-eminently the place in which the Balkans can be shown […] to be the place of violence itself – its home and its heartland”. He goes on to highlight that “such movies seem to offer eyewitness proof that the people in the Balkans are violent by their very nature; they seem to locate a place in which culture and civilization […] are at the thinnest veneer, at any moment capable of being stripped away to show the anarchy and ferocity underneath. The inhabitant of this landscape is the wild man of the Balkans”. See: Jameson, Fredric. “Thoughts on Balkan Cinema.” in Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film, eds. Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 231-258.

[85] Tookey, “It’s Not Just the Internet That’s Full of Violent Porn – So Are Cinemas.”

Notes on Contributor

Alexandra Kapka is a PhD candidate in the School of Creative Arts at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests include European distribution, extreme cinema, digital piracy and censorship.

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Filmography

A Serbian Film (Srpski Film, Srđjan Spasojević, 2010)

Deja Vu (Vec vidjeno, Goran Marković, 1987)

Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)

Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008)

Sheitans Warrior (Šejtanov Ratnik, Stevan Filipovic, 2006)

Strangler Vs Strangler (Davitelj protiv davitelja, Slobodan Sijan, 1984)

The Life and Death of a Porno Gang (Zizot i smrt porno bande, Mladen Djordjevic, 2009)

T.T. Syndrome (T.T. Sindrom, Dejan Zečević, 2002)

Variola Vera (Goran Marković, 1982)

Doomsday (2008) is a British-American-German co-production written and directed by Neil Marshall, who established his career and reputation with the horror films Dog Soldiers (2002) and The Descent (2005). While Marshall’s earlier work exhibits a relatively stable genre identity, Doomsday, an apocalyptic action film, is notable for its assemblage of cross-generic elements and could be viewed as a pronounced example of genre hybridism. First, I argue that Doomsday is more usefully examined as a point of intersection for debates on genre and authorship that can be traced to the origins of the former as a reaction against auteur theory. In other words, the film invites readings in terms of both genre and authorship, yet proves resistant to both, underlining its perceived ‘failings’ but also the limitations of these forms of analysis. My methodology also draws on reception studies, informed by the critical response to the film, and secondly, I argue that Doomsday, while playing with genre tropes and authorial ‘marks’, is also referencing and quoting from specific films, and that these references and quotes are intended to be perceived as such by the viewer. While Doomsday can be read as a parody of the cited film texts, it operates rather as pastiche, or aesthetic imitation, through which its disparate aspects achieve accommodation and coherence.

Much early English-language writing on film genre dates from the late 1960s and early 1970s, in response to film criticism that focused on the director as auteur¹ and treated popular art as high culture.² There are problematic aspects to genre scholarship, such as a bias towards American productions and an incompatibility of theoretical and industrial terms,³ yet it is regarded widely as a key component of film studies. Debates on genre tend to identify a series of distinct categories (such as the western or the musical) and Richard Maltby notes how a given genre may exhibit distinctive “thematic, iconographic, narrative, and political propensities”.⁴ For example, a western may be identified by its setting (historical and geographical), costumes, props, music, sound effects, character types, story elements and thematic or ideological concerns.While the division of films according to their appointed genres suggests a relatively straightforward process of categorisation, generic purity is a theoretical construct rather than an actuality.⁵ Thus, a given film can draw on a number of genres rather than belong exclusively to just one. Dog Soldiers,for example, while identifying and identified with the horror genre, features elements associated with the war film. Concepts of genre also draw on extra-filmic factors, a process described by Steve Neale as “inter-textual relay”, involving the circulation of generic images, labels, terms and names across various media forms, whether studio publicity, exhibitors’ advertising campaigns, fan magazines or press reviews.⁶ Publicity for The Descent includes the line “Scream Your Last Breath”, placing the film unambiguously in the horror genre and its associated predicted/desired audience response. Thus a western or horror film can be characterised as a cinematic narrative consisting of distinct and standardised ingredients but is equally a film identified, marketed, exhibited and received as a ‘western’ or ‘horror film’.⁷

Neale argues that genres consist not only of films but also of “specific systems of expectation and hypothesis” on the part of the spectator.⁸ These systems give audiences a means of recognising and understanding the films they watch, involving what Neale terms “regimes of verisimilitude”.⁹ Neale identifies two types of verisimilitude, generic and social or cultural. Some genres appeal to cultural verisimilitude, such as the gangster, crime or war film, invoking notions of realism, which links to Barry Langford’s concept of “unmarked verisimilitudes”, such as the laws of physics, “whose observance can simply be taken for granted and establishes the continuity of the generic world with that of the spectator”.¹⁰ Therefore, while a gangster film may contain elements far removed from the experiences of most viewers, it operates in a recognisably ‘real’ world and will not introduce aspects contrary to this realism.Other genres, Neale states, such as science fiction and horror, make little or no appeal to authenticity, operating largely in terms of generic verisimilitude.¹¹ Suspending or flouting the laws of science or nature, as Langford notes, “may form a basic and recognised element of the verisimilitude of an outer-space science fiction film”.¹² I contend that all genres invoke at least an element of authenticity, if only as a point of departure. Nevertheless, I concur with Neale that it is these generically verisimilar elements of the science fiction or horror film that “constitute its pleasure” and attract audiences.¹³

As noted, Neil Marshall established his career as a filmmaker working in the horror genre. James Leggott cites the latter as one the dominant popular genres in British cinema from the mid-1990s onwards.¹⁴ From this perspective, Marshall was following a pre-existing industry trend with commercial potential in both the domestic and international markets. Both Dog Soldiers and The Descent employ, or comply with, visual, aural, narrative and thematic tropes associated predominantly with horror, though by no means exclusive to this form. Doomsday, however, draws on horror, science fiction, disaster film, melodrama, cop film, thriller, war film and medieval quest. This approach can be read as a questioning or subverting of the concept of genre categories, and as highlighting the hybrid nature of popular cinema as a whole. The film’s play with genre labels is initially motivated and legitimised with a coherent if tokenistic narrative structure. Doomsday begins as horror-inflected dystopian science fiction, then segues into a rogue cop movie while retaining its futuristic trappings through such devices as a mobile artificial eye/camera. The main character is then drawn into political conspiracy, arguably a subgenre in itself, which necessitates a military-scientific expedition depicted with clear reference to the war film. The coherence of this multi-genre approach falters with a switch into medieval fantasy which seems barely explained let alone motivated (why has this society regressed so far in a relatively short period?). This transition is anticipated through such devices as the soldiers’ body armour, a dungeon and instruments of torture, ancient weapons and a brief bout of swordplay. These visual cues do not however enable the kind of smooth generic shift seen earlier in the film, despite the appearance of an important, previously unseen character and intercutting with scenes in near-future London.

It could be argued that Doomsday is employing a strategy intended to emphasise rather than disguise the hybrid and even arbitrary nature of genre categories and labels, culminating in the calculatedly absurd medieval scenes. Alternatively, the film is unwilling or unable to construct a stable genre identity, at least in a form with wide audience appeal, reflected in its commercial failure. Budgeted at around US$30 million, considerably more than Dog Soldiers and The Descent, Doomsday grossed just over US$22.2 million in cinemas worldwide.¹⁵ Even allowing for television and home video sales, this was a disappointing response which arguably damaged Marshall’s career. To date he has made only one subsequent feature film, Centurion (2010), a Romans versus Picts drama which also underperformed in cinemas.¹⁶ Marshall’s move away from the horror genre, and thus from his identity as a genre filmmaker, has seemingly compromised his opportunities to work in mainstream feature films and his career is currently focused on television. Whatever the restrictions of being labelled and promoted as a horror director, there are commercial advantages to this form of identification.

While Marshall’s faltering box-office success has undoubtedly impacted on his career, his profile as a distinctive filmmaker with identifiable thematic preoccupations and stylistic consistency has survived and, arguably, been enhanced by his shift away from the horror genre. Making a case for Marshall as an auteur on the basis of four films is problematic yet his work conforms to or may at least be mapped onto notions of authorship. Debates on authorship in relation to cinema have usually centered on the director and ideas of personal expression. As Peter Wollen states, the concept of the auteur is linked to the French film journal Cahiers du Cinéma, which promoted the politique des auteurs during the 1950s, albeit in haphazard fashion.¹⁷ In English language debates, the auteur figure was taken up by American critic Andrew Sarris, who transformed the original Cahiers polemic into what he considered to be a precise theoretical framework.¹⁸ The auteur theory, or policy, permitted specific filmmakers to be aligned with the romantic, and romanticised, principles of individual creativity despite working in a medium that was by its nature “collective, commercial, industrial and popular”.¹⁹ From the start, aspects of auteur theory were disputed, challenged and revised but, as Pam Cook notes, the argument that the director is an important originator of meaning “remained relevant to debate in film studies”.²⁰ The concept of the auteur, however contentious, retains at least a measure of its currency in terms of film scholarship and wider cultural debates.

Caughie notes how, according to auteur theory, “a film, though produced collectively, is most likely to be valuable when it is essentially the product of its director”.²¹ The notion of value is problematic in terms of mainstream cinema: what kind of value is being assessed?; commercial, aesthetic, cultural or social value?; how is this value to be measured? However, Marshall’s status as the writer, director, and, in the cases of Dog Soldiers and Doomsday, editor of his films permits him to be considered the prime creator of these works, at least in terms of promotion and reception. The opening credits for The Descent proclaim it “A Neil Marshall Film”, asserting his status in definite terms. Furthermore, if Marshall’s films do not exhibit the “manifestations of unique personal genius” Cook ascribes to the auteur, they do display traces of the “homogenous personal world-view” also required of the director as author.²² In terms of auteur tropes, Marshall’s films, including Doomsday, are notable for their balance of suspense and violence, but also a preoccupation with Britain and Britishness, hostile landscapes, human recklessness and corruption, unconventional family groups, and female characters whose warrior qualities are unleashed through physical and mental ordeals. He also plays with genre elements and preconceptions. While Doomsday, in my view, exhibits and develops Marshall’s thematic interests, introducing a female character with a more subtle strength than his tough heroines, it was not received in this way. Like The Descent, Doomsday was promoted as “A Neil Marshall Film”, yet neither met expectations raised by his previous work nor offered, in the view of many critics, a coherent stylistic or thematic progression, exacerbating its problematic shift away from ‘straight’ horror.

Doomsday may, nevertheless, be usefully analysed through reception studies, which, as Barbara Klinger states, “examine a network of relationships between a film or filmic element (such as a star), adjacent inter-textual fields such as censorship, exhibition practices, star publicity and reviews, and the dominant or alternative ideologies of society at a particular time”.²³ Whatever the intentions of the filmmakers, financiers, publicists or distributors, the meaning or significance of a film is not fixed or stable once it enters into public circulation.²⁴ Its reception in a given market is dependent on an ever-changing multiplicity of interrelated factors.²⁵ It is important to acknowledge the limitations and constraints of reception studies. As Paul Willemen notes, extra-filmic contexts involve numerous historical, social, economic and cultural factors with roots dating back decades if not longer in some instances.²⁶ More specifically, Klinger argues that the critical response to a film reveals only a part of its “social circulation” and the material it provides cannot be extrapolated into a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon.²⁷ What such a study can do is to “tell us how that field produced meaning for the film and give us a partial view of its discursive surround”.²⁸ Reviews, both in the mainstream press and in specialist publications, are potentially problematic in and of themselves. Issues of word limits, in-house style and target readership all play a part in shaping the published review.²⁹ Allowing for these constraints, a review can be placed in comparative relation with other reviews generated from analogous circumstances. In this way similarities and differences “begin to be observable and potentially pertinent”.³⁰

It is instructive to compare and contrast Doomsday’s generic mash-up with its promotion and reception, domestic and international. Both the British and US poster design suggest some uncertainty over how the film should be marketed. The British poster is dominated by the image of a spiked club, clutched in two hands, against a backdrop of flames and red sky. A feral gang are depicted on the lower left side of the poster yet their appearance does not clarify the film’s setting or genre type. The poster’s imagery connotes action of a violent and brutal nature, as does the tagline, “Survive This”, yet on the strength of this design the film could be set in the past (historical or mythical), the present or the future. The text highlights Marshall’s name but also clarifies his identity and achievements: “From the director of Dog Soldiers and The Descent”, underlining his association with the horror genre. The US poster features the punkish cannibal villains Sol and Viper alongside heroine Eden Sinclair, a lone wolf law enforcement officer. All three are associated with weaponry: pistols, spiked club and sword, connoting violent spectacle. Marshall’s name is not prominent, suggesting his negligible status Stateside as a promotional tool. The tagline “Mankind has an expiration date” hints at a present day or futuristic setting. In both instances there is little information by which to identify the type of film being sold. The text on the UK poster suggests another horror film from a known genre director, yet the imagery does not confirm this expectation to any significant degree. Unlike the UK design, the US poster highlights three of the characters, but does not place them in a readily identifiable context.

It is notable that the critical response to Doomsday, on both sides of the Atlantic, stressed not so much its genre(s) or status as “A Neil Marshall Film”, but rather its assemblage of elements lifted from other films. Titles cited by critics include the then recent 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002) and Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003), along with older films such as The Omega Man (Boris Sagal, 1971), The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979), Mad Max 2 (George Miller, 1981), Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981), Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), Streets of Fire (Walter Hill, 1984), Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985), Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) and Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994). In addition to story elements and themes, these films and others are referenced in terms of scenes, dialogue, lighting, music, character names, vehicles, costumes and props. A commonly cited influence on Doomsday is the near-future action fantasy Escape from New York (John Carpenter, 1981), with its quarantined metropolis, corrupt politicking, feral gangs and one-eyed protagonist.

Broadly speaking, the critical reaction to Doomsday focuses on the legitimacy of Marshall’s extensive cinematic sampling, taking the latter as a given. An interesting response can be found in Cinefantastique, a US magazine covering horror, science fiction and fantasy cinema, and therefore, arguably, more attuned to the demands of the target audience than the mainstream press. Reviewing the film on 16 March, 2008, critic Steve Biodrowski gave a qualified approval to Marshall’s approach, comparing Doomsday to “a medley of greatest hits performed by a hot, young talent who brings a new vocal inflection to the tired, old standards […] creating something simultaneously familiar and new”.³¹ Nigel Floyd, writing in Time Out, on 6 May, 2008, also took a positive view of this ‘cover version’ approach: “Marshall, likewise, lashes together elements from ’80s post-apocalyptic movies such as ‘Mad Max’ and ‘Escape from New York’ to create a supercharged monster of a movie”. More neutral responses to Doomsday include Philip French’s review for the Observer on 11 May, 2008: “It’s 28 Days Later meets Escape from New York with Malcolm McDowell as a loony laird leading the Mad Macs”, encapsulating what he saw as the film’s main reference points. Andrew Robertson, writing in Eye for Film on 19 May, 2008, acknowledged Marshall’s “genuine love of classic Eighties action movies” but noted how “Doomsday nearly creaks under the weight of its references”.

For other critics, Marshall’s ‘greatest hits’ approach to Doomsday was nothing more than blatant and inferior imitation. New York Times critic Matt Zoller Seitz, on 15 March, 2008, criticised Doomsday as “so derivative that it doesn’t so much seem to reference its antecedents as try on their famous images like a child playing dress-up. Homage without innovation isn’t homage, it’s karaoke”. Jim Ridley, in Village Voice, on 18 March, 2008, described the film as cobbled together “in the manner of a junk-food glutton”, offering nothing “that wasn’t lifted from its context in a better movie”. Guardian critic Phelim O’Neill, on 9 May, 2008, identified the strategy of tribute in Doomsday, acknowledging Marshall’s astute choice of references, yet characterised the result as “pale imitation and jumble sale thrills”, with a plot that “clumsily lurches from one cribbed set piece to another”.³² Addressing Doomsday in terms of imitation, second handedness and outright plagiarism, these responses suggested the film neither required nor merited further analysis. This cinematic karaoke, to use Zoller Seitz’s term, invalidated Doomsday as an integrated text.

None of the reviews cited above address Doomsday in terms of parody, that is, the deliberate imitation or repetition of a specific text, or texts, with humorous intent. Ingeborg Hoesterey defines parody as “a work of literature or another art that imitates an existent piece which is well-known to its readers, viewers, or listeners with satirical, critical, or polemical intention”.³³ Distinctive features of the original work are retained but with what Hoesterey terms “contrastive intention”.³⁴ The clues, or cues, in the parodic text are decoded successfully by the intended audience which shares “certain assumptions or cultural codes with the encoder”.³⁵ Much of the pleasure offered by parody derives from the violation of rigid norms or conventions and the transgression of boundaries.³⁶ Richard Dyer states that parody always implies a negative evaluation of its referent,³⁷ which I argue is not necessarily the case.

Aspects of Doomsday invite interpretation as parody, such as comedy Scotsmen dancing the can-can alongside svelte pole dancers. A long-haired punk gang member with white and blue make-up is clearly based on the medieval epic Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995), its heroic protagonist William Wallace and his war paint, which featured heavily in promotion for the film. This reference could be read as parodic, given the punk’s ineptitude as a fighter and his excessively gory demise, invoking Wallace’s grisly execution in Braveheart but played here for gross-out humour. The lengthy sequence set in a retro-medieval kingdom offers a more sustained parody of what Andrew Higson terms heritage cinema,³⁸ ‘quality’ films recreating Britain’s past for middlebrow audiences, as with the gift shop sign in the castle and the mixing and matching of eras and cultures common to historical epics and sword-and-sorcery fantasies.

For the most part, however, Doomsday does not seek to parody its sources. I argue the film is more constructively read as pastiche, or aesthetic imitation, which like parody is dependent for its effect on the audience’s awareness and appreciation of the original work(s). Dyer defines pastiche as “a kind of imitation that you are meant to know is an imitation”, this knowledge being “central to its meaning and affect”.³⁹ Marshall’s earlier films employ various cinematic and wider cultural references. Dog Soldiers invokes Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Nicholas Meyer, 1982), Aliens, Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970) and, especially, Zulu (Cy Endfield, 1964), while The Descent has passing references to the Tomb Raider video game series and, less overtly, The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) and The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982). These references are, however, fleeting and the films are not dependent on them to any significant degree. Even the repeated visual and aural nods to Zulu are sufficiently integrated into Dog Soldiers to function without viewer awareness of the source text. By contrast, Doomsday foregrounds this practice with a wealth of cinematic references clearly intended to be read as such. It is notable that Robertson’s review describes the film as pastiche, with the clear implication that this form is inherently inferior to tribute or homage, however these terms might be defined. For him, the references to films such as Escape from New York and Mad Max 2 cross some indeterminate point at which they become mere imitation or appropriation.

The tensions that play out in Doomsday between ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ imitation invite comparisons with the cycle of futuristic urban breakdown/post-apocalypse action films produced in Italy during the early 1980s. Examples of this form include 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1990: I guerrieri del Bronx, Enzo G. Castellari, 1982), The New Barbarians (I nuovi barbari, Enzo G. Castellari, 1983), Endgame (Endgame – Bronx lotta finale, Joe D’Amato, 1983), The Final Executioner (L’ultimo guerriero, Romolo Guerrieri, 1984) and Rats: Night of Terror (Rats – Notte di terrore, Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso, 1984). These all exhibit, to whatever degree, a similar equivocation and tension between open, if unacknowledged imitation and calculated pastiche, most obviously in their borrowings from the Mad Max 2 and Escape from New York templates. Recurrent features include: desolate, corpse-strewn landscapes, urban and rural; pulsing, repetitive synthesiser scores; customised and/or armoured vehicles; fetishized weaponry ancient, modern and futuristic; set-pieces emphasising violent action, stunts and gore; punk-style extras and mix-and-match costume design; taciturn anti-heroes often dressed in black; hostile tribes or gangs, and corrupt totalitarian rulers. The above criteria can also be applied to Doomsday, despite the female lead, along with the pointedly open ending, as featured in Escape from New York and Mad Max 2 and also favoured by Italian films such as 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Endgame and Rats: Night of Terror.

The Italian films employ a strategy of imitation which can be termed qualified or compromised pastiche, in that the intention is more apparent than the achievement. The hero of Rats: Night of Terror is clearly modelled on Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken in Escape from New York and is even named Kurt (or ‘Kurk’ in some versions), yet the casting, costuming and scripting do not facilitate a sustained pastiche. More generally, the films masquerade as American product: as with the earlier peplum, spaghetti western and giallo cycles, they feature familiar American actors, budget permitting, while the Italian cast and, often, the crew employ anglicised or rather Americanised pseudonyms. There are hints of parodic intent, such as Kurt’s multi-barrelled gun in Rats: Night of Terror and the soldiers dressed like German SS troops in Endgame, yet these are isolated instances. In contrast to Doomsday, the imitation found in these Italian films is constrained and arguably shaped by a combination of economics and excess. The low budgets, technical limitations and linguistic disparities manifest in such recurrent features as ill-matched stock footage, substandard special effects, minimal takes and coverage, and the mechanical re-voicing of the actors. The pacing and editing arguably lack the precision found in the American and Australian originals or at least do not conform to the same standards. In terms of excess or deviation, the films feature imagery more extreme and/or absurd than that found in their source texts, whether in terms of graphic violence (incineration, decapitation and dismemberment) or character/design concepts, such as the simian and aqueous mutations in Endgame or the hero’s transparent plastic armour in The New Barbarians. The depiction of the hero in the Italian films can also transgress the acceptable limits established by Escape from New York and the Mad Max films, as when he kills an innocent man, albeit to save others (Endgame), or is raped by the villain (The New Barbarians). Taken together these factors mitigate against the sampled Italian films operating as sustained pastiche, successful or otherwise.

Doomsday, though made on a modest budget, is not constrained in this manner and its pastiche of multiple film texts is readily recognisable as such. Furthermore, an increased audience tolerance for extreme violence, in the context of fantasy action cinema, means that the ‘excessive’ gore that marked the Italian films is not an issue here. Discussing the wave of British gangster films led by Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie, 1998) and Snatch (Guy Ritchie, 2000), Leggott argues that “knowing pastiche is achieved through self-reflexive strategies and one-dimensional characterisations”.⁴⁰ Leaving aside the issue of characterisation, Doomsday exhibits a similar self-reflexive quality which enables it to function as a successful aesthetic imitation. I argue that Marshall’s film can be legitimately read, and therefore legitimised, as operating in the long-established and acknowledged cultural mode of pastiche. Furthermore, Dyer notes how the concept of genre is crucial to pastiche, which highlights “the savouring of generic elements as generic elements”.⁴¹ In referencing a substantial catalogue of film texts, Doomsday also invokes, and plays with, the genre tropes featured in these works and by extension the primary creators, or authors, of the films. Doomsday functions as a multi-generic, multi-authored medley, constructing its narrative and characters around pre-existing concepts in a form that highlights its sources to the point of near-replication. Reading Doomsday as pastiche enables an accommodation between its disparate generic and authorial aspects, and bestows coherence on an otherwise problematic text.

¹ Steve Neale, Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (London: BFI Publishing, 2002), p. 1; Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 10.

² Christine Gledhill, ‘History of Genre Criticism’, in The Cinema Book. Third Edition, ed. Pam Cook (London: BFI, 2007), p. 252.

³ Richard Maltby quoted in Neale, Genre and Hollywood, p. 252; Maltby, Hollywood Cinema (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 134.

⁴ Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, p. 123.

⁵ Cf. Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre. From Iconography to Ideology (London and New York: Wallflower, 2007), p. 23.

⁶ Neale, Genre and Hollywood, p. 40.

⁷ Cf. Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999), p. 14.

⁸ Neale, “Questions of Genre” Screen, Vol. 31, Issue 1 (Spring 1990): p. 46; cf. Grant, Film Genre. From Iconography to Ideology, p. 30.

⁹ Neale, ‘Questions of Genre’, p. 46.

¹⁰ Barry Langford, Film Genre. Hollywood and Beyond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p.15.

¹¹ Neale, “Questions of Genre”, p. 47.

¹² Langford, Film Genre. Hollywood and Beyond, pp. 15-6.

¹³ Neale, “Questions of Genre”, p. 48.

¹⁴ James Leggott, Contemporary British Cinema: From Heritage to Horror (London and New York: Wallflower, 2008), p. 3.

¹⁵ Box-office Mojo <http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=doomsday.htm> [Accessed 07/02/2012].. By contrast, The Descent made $57 million worldwide. <http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=descent.htm> [Accessed 10/06/2014].

¹⁶ Centurion grossed US $6.8 million worldwide on a US $12 million budget. Box-office Mojo <http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=doomsday.htm> [Accessed 10/06/2014].

¹⁷ Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (London: Secker and Warberg, 1972), p. 74, 77.

¹⁸ Cook, The Cinema Book. Third Edition (London: BFI, 2007), p. 387.

¹⁹ John Caughie, Theories of Authorship (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 13.

²⁰ Cook, The Cinema Book. Third Edition, p. 390.

²¹ Caughie, Theories of Authorship, p. 9.

²² Cook, “The point of self-expression in avant-garde film”, in Theories of Authorship, ed. Caughie, p. 273.

²³ Barbara Klinger, “Film history terminable and interminable: recovering the past in reception studies” Screen Vol. 30, Issue 2 (Summer 1997): p. 108.

²⁴ Miriam Hansen, “The mass production of the senses: classical cinema as vernacular modernism”, in Reinventing Film Studies, ed. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (London: Arnold, 2000), p. 341.

²⁵ Hansen, “The mass production of the senses: classical cinema as vernacular modernism”, p. 341.

²⁶ Paul Willemen, “Fantasy in Action”, in World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, ed. Natasa Durovicova and Kathleen Newman (New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010), p. 250.

²⁷ Klinger, “Film history terminable and interminable: recovering the past in reception studies”, p. 110.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Janet Staiger, “Reception Studies: The Death of the Reader,” in The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches, ed. R. Barton Palmer (New York: AMS Press), p. 362.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Steve Biodrowski, “Doomsday”, Cinefantastique, 16 March, 2008. <http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2008/03/film-review-doomsday-2008/> [Accessed 30/12/13].

³² Phelim O’Neill, “Doomsday”, The Guardian, 9 May 2008. <http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/09/filmandmusic1.filmandmusic11> [Accessed 30/12/13].

³³ Ingeborg Hoesterey, Pastiche. Cultural Memory in Art, Film, Literature (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 13-4; cf. Dan Harries, Film Parody (London: BFI Publishing, 2000), p. 26.

³⁴ Hoestery, Pastiche. Cultural Memory in Art, Film, Literature, p. 14.

³⁵ Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody. The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), pp. xiii-iv.

³⁶ Harries, Film Parody, p. 126.

³⁷ Richard Dyer, Pastiche (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 23.

³⁸ cf. Andrew Higson, English Heritage, English Cinema. Costume Drama Since 1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 248.

³⁹ Dyer, Pastiche, p. 1, 4.

⁴⁰ Leggott, Contemporary British Cinema: From Heritage to Horror, p. 63.

⁴¹ Dyer, Pastiche, p. 104.

Notes on Contributor

Daniel O’Brien is a freelance writer and part-time tutor in film studies. He has contributed to encyclopaedias, dictionaries and other reference works, and produced articles and reviews for journals such as Film International. He has written books on such subjects as Clint Eastwood, Frank Sinatra, British science fiction, Hong Kong horror movies, the Hannibal Lecter books and films, Paul Newman and Daniel Craig. His research interests include representations of masculinity, femininity and race on the screen, and popular European cinema. His monograph Classical Masculinity and the Spectacular Body on Film was published by Palgrave Macmillan in October 2014.

Bibliography

Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: BFI, 1999.

Biodrowski, Steve. ‘Doomsday’, Cinefantastique, 16 March, 2008. <http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2008/03/film-review-doomsday-2008/> [Accessed 30/12/13].

Caughie, John (ed.). Theories of Authorship. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

Cook, Pam (ed.). The Cinema Book. Third Edition. London: BFI, 2007.

Cook, Pam. ‘The point of self-expression in avant-garde film’. In Theories of Authorship, edited by John Caughie, pp. 271-81. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

Dyer, Richard. Pastiche. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

Gledhill, Christine. ‘History of Genre Criticism’. In The Cinema Book. Third Edition, edited by Pam Cook, pp. 252-9. London: BFI, 2007.

Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre. From Iconography to Ideology. London and New York: Wallflower, 2007.

Hansen, Miriam. ‘The mass production of the senses: classical cinema as vernacular modernism’. In Reinventing Film Studies, edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, pp. 332-50. London: Arnold, 2000.

Harries, Dan. Film Parody. London: BFI Publishing, 2000.

Higson, Andrew. English Heritage, English Cinema. Costume Drama Since 1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Hoesterey, Ingeborg. Pastiche. Cultural Memory in Art, Film, Literature. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody. The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Klinger, Barbara. “Film history terminable and interminable: recovering the past in reception studies” Screen Vol. 30, Issue 2, Summer 1997: pp. 107-28.

Langford, Barry. Film Genre. Hollywood and Beyond. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

Leggott, James. Contemporary British Cinema: From Heritage to Horror. London and New York: Wallflower, 2008.

Maltby, Richard. Hollywood Cinema. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

Neale, Steve (ed.). Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. London: BFI Publishing, 2002.

———.Genre and Hollywood. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

———. “Questions of Genre” Screen Vol. 31, Issue 1, Spring 1990: pp. 45-66.

O’Neill, Phelim. ‘Doomsday’, The Guardian, 9 May, 2008. <http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/09/filmandmusic1.filmandmusic11> [Accessed 30/12/13].

Staiger, Janet. ‘Reception Studies: The Death of the Reader’. In The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches, edited by R. Barton Palmer, pp. 353-67. New York: AMS Press, 1989.

Willemen, Paul. ‘Fantasy in Action’. In World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, edited by Natasa Durovicova and Kathleen Newman, pp. 247-86. New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010.

Wollen, Peter. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. London: Secker and Warberg, 1972.

Filmography

28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002)

1990: The Bronx Warriors (Enzo G. Castellari, I 1982)

Aliens (James Cameron, USA/UK 1986)

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, USA/HK/UK 1982)

Braveheart (Mel Gibson, USA 1995)

Brazil (Terry Gilliam, UK 1985)

Centurion (Neil Marshall, UK/F 2010)

Descent, The (Neil Marshall, UK 2006)

Dog Soldiers (Neil Marshall, 2002)

Doomsday (Neil Marshall, UK/USA/ZA/GER 2008)

Endgame (Joe D’Amato, I 1983)

Escape from New York (John Carpenter, USA 1981)

Excalibur (John Boorman, USA/UK 1981)

Final Executioner, The (Romolo Guerrieri, I 1984)

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie, UK 1998)

Mad Max 2 (George Miller, AU 1982)

New Barbarians, The (Enzo G. Castellari, I 1983)

Omega Man, The (Boris Sagal, USA 1971)

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, USA 1994)

Rats: Night of Terror (Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso, I 1984)

Shining, The  (Stanley Kubrick, UK/USA 1980)

Snatch (Guy Ritchie, UK/USA 2000)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Nicholas Meyer, USA 1982)

Streets of Fire (Walter Hill, USA 1984)

Thing, The (John Carpenter, USA 1962)

Underworld (Len Wiseman, UK/GER/HU/USA 2003)

Warriors, The (Walter Hill, USA 1979)

Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, USA 1970)

Zulu  (Cy Endfield, UK 1964)

Traditions of Space and Perspective

The representation of space within Western visual cultures has evolved from a mathematical (re)construction of our three-dimensional world, based on systems of linear perspective and Euclidean/Cartesian theoretical models of space.^[1] As a historical lineage, 3-D CGI emerges as a distant relative of Quattrocento image-making systems and is forged from (and privileges) the perspectival conviction adopted by Western visual and cultural ideologies, which in turn continues to understand space as objective (i.e. measured and metric)^[2]. For example, it’s essential relations are with photographic media whose methods are honed to assume a position from which to command and manipulate spatial relations and it is in this way that the narrative, the function and the basis for 3-D CGI image-making is framed. Therefore when we conceive of the image produced by 3-D CGI we are at the same time measuring its cultural position and its location within this heritage.

By extension, when referring to 3-D CGI we might consider our system for understanding visual space^[3] as linked to and assimilated from that of film and photography (which itself embodies a codification system for establishing space and spatial relations predominantly based on an objective understanding). This interconnection between objective understanding of space, perception and the mechanisms for the manufacture of visual space is a subject that is explored in Stephen Heath’s thesis Narrative Space^[4], in which he discusses an absolute relationship between the camera (including its associated paraphernalia; lens, projection, film etc.) and space. For Heath it is the spatial construction that binds space to frame and space to narrative that qualifies an inextricable relation between space and film.

Within 3-D CGI I posit that the complexity of this relationship is more profound, further integrated and increasingly irreducible. If in our consumption of the 3-D CGI image we add to this mix the additional perceptual complexities associated with a supposed camera and also that of film space within 3-D CGI and include a further dimension offered through multi-screen and image-object,^[5] as well as the spatial potentials between image and viewer, then it becomes a complex visual and intellectual system where at its centre is the concept of space.

Space as the Material of 3-D CGI Animation

It is against this backdrop that this paper takes the first step in the proposition that space can be considered as the leading material quality of 3-D CGI animation. This research presents the idea that animation work produced using 3-D CGI is primarily spatial and that it conforms to two dominant (general) spatial theories: one that is determined by objective or relative space theory and one that is informed by subjective or perceived space theory. My hypothesis suggests that the integration of both sets of theories within the production of 3-D CGI animation is fundamental to and provides a basis for exploring the application of space as a material mode within this medium. Moreover the aim via this research is to state the case for subjective space as a leading alternative to communication solutions within 3-D CGI—thus opposing what might be considered the current dominant approach to 3-D CGI animation, one that is largely based on the understanding and application of objective space.

The ambition of this paper is not to establish a meaning for space, to provide a definition of space or to discuss perceptual mechanisms for processing space. Instead the work utilises and references various debates surrounding these topics to inform an investigation into a potential materiality for 3-D CGI where the aim is to invite a discussion around the role of space within this specific mode of production.

To investigate these ideas a series of animation works were produced and exhibited at venues such as the CUC Gallery in Liverpool, The Hockney Gallery in London and Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (MOSI). The work sought, through practice and process, to understand more directly the relationship and the role of space within 3-D CGI production and to consider space as material. It borrows from and refers to methods and principles of Structural/Materialist film developed by Gidal and Le Grice circa 1960/70.

fig. 1 Rendered images from Pylons: Up/Down (2011) ~ An example sequence from a series of animation tests designed to examine relationships between the virtual camera and an arbitrary object.

This paper outlines one of the works from the animation series Pylons 2 (2011) as a means to support the claim that space can be considered material. The emphasis in the work was to establish the virtual camera as possessing the ability to discuss itself within a supposed (3-D CGI) film context, and that in turn this might provide potential avenues for exploring space and its materiality.

fig. 2 Rendered images from Pylons: Up/Down (2011) ~ A second example sequence from a series of animation tests designed to consider the act of the camera as active.

fig. 3 Experimental render images from Pylons (2011) ~ Examining alternative set-ups and configurations.

Experiment 2: Pylons 2 ~ October/November 2011.

Introduction

The overarching intention of the Pylon series, Pylons 2, was to investigate the camera as a vehicle to scrutinise 3-D CGI as material. The work sought to interrogate two main themes: (1) object and subject relationships and (2) the role of the camera to communicate (of and about itself). It sets out to examine two primary enquiries:

1. The camera as instigated and discussed in terms of its subjective and objective relationship with the profilmic event. By extending this concept to include the viewer as author and the activity of viewing (as maker and viewer), the work proposed to explore and question the role of the viewer as integral to the work and our understanding of its process. Therefore the relationship between the viewer, the space (of exhibition), the camera and the profilmic (the space in front of the camera) were at the forefront of this enquiry.
2. Through introducing the camera as key component with its own remit (as a camera), is it possible through opposition (via image juxtaposition) to gain a more developed insight into the potential of the virtual camera and to reflexively review its own process? Can we comprehend the virtual camera as a device to interface and record a virtual environment? How might such an idea be developed via a virtual camera and deemed for its ability to capture and record?

Method

The presentation of ‘Pylons’ at MOSI (2011) was designed to potentially evoke an extended relationship between object/animation and audience, not necessarily ‘shift’ the role of the audience,^[6]but to encourage a more involved spatial engagement between the image and its environment. The work also sought to reference existing debates concerning installation art where “[…] the viewer’s active participation in the exhibition space serves to underscore the embodied and material conditions of film viewing.”^[7] By adopting similar exhibition approaches to those developed by Structural/Materialist filmmakers (such as bringing to the fore the physical presentation apparatus), the installation attempted to draw attention to and support different visual and spatial perspectives where:

Screen-reliant installation artworks such as filmstrip/soundstrip self-reflexively foreground the viewer-screen interface in a way that tends not to occur in mainstream narrative cinema or even in experimental film. Film in Sharits’s locational environments/installations is exposed as a material process and presented as an environment: film is considered to be a space. This space is made up of immaterial projected images but also the physical apparatus; the screen, film, the projectors emerge as sculptural objects in their own right.^[8]

At MOSI the association between object and the presentation of space intended further influence through the use of monitors and their positioning within the physical/actual environment of the exhibition space.

The work consisted of three monitor screens and an additional, single projection. The three screens were designed to operate and to be viewed simultaneously with the purpose that the viewer would conceive of the three screens (and the single projection) as a distinct, phenomenological experience. The proposition for the installation was to generate opportunities where the viewer can engage with the work on different perceptual planes both subjectively and objectively. For example, the images and the screens represent virtual and physical (actual) objects as measurable, tangible entities. Concurrently, the images and the exhibition space itself, within which the images were shown, was intended to be perceived in non-metric, subjective terms.

Screens and Cameras

To add to an objective/subjective dialectic the integration of the camera was presented as both active and passive and it was intended that the viewer might perceive the static immobile perspective of the virtual cameras in screen [2] and screen [3] (as the stationary observer of its falling and rotating focus) as acting in opposition and in contrast to the “mobile anthropomorphic eye”^[9] of screen [1]. The focus for each of the three screens was structured in the following way:

Screen 1 ~Horizontal

The intention of screen [1] was to present an unfixed, indeterminate landscape (providing a subjective aesthetic), within which the camera travels in a constant horizontal, linear motion.

fig. 4  Rendered still sequences from Pylons 2 (2011) ~ Landscape oriented animation designed to assimilate horizontal movement.

The image in this screen was designated as an active subject and the motion and direction of the camera was as a means to counter any perceptual interest in a supposed depth of the image, moving along the horizon, never entering into it.

fig. 5  Rendered still sequences from Pylons 2 (2011) ~ Landscape oriented animation designed to assimilate horizontal movement.

Screen 2 ~Vertical

In contrast, screen [2] offers a vertical comparison to screen [1]’s horizontal orientation. Whereas the purpose of screen [1] was to present the viewer with an indeterminate screen space (where the subjective scale was directed at a supposed, individual, distant horizon), screen [2] was conceived to lead the viewer to consider a subjective space that is much closer to the camera in terms of (supposed) pro-filmic distance. The camera in screen [2] was animated to provide the viewer with an alternative perception for the imagined camera’s movement.

fig. 6  Rendered still sequences from Pylons 2 (2011) ~ Portrait oriented animation designed to assimilate vertical movement.

For example, the camera could be deemed as either travelling vertically (traversing a static object), or it might be seen as a static observer, with objects falling past its lens. The remit of screen [2] was for the space within which the objects are situated and for the objects (scale, material, size) to remain ambiguous and to act as a possible mechanism to encourage the viewer to consider and review screen space/camera relations.

Screen 3 ~ Rotation

The arrangement for the third, final animation, screen [3] provided a virtual, static camera that was positioned before a rotating object. The object was intentionally arbitrary and the image provided no clue to position or distance within its landscape. Screen [3] differs from screens [1] and [2] insomuch as the object presented as a focus for the camera is an identifiable object (an anemometer). The intended association for the object is one that is recording and measuring an implied physicality. A (paradoxical) measuring device was introduced, an instrument for capturing and recording wind speed (anemometer) placed within a virtual environment which is itself devoid of physical or environmental stimuli.

fig. 7  Rendered still sequences from Pylons 2 (2011) ~ Object oriented animation.

Additional Projection Screen ~ A projector was placed in the ceiling space within the exhibition area where it was positioned to point towards the floor. The projected image consisted of a pylon silhouette that gradually shifted its position across the exhibition floor.

fig. 8  Photos taken at the installation site at MOSI, Pylons 2 (2011).

fig. 9  Image taken at the installation site at MOSI, Pylons 2 (2011) showing floor projection.

fig. 10  Image taken at the installation site at MOSI, Pylons 2 (2011) showing floor projection.

Outcomes

Conclusions relating to the exhibition were collated through meetings with peers during the installation, and also via self-reflection during and as a result of the activity of exhibition (practice of practice).

Pylons raised an interest in two key areas: questions about the role of the virtual camera including concepts of ‘recording’ and ‘process as instituted as process’; and questions about how we interface with the spaces that the virtual image produces, its mode of presentation and consumption.

(1) Capture and Process: In the virtual domain, when we consider process establishing process through pro-filmic devices, there is an ambiguity around the role of the camera, the notion of the camera and the relationship between camera and what we might conceive as pro-filmic in the virtual world. The virtual camera (as discussed via Pylons) is integral to the production of the virtual image but has in many ways (seen through this research) a greater role to play as mediator between image (what might be considered as filmic) and the pro-filmic than it does in a traditional camera set-up.

A virtual encounter between a simulated camera and virtual light acts to mimic the properties of a real encounter, whatever the parameters of the virtual camera may be; however, because this encounter is virtual, it offers the possibility for cameras whose functions are impossible in the physical world; the dynamics of encounter between virtual sensor and virtual light can also be modified in ways inconsistent with physical reality, and can even violate the laws of physical reality if the programmer chooses.

The digital variants of this pairing become apparent through CGI. Digital imaging either simulates the optical effects of cameras, or it alters the image graphically as a two dimensional construct.^[10]
In Pylons the attempt to incorporate the viewer in the idea of process and to instil a direct relationship between viewer and the image, as well as between image, viewer and process, has imbued the research with other dimensional possibilities. It has led to questions about subject and object and about the spaces that are formed as a result of these precepts.

(2) Space as Material: The animation work reinforces the initial premise for this project was to seek a materiality for 3-D CGI.

In 3D CGI one might regard or measure materiality in terms of its spatial/temporal properties and the manipulation of these characteristics.^[11] The process of production and presentation of the work has led to the proposition that properties peculiar to and associated with 3D CGI virtual space might be explored beyond the limitations of the screen. By bringing the virtual space or extending the virtual space into the realm of an actual space, can these qualities be examined (in a physical space) and how might this be investigated? For example Pat Power suggests that the

Capacity for simultaneous multi-projections needs to be built into the compositional space and many problems remain to be solved with such systems. However, the seamless integration of multiple perspectives with appropriate lighting, shadows and effective artistic control may provide a projection palate freed from the hegemony of the quasi-objectivity of perspective, enabling the animator to choose dialogically what aspects of the scene to accentuate, from what angle and to what aesthetic effect.^[12]

It is the liberation of 3-D CGI from its linear perspective-driven perception and visual culture conditioning that forms the basis for my most recent thinking in terms of space and the relationship between space and 3-D CGI. How space might be discussed and contained as a subject is the focus for the remaining section of this article.

A Starting Point For Space

Space theories exist across disparate lines of enquiry and discrete disciplines many of which, as areas of specialism, insist on a knowledge of spatial concerns as central to subject understanding. For example, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Philosophy, Fine Arts and Architecture each depend on an engagement with space as an active dimensional component that connects research to application. Space in this way represents a functional primary resource and a critical dynamic force. Yet space as an entity often evades singular definition. It can be about, and at the same time connected to, a range of academic, intellectual, philosophical, relative, physical, and abstract pursuits within a single subject area. Its application draws in a breadth of ideological and practical usage, not least 3-D CGI animation, and space can be considered a common element binding both related and independent areas.

Thus space can conceptually be regarded as divided and yet embodied in multiple conceptual variations that are at once equally accepted and valid. For instance within the subject of social sciences:

We are hemmed in by the three dominant ways in which space is rendered: (1) Space as a Newtonian conceptualisation where it is seen as a category equal to time, thus allying geography to history. Space here is the solution to the question: the interaction and integration of phenomena is explained in terms of space. In other words, space is the container for action – Kant’s filing system for observation – an abstract frame of reference independent of matter; (2) More simply, and more commonly, space is understood as a relative, but active, term. Here space is a material reality dealing with questions of scale – space as a plane, as a distance, as something that acts as a weak actant and has effect; (3) More open to possibility but often just as constraining in how it is conceptualised, space is turned into something that is relative to the transcendent. Space is a product of society but also a factor in the production of the social becoming socially constructed, idealised and ideological.^[13]

Demonstrating that the question of space can provide not one, but multiple dominant spatial definitions within an individual specialism. Equally, each principle strand might be further expanded to increase key variations within the same primary topic. Space as a ‘product of society’, divided as such, delineates additional refinement of conceptual ideas; space as a product (a consequence of political, social, and economic activities); space as a process (referring to the coeval and relational nature of space); space as productive (where space emerges as a dynamic component shaping as well as generating change and directing social narratives).^[14]

Tensions Between Opposing Models

This is of course only one example and we might equally discuss definitions of space within the subjects of Architecture, Art or Mathematics with similar comparison. My point (through the above example) is to establish that multiple definitions of space occur, and are able to co-exist, within a single field of study.

My conjecture therefore is that when space can be deemed a critical component within a subject one definition of space is not always possible or desirable. That it is the tensions, formed as a result of the differences between the opposing models, that facilitate and bind disparate ideas to form a unified and expanded knowledge of a discrete subject. It could therefore be argued that the dialectic of space itself operates to provide a more complete understanding or analysis of a topic or theme and that it is in the opposing or indirectly connected conceptualisations of space that serve to expand a unified knowledge or support subject ontologies.

For example, for Henri Bergson this dualism exists in the tension between idealism and realism. That it is the relations between systems of science and perception that form the basis for an analysis of space. Two interdependent systems operate to mutually inform one another in order to adapt and confirm experience and understanding.

The whole discussion turns upon the importance to be attributed to this knowledge as compared with scientific knowledge. The doctrine starts from the order required by science, and sees in perception only confused and provisional science. The other puts perception in the first place, erects it into an absolute, then holds science to be a symbolic expression of the real. But, for both parties, to perceive means above all to know.^[15]

This in turn might be considered as an extended model derived from Kantian philosophy which introduces a distinction between the possible and the actual. Likewise this can itself be regarded as attempting to overcome a similar tension between the relative space outlined by G.W. Leibniz (space exists in its relative forms as material and immaterial) and the absolute space of Newton (non-dependent on physical events).

It is the duality of spatial systems that are of interest here. Differences in the actual and the imagined, the material and the immaterial, the real world and the perceptual spaces. The idea of space as understood through polar conceptualisations and presented as unified systems, interlinked and interdependent.

It might therefore be suggested that a dominant re-occurring trend within spatial theories is the dialectic between two polar spatial paradigms. An oft-repeated intellectual dualism between what might be broadly and simplistically regarded as imagined or visual space in opposition (but inextricably linked) to a physical or actual space grounded in perceptually real objects and distances.

For example, for Hermann Soergel the fundamental substance of architecture is space and he distinguishes between “Daseinsram (existential space, the objective real, imaginable space), Erscheinungsraum (visual space, i.e. the physiological, visually perceivable space), and finally Wirkungsraum (effectual space, i.e. the aesthetically impressive space.”^[16] Although here Soergel alludes to three definitions, the important outcome from this analysis is his distinction between architecture as process (the technical and rational construction of the relationship between space and object) and architecture as art (the subjective and emotive realisation of space as concept), echoing Bergson’s delineation of subjective and objective nature of space and the interrelationship and inter-reliance between the two modes.

CGI and Space

By extending this thought process and to establishing a position in which to study the proposal of space as material I infer CGI as both objective (rooted in rational space relationships and built upon Cartesian and Euclidean traditions of spatial understanding and representation) and at the same time subjective(the image received through perceptual mechanisms to form imagined and visual space relationships).  Thus initiating a dialectic between two common theories:

1. A Relationist space theory, that places objective relationships at the centre of its discourse. Broadly, Relational theories adopt the viewpoint that space is related to physical, real-world or actual objects and the relations that exist between them.

And..

1. A Subjective theory, that might largely be seen as a development of Kant’s ideas as an extension of his theory of intuition and as a feature of his understanding the world around us as a priori.

Subjective and Objective Spaces

The final section of this discussion brings in objective and subjective combinations viewed through the work of David O’Reilly where the interplay of structure and ambiguity provide a harmonious conflict. If we look at O’Reilly it should be within his ideological approach to producing animation. The systematic and analytical method that he adopts to explore both the nature of the material of 3-D CGI which is through a defined set of rules that are designed to contain the animation practice as well as provide an aesthetic coherence to the work. “In 3d we essentially create artificial models of worlds, I contend that what makes these worlds believable is simply how coherent they are; how all the elements tie together under a set of rules which govern them consistently”.^[17] In essence it might be seen that O’Reilly’s work is more concerned with delivering a subversive narrative within an intentionally awkward, technically rudimentary style that he imposes as an aesthetic, and which he seeks to employ as complementary to the often abrasive and culturally challenging content of his animations. For example, in his work RGB XYZ part 1 (2008) he offsets the coarse verbal and narrative content against the coarse and deliberately crude treatment of his animation.

O’Reilly discusses his approach as a method to deliver an economy of production, that the act of denying involvement in the complexities and refinement of delivering photorealistic animation (which he sees as inherent within 3-D CGI software), sets free the creative potential of the software and empowers the animator to explore more directly the expression of movement and codes for filmmaking.

My short Please Say Something employed a very specific set of rules in its aesthetics. They are all centered around the idea of economy. One of the main problems with 3d animation is that it takes so long to learn and then to use, from constructing a world to rendering it. There are many knock on effects of this, mainly it prevents people from attempting to use it and employ it artistically, the process is very discouraging for the individual to go ahead and make their film. Simple changes can take hours to do, and very often the process is so rigid it doesnʼt allow any changes at all.

My goal therefore was to shorten this production pipeline to a bare minimum. I removed the entire process of software rendering by using preview renders, which are essentially snapshots of what you see on the screen, they take a split second to be generated. ^[18]

Ultimately what is of interest here is the boundaries of the method that he constructs to frame the process. O’Reilly’s rules for discussing animation might be seen to reverberate as perhaps an unintentional homage to Structural/Materialist film; a strict set of principles designed to reveal or demystify process; the use of loops initiated to foreground production and reveal the mechanics of 3-D CGI construction, and the implementation of structural mechanisms to lay bare the manufacture and underlying systems of its operation.^[19] In discussing his film Please Say Something (2009) O’Reilly concedes,

The film makes no effort to cover up the fact that it is a computer animation, it holds an array of artifacts which distance it from reality, which tie it closer to the software it came from. This idea is in direct opposition to all current trends in animation, which take the route of desperately trying to look real, usually by realistic lighting and rendering, or by forcing a hand-made or naive appearance.^[20]

This conceptual approach to filmmaking is explored further in other examples of his work, such as Black Lake (2010) in which the uncut camera leads the viewer through a cavernous water landscape where we are at once traversing the surface of the lake, following a family of ducks, we are beneath the surface of the lake, swimming with a school of fish and then entering into an ambiguous cosmic space, where we pass a small house.

This sequence is looped three times, and with every passing cycle there is a peeling away of the visual surface to expose the geometric framework on which the illusion sits. This cyclic deterioration of form and illusion to reveal process and material can be seen as reminiscent of the techniques and interests of some Structural/Materialist and experimental film/videos, such as David Hall’s This is a Television Receiver (1976) which follows a similar deconstructive trajectory^[21] that moves the viewer from one visual state of appreciation to then occupy another.

In this way Black Lake might be seen as offering a unique description of 3-D CGI space. The film begins with the camera guiding the viewer through an ambiguous, subjective space within which the orientation and the boundaries of the space are unclear and where the darkness of the scene conceals visible limits and spatial referents. After the third pass, this offering of an indeterminate, subjective terrain is stripped away and replaced by an objective, linear perspective landscape, where animation paths, polygonal lines, and geometric planes serve to map the skeletal construction and to unveil previously hidden spatial relationships between objects and the environmental spheres.

Black Lake opens up the possibility for a conceptual and philosophical model for space, where opposing spatial representations converge and conspire to manipulate the viewer’s expectation of space and environment. It is an idea of space that both confirms and challenges Manovich’s claims for 3-D CGI space in which he sees computer space as both “aggregate”^[22] and forming a “…binary ontology…in which the space and the sprites/characters appear to made from two fundamentally different substances.”^[23] For the purposes of this study, it is precisely the accentuation of these fundamental differences that Manovich discusses as opposing a CGI “monism” that leads us to a greater understanding of the material of construction and also the spaces that such a film creates. Moreover, by juxtaposing an objective representation of space against a subjective one to form a shifting intellectual/conceptual understanding of the computer environment, we might be seen as moving towards a closer affiliation with the modernist ideologies as forwarded by Manovich, where he suggests,

This understanding of space also characterizes a particular tradition of modern painting that stretches from Seurat to Giacometti and de Kooning. These painters tried to eliminate the notions of a distinct object and empty space as such. Instead they depicted a dense field that occasionally hardens into something that we can read as an object.^[24]

Almost a decade separates Manovich’s Language of New Media and O’Reilly’s Black Lake. Perhaps in that period computer animation and the ambition of the medium of 3-D CGI and notions of the film’s associated space have moved beyond the stage of the archaic as proposed by Manovich^[25] and that with animations such as Black Lake we might be entering into a period where the study of animation embodies the “…activity of articulating new concepts akin to philosophy.”^[26] A period that (at the time of his writing) Manovich conceived as “…something mainstream computer graphics still has to discover.”^[27]

Conclusion

The aim of this paper has been to discuss approaches to animation that develop and employ spatial aspects as a key component within their production. Moreover it has attempted to introduce a variety of different methodologies and practices that utilise or manipulate spatial techniques or conformities to deal with or assist in delivering central ideas within the work. Perhaps more importantly, this paper supports ideas that have been developed as a result of the project’s initial investigations, and that now, at this juncture, represent a step towards a refocusing of this research and a move towards a hypothesis that it is space that forms the basis for the material of 3-D CGI.

The main intellectual and theoretical position relating to space up to this point in the research has been attached to the linage of representational perspectival systems of space from the Renaissance onwards. Departures from this specific theory, ideology or philosophy position, within this paper, have been introductory and presented as intentionally speculative. The investigation has been primarily concerned with an exploration into how space is included as a part of the experience and communication of an animated work and to what extent space might be deemed as a viable route through which to discuss material in relation to 3-D CGI. As a foremost principle, space is undeniably inherent in 3-D CGI and I have discussed this through the lineage of perspective as well as the variations that deviate from this system. A more philosophical stance has been where space is considered as a means to expand the relationships between image and viewer. In Pylons for example, image illusion confronts actual, real-world space to generate a phenomenological dialogue and to raise questions around indexical relations. Finally, by looking at the animations of O’Reilly, I have intimated that space can be viewed both simultaneously as objective and subjective within the same animated film, and in examples such as Black Lake we might consider the imagined and the actual, or the imagined and the illusion of the actual, as systems of representation, coexisting within the same frame.

Underlying this research has been a direct reference to Structural/Materialist film and this has provided a practical basis for the study of digital materialism. It has supplied a useful framework from which to deconstruct a largely illusion-centric medium, and has been included as a fundamental component in the research methodology up to this point. It does however present a set of principles and a system designed to interrogate the medium of “film”. As such it is not without its shortcomings when applied to digital processes or dealing with and describing the complexities of a digital landscape. Most notable comparative differences are within the basic assumption that the function of the medium of film is to record experience. Film acts, primarily, as a process of recording and replaying ostensibly real-world experience and location. Digital 3-D CGI environments do offer-up and can present an equivalent spatial reality but this is a constructed, self-referential, reflexive geography.

Perhaps more pressing is the possible limitations of Structural/Materialist as a methodological framework to discuss ideas of space. Space is an irrefutably large and complex subject and potentially beyond the boundaries of Structural/Materialist which is essentially an introspective system designed to study the material nature of film. Space as a subject is certainly included within Structural/Materialist discourse and many of the conclusions that have emerged in this project that relate to and have pointed towards space as material have emanated from this anthology. However, if the aim of this research is to determine the currency of space as material within 3-D CGI then an additional, robust method whose concern is more directly with problematizing space is required.

To connect these theories and for the purposes of this study I lean towards Martin Heidegger’s theoretical stance and a recognition of space as including (but not imposing) two general theories of space. Consequently, Heidegger argues a third position that incorporates both subjective and objective viewpoints regarding space, one that involves our bodies in a lived space; both physical and perceptual. This forms the basis for my current research that explores Place and Space and key components in understanding space and its relationship with 3-D CGI.

^[1] Patrick A. Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).

^[2]Ivins’ text The Rationalization of Sight (1976)on perspective and the emergence of perspective within Western societies provides a comprehensive account.

^[3]Visual space in this context refers to the space as perceived and understood by the viewer via perceptual means, predominantly visually.

^[4]Stephen Heath, “Narrative Space,” Screen, Autumn 1976.

^[5] For a useful discussion on image as object see Fried and his essay Art and Objecthood (1998). Also, the importance of extending the display to incorporate multi-screen experience lies in the juxtaposition of varying layers of profilmic landscape/object representations.

^[6]Nicky Hamlyn, Film Art Phenomena (London: BFI Publishing, 2003).

^[7] Kate Mondloch,Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art-Electronic Mediation(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,  2010), p. 10.

^[8] Ibid, p.10.

^[9]Peter Gidal, Materialist Film (London: Routledge, 1987), p.57.

^[10]Michael Betancourt,Structuring Time (Rockville: The Wildside Press, 2004), p. 37.

^[11] This might be seen as opposing more common attempts to define digital material through digital artefact and technological traces ‘glitch aesthetic’ or ‘glitch art’ theory (for example see Jonas Downey 2002).

^[12] Pat Power “Animated Expressions: Expressive Style in 3D Computer Graphic Narrative Animation,”, Animation 4 (2009),  p. 107.

^[13]Ian  Buchanan and Gregg  Lambert, Deleuze and Space (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,  2005) p.8.)

^[14] Yingjin Zhang, Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2010)

^[15]Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2004), p.17.

^[16] Paul Zucker, “The Paradox of Architectural Theories at the Beginning of the  ‘Modern  Movement’, Journal of the Society of Architectural HIstorians, Vol. X. No. 3 (Oct 1951), p. 11.

^[17] David O’Reilly, “Basic Animation Aesthetics”, 2011, p.1.

^[18] Ibid, p. 2.

^[19] Further parallels might be drawn between O’Reilly’s work and Sharits, who modified the projector in his later work, or filmmakers using their fingers to create vignettes when shooting (See Hamlyn).

^[20] An additional comparison might be made with David Larcher’s, analogue and digital video work in the which he discusses and visually manipulates ideas of space, for example in EETC(1984-86), Granny’s Is (1990) and Ich Tank (1983-97). (David O’Reilly, 2011, p2)

^[21] David Curtis provides a useful insight into the work of David Hall and his series of film and video based experimental films (p 222).

^[22] Lev Manovich in this context regards computer space as aggregate in that space in this sense is not continuous but formed of different spaces, across different networks and systems. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2001), p. 256-257.

^[23]Ibid, p.257.

^[24]Ibid,  p.255.

^[25] Manovich dicusses the paradigm of virtual space as being at  a primitive stage of its evolution as opposed to being considered regressive and retrospectively reliant on ancient concepts of space. p. 257.

^[26]Ibid, p. 255.

^[27]Ibid, p.255.

“Think of a kitchen table […] when you’re not there.” –Virginia Woolf^[1]

Contemporary British artist David Theobald uses digital composition techniques and computer-generated animation to produce work that often resembles the high quality, colour-saturated hyperrealism of commercial computer-generated animations like those produced by Pixar and DreamWorks Animation studios.^[2] However, although his works might resemble the visual aesthetic of these commercial studios, Theobald’s animations spend their entirety focusing on places and objects that would appear in a Pixar animation only very briefly and most likely somewhere in the background. The intensive labour that goes into Theobald’s animations is perversely used to produce images of everyday objects and scenarios that would normally be deemed unworthy of prolonged attention. His vibrant animations use humour and wit to engage spectators, yet their banal subject matter, lack of narrative action or structure and extended duration (most of them are intended to play on a continuous loop) test the limits of spectators’ comfort and patience. Although in interviews and artist statements Theobald positions his work principally in relation to a Marxist-based critique of commoditized art and the excessive consumer values of late capitalist culture, in this article I am more interested in reading his animations as being in dialogue with a kind of post-humanist, ecophilosophical ethics. In particular, I propose to examine Theobald’s works in relation to several concepts that have arisen out of a fairly new movement in contemporary philosophy called speculative realism.^[3]

Very briefly, speculative realism is a broad term that encompasses a number of different philosophers’ ideas, but one thing that unifies these philosophies is their opposition to what philosopher Quentin Meillassoux has called “correlationism”.^[4] A fundamental problem for philosophy has always been the question of access (e.g. how do we really know the true nature of the universe that exists beyond ourselves, when we can only access the world through our senses?).^[5] Correlationism refers to the tendency in contemporary anti-realist philosophy to root all knowledge in the correlation between human mind, language and world.^[6] Correlationist philosophies, as speculative realist philosopher Ian Bogost notes, consider that “if things exist, they do so only for us.”^[7] Speculative realism is an attempt to escape from this supremely anthropocentric mode of thinking.

The concepts that are most productive for thinking about David Theobald’s work arise from speculative realism’s opposition to the anthropocentrism inherent in correlationism. The subset of speculative realism that I refer to most in my analysis of Theobald’s works is called “Object-Oriented Ontology” (OOO, for short), pioneered by philosopher Graham Harman. OOO, or “onticology” as Levi Bryant calls it, “attempts to think the being of objects unshackled from the gaze of humans in their being for-themselves.”^[8]Bogost states, “OOO puts things at the centre of being. We humans are elements, but not the sole elements, of philosophical interest. OOO contends that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally—plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for example.”^[9] When I suggest that Theobald’s works are post-humanist, I am referring to Bryant’s assertion that a post-humanist ontology is one in which “humans are no longer monarchs of being, but are instead among beings, entangled in beings, and implicated in other beings.”^[10] I argue that Theobald’s choice to focus on the most banal of objects as subjects can be understood to be in sympathy with OOO’s “democratization of objects”.^[11] Timothy Morton has pointed out the obvious link between OOO and ecophilosophy and ecocriticism.^[12] A philosophy that places all objects on an equal plane of existence (what in OOO is called “flat ontology”) stands in contrast to the alarming disregard that human civilization, primarily in the form of capitalist economic systems, has for the environment, other beings and objects.^[13] When I propose that Theobald’s works can be understood as ecophilosophical, I do not mean to suggest that they are strictly environmentalist in the sense that they directly depict environmental issues or even an immersion in natural environments—in fact, they often depict exactly the opposite—but I want to suggest they are ecocritical in the sense they implicitly critique the unethical effects of anthropocentrism.

The perspectives that Theobald’s animations simulate most often lack a sense of human presence (diegetically, that is; the presence of the human spectator as witness to the depicted events will be addressed later in the article). In his works, spectators witness the normally unseen lives of objects, which may be sentient or non-sentient (according to OOO everything is an object, be it a human being, a computer, a quark, a budgie, or an idea). I want to suggest that Theobald’s animations can be considered as kinds of philosophical thought experiments where human absence is visualised. His works invite spectators to consider the nature of non-human objects in their autonomous integrity, as Andrew Ramsey asks Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse to “think of a kitchen table […] when you’re not there.”^[14]However, as artistic representations, they offer an unavoidably imperfect answer to Bogost’s impossible question of “what it means to be something”.^[15]

For the purposes of this article, I am separating Theobald’s animations into two categories.The first includesworks that depict largely non-sentient objects in everyday scenarios from a fixed point of view (e.g. an empty commuter train in The Winnerish Triangle (2009); blinking electronic router panels in The Cloud (aka All of Our Agents Are Busy) (2013); a kebab shop window in Kebab World (2014)). The perspectives represented in these works resemble those of a camera on a tripod, or perhaps, as I would like to suggest, the simulated points of view of objects themselves. The second category is comprised of works that simulate scenes viewed from the embodied perspectives of sentient non-human beings (e.g. a fly trapped in a kitchen in Buzz (2008); a fish swimming around a tank in New Atlantis (2008); a budgie in its cage in Trill (2010)). I argue that the formal techniques used in the former category are in keeping with certain avant-garde cinema techniques that can be productively considered in terms of a “democratisation of objects”. The second group of works use techniques that are more particular to animation to render dynamic, embodied perspectives that I will address in terms of the “critical anthropomorphism” inherent in Bogost’s notion of alien phenomenology, or the effort to describe objects in and for themselves and their relations to other objects.^[16]

An example of one of Theobald’s object-oriented works is his 2007 animation Office. Office is an eight-minute animation of an empty elevator endlessly travelling between the floors of an anonymous and unpeopled office building. Spectators are presented with a fixed point of view from the centre back of the elevator’s interior as the doors open and shut at each new floor. The sequences between floors depicting the closed, subtly shifting elevator doors last an average of seventeen seconds, while the ones revealing the floors last anywhere from ten seconds to nearly half a minute, offering spectators ample time to examine every aspect of the image several times over. Theobald’s minimalist animation style is striking in its slowness and stillness. However, there are subtle movements to be noticed in each sequence, for instance in a slowly bobbing balloon tied to the water cooler on the “Administration” level, a blinking red light on the surveillance camera on the “Reception” level, floating fish in a small aquarium on the “Human Resources” level, etc. On the soundtrack we hear the constant hum of the elevator as it makes its way between floors, the sounds of the doors themselves, and each floor has its attendant sounds as well (e.g. police sirens in the distance on the ground floor, or the rough rumble of machines in the basement.) Works like Office are meant to be humorous. The perverse novelty of animating this particular subject first appears as a wry joke(why would anyone take the time to film these banal events, much less animate them?). Clever details are often hidden in the images of the different levels (e.g. decadent red wallpaper and empty wine glasses on the “Management” level), creating a kind of anticipation for what will appear next. However, over the course of the animation, it becomes clear that at least one way of interpreting the work is to take it seriously and consider the nature of an elevator’s interactions with the different levels of an office building (see figures 1-3).

Figure 1: Office, David Theobald (UK 2007)

Figure 2

Figure 3

Theobald’s object-oriented works like Office can be productively linked to the formal and conceptual challenges presented to spectators by what Scott MacDonald calls avant-garde “ecocinema”.^[17] Examples of this ecocinema are live-action “landscape” films such as Peter Hutton’s Study of a River (1996), James Benning’s Deseret (1995), Sogobi (2001) and 13 Lakes (2004), and Fog Line (1970) by Larry Gottheim.^[18] These works are characterised by their largely non-narrative depictions of natural environments, featuring shots of extended duration and stillness that challenge spectators to tests of endurance. According to MacDonald, the slowness of these works directly opposes the “unbridled consumption of products and the unrestrained industrial exploitation of the environment”.^[19] He argues that they encourage “patience and mindfulness—qualities of consciousness crucial for a deep appreciation of and an ongoing commitment to the natural environment.”^[20] Matthew Flanagan has described this kind of cinema as conveying an “aesthetic of slow”, which he characterises as “the employment of (often extremely) long takes, de-centred and understated modes of storytelling, and a pronounced emphasis on quietude and the everyday”.^[21] He notes that:

[…] during long takes we are invited to let our eyes wander within the parameters of the frame, observing details that would remain veiled or merely implied by a swifter form of narration. In terms of storytelling, the familiar hegemony of drama, consequence and psychological motivation is consistently relaxed, reaching a point at which everything (content, performance, rhythm) becomes equivalent in representation.^[22]

The slow stillness and extended duration of Theobald’s animation style operates in much the same way that MacDonald argues that these qualities operate in ecocinema.Unusual for animation, Theobald’s minimalist style in his object-oriented animations asks spectators to slow down and explore what they are seeing—an action that is aligned in MacDonald’s eco-film-criticism with a kind of respectful mindfulness of our place in the world. Flanagan’s suggestion that in slow cinema “everything […] becomes equivalent in representation” has obvious connections to the theorisation of the democracy of objects in OOO. Theobald’s refusal to cater to conventional narrative expectations, denying spectators their attendant gratifications, serves to remind them of the fact that everything is not always selfishly, anthropocentrically, for us.

MacDonald has argued that the job of ecocinema is “to provide new kinds of film experience that demonstrate an alternative to conventional media-spectatorship and help to nurture a more environmentally progressive mindset.”^[23] Theobald’s animations, as animations, have to quite a lot to contribute to this contemplative, avant-garde ecocinema. For one thing, there has been some debate as to the accessibility and effectiveness of avant-garde ecocinema in promoting ecological awareness in audiences. David Ingram, following on from Steven Shaviro, has pointed out the use of modernist distanciation techniques in our contemporary moving image culture has lost most of its critical value.^[24] Indeed, cognitivist Torben Grodal has noted:

When watching a visual representation of phenomena without any centring anthropomorphic actants, we often “lose interest” owing to lack of emotional motivation or the cognitive analysis of the perceived, a fact which many makers of experimental films have discovered when presenting their films to a mass audience.^[25]

However, the fact that Theobald’s modernist distanciation techniques, if they can be so-called, are rendered in a style that resembles the visual aesthetic of mainstream animation studios breathes new life into these older techniques. His work purposefully plays off of spectators’ expectations of mainstream narrative animation, potentially drawing the interest of spectators who might otherwise be put off by works that seem “too avant-garde”. That these animations are viewed in a variety of contexts (at art and animation festivals, in galleries and online) increases the possible diversity of their potential audiences. In addition, Theobald expressly uses humour to draw spectators into the spectacle and to encourage them, as he says, to “sustain interest in a subject beyond when someone might otherwise get bored, perhaps allowing other more subtle sensory aspects of a work to become apparent.”^[26] Theobald has observed that humour “lowers barriers and encourages people to think laterally and make connections” between the works’ “simple” imagery and all of their possible implications.^[27]Moreover, many scholars have remarked on the pristine illusionism and haptic textures that computer-generated imagery offers, commenting on the special “allure and fascination of the [computer-generated] image itself.”^[28]Computer-generated animation adds emphasis to the objects it depicts through what Andrew Darley has called its “heightened sense both of naturalism and illusionism”.^[29] The visual appeal of the computer-generated animation itself is an invitation to notice the objects in Theobald’s works in a way that they might not be if they were live-action representations of the same things.^[30] As such, they encourage spectators to take special note of these non-human objects as objects worthy of fascination and scrutiny.

The unrestricted capacity for computer-generated animation’s “virtual camera” to create and explore three-dimensional space is one of the most salient features of the second category of Theobald’s works. Tobey Crockett, for instance, has observed that in computer-animated film, “the entire space is activated as a viewing space; it has in effect become a camera, a new kind of volume in which all visual imagery is generated by pixels, and in which every mathematically defined point […] is literally enabled as a point of view.”^[31] The virtual camera “allows the filmmakers to generate imagery for the audience from any point of view they choose.”^[32] In mainstream computer-generated animation, this capacity has often been used to adopt the points of view of non-human objects—normally in the form of anthropomorphic characters. Anthropomorphism, in Tim Tyler’s words, refers to “the practice of attributing intentionality, purpose, or volition to some creature or abstraction that (allegedly) does not have these things.”^[33] Anthropomorphism, as Paul Wells has noted, remains the “consistent locus” of the animated cartoon.^[34] Patrick Power agrees that “anthropomorphic personification is so pervasive in cartoon and 3D feature animation that it is virtually synonymous stylistically with these genres.”^[35] The way that anthropomorphism has traditionally been used in cartoon animation is supremely anthropocentric. It aims to make non-human beings more accessible to us whilst simultaneously eliding real radical difference through the projection of human sensibilities and shapes onto them. This is true even in the many ambiguous cases where an anthropomorph, as Power suggests, “is neither human nor other but on the edge of chaos, both at once”, where it “is a liminal shape-shifter, playing in the interstitial spaces of becoming, of representational transformation.”^[36] However, Christopher Holliday points out that, due to computer-generated animation’s capacity to render perspectives from any point in three-dimensional space, contemporary computer-animated films have more frequently emphasised the non-human (morphē) characteristics of a character over the human (ánthrōpos) ones. He writes:

In the computer-animated feature-film, there is […] a deeper interest in objects as objects rather than objects as humans […]. The reversal in agency from human ánthrōpos to non-human morphē is often articulated through dynamic point-of-view subjectivity, a degree of perspectival intrigue, and a continuous innovation of spectator viewpoint.^[37]

Although computer-generated animation enables spectators to witness events at a scale and from perspectives that would be largely impossible with live-action film or the naked eye and are thus able to emphasise the perspectives of non-human objects, the anthropomorphic characters in mainstream narrative animations remain first and foremost conduits of experience made accessible to and for us. Mainstream narrative animations hierarchise these anthropomorphic objects over all other objects in the film. Most of the objects in these worlds are all painstakingly animated only to act as background to the human-like agents that are acting onscreen, propelling the narrative forward.

The works of Theobald’s that I have placed into the second category make full use of the fluid omni-directionality of computer-animation’s virtual camera. For example, Buzz presents spectators with a hyper-kinetic first-person (or, rather, “first-object”) perspective of a fly as it frenetically circles the interior of a kitchen (see figures 4 & 5). New Atlantis depicts the first-object perspective of a fish swimming endlessly around a small tank in a closed estate agents’ office at night (see figures 6 & 7).

Figure 4: Buzz, David Theobald (UK 2008)

Figure 5

Figure 6: New Atlantis, David Theobald (UK 2008)

Figure 7

Buzz and New Atlantis, which are intended to loop indefinitely, convey a sense of the monotony and alienness of these creatures’ lives. Rather than leading spectators on a linear narrative trajectory, these animated objects circle around, ceaselessly repeating their purgatorial actions. Works like New Atlantis and Trill also raise potential concerns about the ethics of keeping pets in small spaces. In Trill, Theobald shows us the world through the eyes of a budgie in its cage. The four-minute animation begins in darkness and slowly lightens to reveal a modern-looking kitchen and dining room viewed from the back of a metal birdcage. The persistent hum of a refrigerator is heard on the soundtrack (see figure 8). As the sun rises outside the window and the room brightens, an electronic alarm clock fills the room with Edvard Grieg’s Morning Mood. Up to this point the perspective has remained fixed, but as the horizon is illuminated, the image tilts to the right and shifts three times to the left, accompanied by the sounds of chirruping. At this point in the animation it becomes clear that the first-object perspective being shown is that of the budgie as it flits around its cage (see figure 9). As the sun rises above the horizon and Grieg’s Morning Mood climbs to its crescendo, the virtual camera/budgie explores the cage from different angles, jumping between different points of space to the sounds of chirps and wings flapping. Halfway through the animation, the brilliant yellow, green and blue budgie stands in front of a small circular mirror in the corner of the cage, revealing itself as the subject/object of the gaze (see figure 10). It begins aggressively and repeatedly attacking its reflection, carrying the spectator along with it as it does so. Eventually the bellicose bird knocks the mirror to the floor of the cage and continues to peck at it before returning to its original position at the back of the cage. The music eventually stops and the animation ends by fading to black when the budgie closes its eyes. The moment that the budgie is revealed in the mirror is a key moment in the animation, since it allows spectators to see themselves as a non-human object. The cleverness and novelty of this sequence is humorous, but its lack of overt anthropomorphic “explanation” also highlights the strangeness of this behaviour. It may prompt spectators to wonder why do budgies do this? What do these birds experience? What is it like to not recognise oneself in a mirror?

Figure 8: Trill, David Theobald (UK 2010)

Figure 9

Figure 10

It is entirely significant just how non-human the beings in Theobald’s works are. While offering spectators experiences of navigating space through the embodied gaze of a non-human being, these works do not pretend to give full access to what philosopher Thomas Nagel has called the “subjective character of experience”.^[38]To a large degree the subjective experiences of the sentient beings in Theobald’s works remain withdrawn from our grasp. We see what they see, but how they experience their experience remains inaccessible.If the works’ formal strategies sometimes strike spectators as alienating, then they are also honouring the alienness of these objects. OOO also acknowledges the fact that individual objects in their essence are always to some degree unknowable and withdrawn from us humans as well as from each other.^[39] It respects that radical inaccessibility. As Bogost notes, “only some portion of the domain of being is obvious to any given object at a particular time. […] When we ask what it means to be something, we pose a question that exceeds our own grasp of the being of the world. These unknown unknowns characterize things about an object that may or may not be obvious or even knowable.”^[40]

Observing the perspective of an unobserved object is to some degree an inescapable paradox. We cannot ever truly know what the world is like when we are not there to witness it. It is one thing to philosophise about how all objects exist equally and in partially withdrawn relation to one another, it is quite another to attempt to represent what it is like to be an object. Spectators of Theobald’s animations are, after all, witnessing objects relating to one another from a particular, privileged perspective. And these animations have been expressly made to reveal the secret lives of objects to us as spectators. This problem of representation returns us to the problem of correlation, where even the world imagined without us in it is still imagined through us. The task may be impossible, but Bogost argues that nevertheless it is the philosopher’s job to speculate about the private lives of objects and to “go where everyone has gone before, but where few have bothered to linger.”^[41] It is their job to attempt to encounter and describe the nature of objects and their relations to one another. Bogost calls this effort “alien phenomenology”.^[42] He notes that “speculative realism names not only speculative philosophy that takes existence to be separate from thought but also a philosophy claiming that things speculate and, furthermore, one that speculates about how things speculate.”^[43] Like the speculative realist philosopher, Theobald speculates. That is, he creates fictional yet plausibly realistic scenes where objects are relating to one another, seen through the perspective of a non-human, and non-anthropomorphised, object. The speculation involved in alien phenomenology is a creative act, and in this way Theobald is an alien phenomenologist, too.

Usually philosophers speculate about objects through the written word, and speculative realists are given to detailed description and the endless listing of diverse objects. In its efforts to investigate the relations between particular objects more closely (namely, through examples or “speculative fiction”), OOO has been criticised for its “tendency to exceptionalise and anthropomorphise objects” by attempting to suggest, for instance “here’s how a tomato thinks.”^[44] However, anthropomorphism here can be explained as resulting from what Henrik Karlsson calls “embodied anthropocentrism”, which refers to the correlationist fact that “we necessarily and permanently think from a human perspective”.^[45] (This privileging of one object over another is reflected in the phrase “first-object perspective” that I have used in my descriptions of Theobald’s works.) However, alien phenomenology makes sure that this unavoidable anthropomorphism is at the very least a critical one, one that is aware of its limitations and its blind spots. The impossibility of fully escaping our embodied anthropocentrism does not detract from the deeply ethical effort of asking us to imagine the world from alien perspectives and to honour the integrity of non-human objects, in Bogost’s words, “as their own end product worthy of consideration, scrutiny, and even awe.”^[46]Bogost argues that the speculation at the root of OOO’s philosophical investigations is also a form of wonder, because it maintains the unknowable irreducibility at the heart of all things, and it respects them, maintaining a sense of awe at their very separate yet equal existence. Theobald’s animations share in this post-humanist respect for objects in themselves. By representing the unseen lives of non-human objects—a task that is at least partially doomed to failure—Theobald succeeds in offering spectators an opportunity to wonder at the fact that objects are always leading their own lives, whether or not we are watching.

^[1] Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse (London: Vintage Books, 2004), 21.

^[2] For Theobald’s artist statement, filmography and CV, see http://www.re-title.com/artists/david-theobald2.asp, accessed May 2014. Many of Theobald’s works are available to be viewed on his Vimeo channel. See https://vimeo.com/user1148942, accessed May 2014.

^[3] “Speculative realism” is a term initially coined in 2007 by Ray Brassier in a meeting of contemporary philosophers Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, and Ian Hamilton Grant. The term has since been modified to suit each individual philosopher’s approach to the problem of “correlationism”. Graham Harman, Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism (Alresford: Zero Books, 2013), 5.

^[4] Harman, 5.

^[5] Levi R. Bryant, The Democracy of Objects (Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2011), 15.

^[6] Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, translated by Ray Brassier (London: Continuum, 2008), 2.

^[7] Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology or What It’s Like to Be a Thing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 4. Emphasis in original.

^[8] Bryant, 19.

^[9] Bogost, 6. Emphasis in original.

^[10] Ibid., 40. Emphasis in original.

^[11] Bryant, The Democracy of Objects, 19.

^[12] Timothy Morton, “Here Comes Everything: The Promise of Object-Oriented Ontology”, Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, Volume 19, Number 2, Spring/Summer 2011, 163.

^[13] Bryant, 245.

^[14] Woolf, 21.

^[15] Bogost, 30. Emphasis in original.

^[16] Fredrik Karlsson, “Critical Anthropomorphism and Animal Ethics”, Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Ethics, October 2012, Volume 25, Issue 5, 707.

^[17] Scott MacDonald, “The Ecocinema Experience”, in Ecocinema Theory and Practice, edited by Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, and Sean Cubitt (New York: Routledge, 2013), 20.

^[18] Scott MacDonald, The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films About Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 5.

^[19] MacDonald, “The Ecocinema Experience”, 19.

^[20] Ibid.

^[21] Matthew Flanagan, 16:9 in English: “Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema”, http://www.16-9.dk/2008-11/side11_inenglish.htm, accessed May 2014.

^[22] Ibid.

^[23] MacDonald, “The Ecocinema Experience”, 20. Emphasis in original.

^[24] David Ingram, “The Aesthetics and Ethics of Eco-Film Criticism”, in Ecocinema Theory and Practice, edited by Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, and Sean Cubitt (New York: Routledge, 2013), 56.

^[25] Torben Grodal, Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 5.

^[26] David Theobald, “Interview with David Theobald”, www.animateprojects.org, http://www.animateprojects.org/interviews/david_theobald, accessed May 2014.

^[27] Ibid.

^[28] Andrew Darley, Visual Digital Culture (London: Routledge, 2000), 84. See also Jennifer M. Barker, The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), 44-47; Paul Crowther, Phenomenology of the Visual Arts (even the frame) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 153-172.

^[29] Ibid., 83.

^[30] Computer animation’s iconicity as a simulacrum can serve as an abstracted representation of the object, connoting its generalness, rather than its indexical specificity, which might serve a more ecocritical purpose. For instance, the landfill in Jingle Bells (UK 2013) might more readily be understood to represent landfills in general.

^[31] Tobey Crockett, ‘The “Camera as Camera”: How CGI Changes the World as We Know It,’ Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Film, Pleasure, and Digital Culture, Vol. 1, edited by Scott Balcerzak and Jason Sperb (London: Wallflower Press, 2009), 122. Emphasis in original.

^[32] Ibid., 121.

^[33] Tom Tyler, “If Horses Had Hands…”, Society & Animals, Volume 11, Number 3 (2003), 269.

^[34] Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (Oxon: Routledge, 1998), 15.

^[35] Patrick Power, “Character Animation and the Embodied Mind–Brain,” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 3, no. 1 (March 2008), 37.

^[36] Ibid., 36.

^[37] Christopher Holliday, “From the Light of Luxo: The New Worlds of the Computer-Animated Film” (PhD dissertation, King’s College London, 2013), 128-129.

^[38] Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974), 436.

^[39] Harman, 27.

^[40] Bogost, 30. Emphasis in original.

^[41] Ibid. Emphasis in original.

^[42] Ibid., 34. Phenomenology is one branch of anti-realist/correlationist philosophy that has some respect for and wonder about objects in the world outside ourselves, even if it ultimately reduces them to their appearance to consciousness.

^[43] Ibid., 31. Emphasis in original.

^[44] J. Thomas Tremblay (Jthomastremblay), “OOO: What it’s not”, Network Aesthetics/Network Cultures (blog for the University of Chicago English 50013, CDIN 50013, ARTH 40013, CMST 69300, ARTV 50100), November 12, 2013, https://networkaesthetics.wordpress.com/tag/speculative-realism/, accessed May 2014.

^[45] Karlsson, 710.

^[46] Ibid., 120. Emphasis in original.

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Filmography

13 Lakes, James Benning (US 2004)

Buzz, David Theobald(UK 2008)

Deseret, James Benning (US 1995)

Fog Line, Larry Gotheim (US 1970)

Jingle Bells, David Theobald (UK 2013)

New Atlantis, David Theobald (UK 2008)

Office, David Theobald (UK 2006)

Sogobi, James Benning (US 2001)

Study of a River, Peter Hutton (US 1996)

The Cloud (aka All of Our Agents Are Busy), David Theobald (UK 2013)

Trill, David Theobald (UK 2010)

In this paper I will analyze three short avant-garde animation films that address the issues of vision disabilities and blindness: Many Happy Returns (Marjut Rimminen 1996), A Shift in Perception (Dan Monceaux 2006) and Ishihara (Yoav Brill 2010).^[1] Through the use of diverse animation techniques^[2] intensified by sound strategies^[3] all three films evoke a dream-intoxicated-like atmosphere. These shorts subvert – in form as well as content – former cinematic and cultural representations of people with vision disabilities. Thus, by providing a phenomenologically-sensual alternative, these works critique the able-bodied cinematic construction of spectatorship. I will argue that these shorts offer an antidote to the social organization of vision, and above all, to the supremacy attributed to vision in the experience of spectatorship.

This analysis is derived from the interconnections between disability and crip studies, phenomenology and the critique articulated by the Frankfurt School scholars. The kinship between these theories and the avant-garde animations about vision disabilities lie in their common hypothesis that shifts in perceptions are at the heart of any possibility of change. The disability approach of this essay uses crip theory, which emphasizes the compulsory able-bodiedness articulated by Alison Kafer (2013), and is influenced by disability theoreticians such as Margarit Shildrick and Janet Price (2006) who incorporate phenomenology into their deconstruction of an able-bodied society. In addition, I will discuss the intoxicating spectatorship these shorts offer their viewers through film studies that rely on phenomenologists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) and Edmund Husserl (1940). Finally, all three autonomous works of art offer a political critique of the very social order that defines a sensual hierarchy, and are therefore continuing the tradition of Frankfurt School scholars like Walter Benjamin (1931, 1936), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1969) who theorized the experiences of perception of art as an emancipatory possibility.

The avant-garde animation works that address the issue of visual disabilities create a dream-like experience which alters traditional spectatorship. This alteration challenges traditional uses of the cinematic apparatus in screening “prosthesis” narratives, which function as a type of prosthetic response to the fact that something or someone needs to be fixed.^[4] The subversion in form and narrative aims to disrupt the tranquilizing effect of ableist images and prosthetic narratives. In a sense, alternative cinema, and especially avant-garde animation, draws from Adorno and Horkheimer’s vision of the possibilities of autonomous art.

According to Miriam Hansen, Adorno and Horkheimer put an emphasis on the illegitimate and anarchic beginnings of the cinema as well as on its affinity to the circus and the road show. They clearly preferred marginal genres like the grotesque, funnies or certain varieties of the musical. Their repeated contrasting of the sound film with the less streamlined products of the silent era – all flow from the main thesis point to a subversive potential which could some day lay the ground for the negativity essential to a different kind of cinema.^[5]

In Transparencies on Film (1966), Adorno emphasizes the subversive potential of the ambiguous layering of response patterns. This ambiguity allows for the possibility that “the ideology of the culture industry contains the antidote to its own lie”.^[6] Thus, a short clay animated documentary like School – Sneaking up (Leonard Cheshire Disability and Aardman Animations, Creature Discomforts Series 2007-2008) may expose the able-bodied ideology or could even contain the cure for it. Christopher is a blind chameleon who lives in an unnatural surrounding: a human home. It is not Christopher’s blindness which is the main reason for his social oppression, but rather his humanization. The chameleon is forced to adopt human habits and is used to critique the able-bodied social structure and uncover its ideology. Therefore, “[t]he presentations of disability through comedy and using the medium of stop-motion work in the Creature Discomforts series leads us away from staid representations and through incongruous discourses allows an access to richer truths”.^[7]

Walter Benjamin (1931) was also fascinated with art and response patterns. Benjamin focused on marginalized spectatorships and conceptualized the optical unconscious, explaining it in the following manner:

[It is] another nature which speaks to the camera rather than to the eye: “other” above all in the sense that a space informed by human consciousness gives way to a space informed by the unconscious. […] Photography, with its devices of slow motion and enlargement, reveals the secret. It is through photography that we first discover the existence of this optical unconscious, just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis.^[8]

Benjamin’s optical unconscious offers a perspective on marginalized forms of spectatorship that enables us to grasp people and objects we neglect to see.^[9] His “elaboration of the ‘optical unconscious’ oscillates between a description of technical innovations and their emancipative possibilities.”^[10]    Furthermore, Benjamin’s famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) was directly linked to disability studies critique. According to Tobin Siebers, Benjamin “argued that photography, film, and lithography, among other forms, introduce profound changes in the ancient craft of the beautiful. These new forms supposedly destroy the ritual aura of the artist and the artwork, enable art to illustrate everyday life, and make art available to the masses”.^[11] Siebers utilizes Benjamin’s critique to the explanation of the presence of disability in art:

It is no accident […] that new forms of art have embraced the disabled body as a primary aesthetic symbol. […] Images of the body, especially of traumatic bodies, are available to people on a daily basis as never before, and if it is the case that the body is one of the privileged sites of symbolic action, this development cannot be meaningless. The media age has made possible a return to ritual that has renewed the effectiveness of the body as a collective representation. The disabled body has evolved such a strong presence in the art world for this reason.^[12]

The presence of people with disabilities, including vision disabilities, was prominent in cinema, especially in the US, from its earliest days. Silent films such as The Near-Sighted Cyclist (1907), Near-Sighted Mary (1909)^[13] and the popular Chaplin hit City Lights (1931) made use of the topic to explore various comic situations. In mainstream cinema these characters function as either male villains/criminals who seek to destroy the able-bodied or a female victim who tells of the terror of ‘living in darkness’.^[14][15] In addition, blind characters who are romantically involved with people with other disabilities are often used to emphasize the repugnance of people with these other disabilities.^[16] In other cases where people with vision disabilities are portrayed as a subject matter for prejudice and injustice the context is usually nationalist or militaristic.^[17]

Mainstream documentary cinema has had its own role in depicting the stories of people with vision disabilities in accordance with what Paul Longmore identified as the narratives of adjustment, perseverance, self-acceptance and “positive-thinking”, which aim to lift the spirits of the able-bodied spectator.^[18] These formulas go hand in hand with the individual/medical model of disability, which locates the “problem” in the individual and the cause for his/her functioning or physiological limitation. Thus, the individual model forges a personal tragedy narrative that contains a medical/rehabilitational solution.^[19] Furthermore, it has been argued that the emphasis on tactile perception is a stereotypical representation of disability. In his analysis of Johan van der Keuken’s documentary Herman Slobbe/Blind Child 2 (1966), Hing Tsang asserts that the film subverts stereotypes by representing the body as a whole, rather than atomizing the senses and resorting to the stereotypical emphasis of aural and tactile perception.^[20]

Despite the claim that the sensuous representation is stereotypical, I wish to suggest that avant-garde cinema and animation have the potential to create political intersections between different bodies and senses and deconstruct mind-body and part-whole dichotomies. By providing a sense of being-in-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein)^[21] with a disability, which includes bodies and senses, these films may politicize their spectators and force them to take responsibility for their privileges. The experimental and avant-garde short animations I explore here use diverse techniques to illustrate the experiences of those who are socially and culturally overlooked as a result of vision disabilities. Moreover, I will argue that these shorts utilize new technological capabilities to create an atmosphere which forges a sensual spectatorship and provides a tool for resisting conventional and ableist ways of looking.

A prominent example of this potential is seen in Gary Tram’s documentary Black Sun (2005), which tells the story of Hughes de Montalembert, a NewYork based French filmmaker and painter who was attacked in his apartment and blinded. The film is a collage of 16mm visual imagery, which is not always in full agreement with Hughes’ narration. The visuals of this 70-minute film lure the viewers into a dream, moving from one image to another and generating a string of associations. This extraordinary experience of spectatorship may be analogous to Hughes’ own visual experiences soon after he was blinded:

Not receiving perception from the eye the mind would create very strong images, vivid images. To the point I would talk to you and suddenly I would see something like a vision. […] or I would have erotic images. Very strong erotic images. Talking to somebody was very disturbing because I had very strong erotic images.

This compulsory associative, and perhaps even dissociative, imagery is the most forceful message conveyed to the viewer, to the point of intoxication by the images. Thus the spectators must rely on Hughes’ voice and allow it to guide them through the tactile imagery of the film.

Miriam Hansen wrote that Benjamin introduced ‘tactile’ elements into the field of the ‘optical unconscious’. Benjamin’s allegorical devices, such as framing and montage, would thus have a therapeutic function similar to other procedures – the planned rituals of extraordinary physical and mental states, such as experiments with drugs, flaneurist walking, surrealist séances, psychoanalytical sessions – all procedures that are designed to activate layers of unconscious memory buried in the reified structures of subjectivity.^[22]

Similarly, fragments and ghosts from the buried past that demand attention are the materials of which the short animation Many Happy Returns (Marjut Rimminen 1996) is crafted. The short juxtaposes digital image manipulation and pixillation with live action and puppet animation, inserting the past into the present, and claiming an inability to separate the two. It portrays a puppet little girl who continuously haunts a woman’s everyday life, constantly demanding her attention. The girl represents a childhood trauma which ails and disrupts the woman’s experience of the present. The doll-ghost-girl is made of delicate, disintegrating material, which is most notably frail in the eyes. The animation resurrects the repressed and transparent child and forces the spectators to truly see her, not only with the help of their eyes.

In a documentary entitled Janela da Alma [A Window to the Soul] (Walter Carvalho and João Jardim, 2001) about artists with vision disabilities, Marjut Rimminen was asked about the film Many Happy Returns. Rimminen talked about her strabismus or squint, which she described as “terribly upsetting because you don’t get that contact with people”. Her childhood memories include her mother’s “very depressed and sad [way of] looking through you”. Hence one of the director’s most prominent childhood memories was a gaze which offered no connection to the other. According to Rimminen the animation is about the trauma of mental rather than physical deformity. For her, the damage inflicted on the eyes stem from their witnessing of traumatic events as well as from an internal feeling of distortion resulting from her “squint”. Rimminen rouses the repressed child who was looked at with pity and who failed to connect with others; this child subverts her marginalization and demands to be looked at.

The final sequence of the animation depicts the doll-ghost-girl as a ghost gazing through the window and watching the departure of the woman’s partner. The child’s cry “Mommy, don’t go!” coincides with the woman’s whisper “Don’t go!” and creates a dual sense of abandonment. As the child falls on the carpet, she is turned into waves in her reflection, which is followed by a shot of her lying in bed with a bandage over her eye. This shot is replaced by one of a gift unwrapping which finally reveals a wounded face instead of an eye. The face then becomes a crystal ball that resembles an eyeball.

The obscure style of the animation becomes tangible through the senses and especially through the evocation of tactility. The eye and the wound, the wrappings and the bandages are all materials that blend into one another, thus offering a sensuous perception. This unique and unclassifiable form forces a focus on the materials and textures of which the short is composed. In a sense, Rimminen’s work enables us to grasp that of which our eyes cannot make sense: the trauma of invisibility.

The experience of watching abstract images while the haptic senses are intensified is further discussed in Benjamin’s “protocols of drug experiments”, posthumously published in On Hashish.^[23] His wish to articulate a sense of intoxication in complex terms preceded the contemporary term “high”. In his fifth protocol from March 1930, Benjamin attempted to characterize the image zone. He asserted that while intoxicated, we may grasp both images and sounds in a way we cannot in a normal state of consciousness. Benjamin wrote that “there can be an absolutely blizzard-like production of images, independently of whether our attention is directed toward anyone or anything else. Whereas in our normal state free-floating images to which we pay no heed simply remain in the conscious, under the influence of hashish images present themselves to us seemingly without requiring our attention.”^[24] These protocols enable a reading of the experience created by Many Happy Returns in a manner which includes the unique state of mind and body it offers its spectators. As Benjamin stated, the result of such a state may be a static gaze; “the production of images that are so extraordinary, so fleeting, and so rapidly generated that we can do nothing but gaze at them simply because of their beauty and singularity.”^[25]

Although Benjamin wrote about the joy and beauty of such an experience, he did not exclude the “down” aspects of intoxication. Furthermore, Benjamin’s concept of beauty does not coincide with the socially constructed one, but rather resembles Tobin Siebers’ Disability Aesthetics, Alison Kafer’s Feminist, Queer, Crip theory and Judith Halberstam’s Queer Art of Failure. In an earlier protocol from September 1928 he wrote: “I now suddenly understood how to a painter (hadn’t it happened to Rembrandt and many others?), ugliness could appear as the true reservoir of beauty – or better, as its treasure chest: a jagged mountain with all the inner gold of beauty gleaming from the wrinkles, glances, features.”^[26]

The abstract animation style of Many Happy Returns combines the intoxicated imagery with the presence of depression, deformity and trauma. Or, in other words, the animation blends the high and the low as experienced through the body. These kinds of concoctions can be read through crip and queer theory which challenge the unified norm. According to Sara Ahmed, the enjoyment of failure to be “proper” characterizes both queer studies and phenomenology. She asserts that phenomenology can offer a resource for queer studies “insofar as it emphasizes the importance of lived experience, the intentionality of consciousness, the significance of nearness or what is ready-to-hand, and the role of repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds.”^[27] The lived experience includes inhabiting a body, or what Edmund Husserl calls “living body” (Leib).^[28] All these insights regarding the “inappropriate” or “disoriented” body as needing to be revalued through queer phenomenology correlates with disability and crip studies.

Alison Kafer explains the term ‘crip’ as an integration of radical queer theory with feminist and disability studies, asserting that “critical attempts [are needed] to trace the ways in which compulsory able-bodiedness/able-mindedness and compulsory heterosexuality intertwine in the service of normativity; to examine how terms such as ‘defective,’ ‘deviant,’ and ‘sick’ have been used to justify discrimination against people whose bodies, minds, desires, and practices differ from the unmarked norm […].”^[29]

The crip converges the disability with the queer and includes the excluded, the lowly and the failure. In her book The Queer Art of Failure, Judith Halberstam adopts the term “low theory” from Stuart Hall’s writings in order to “locate all the in-between spaces that save us from being snared by the hooks of hegemony […]”. But, she adds, this theory “also makes its peace with the possibility that alternatives dwell in the murky waters of a counter intuitive, often impossibly dark and negative realm of critique and refusal.”^[30]

Thus, the crip doll-ghost-girl encompasses both compulsory able-bodiedness and a dark realm of refusal in the lived experience through the body. Rimminen does this by portraying the transformation of the doll into a traumatic ghost, waves, crystal ball and a girl. The most prominent transformation is of the eyes which turn into diverse objects, organs and textures. The lived body of the protagonist “touches” the spectator’s body since, as argued by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, all subjects and objects are “flesh” in the “flesh” of the world. “[…] The body belongs to the order of the things as the world is universal flesh”. Thus all subjects and objects can touch and be touched.^[31] This interconnection between touch and bodily parts in Many Happy Returns calls for a crip spectatorship in which the viewer employs all disparate parts of the body in addition to the eyes and fails to be oriented by social norms.

Both Benjamin and Merleau-Ponty claimed that an intoxicated perception foregrounds and politicizes the otherwise unconscious cross-modal sensory exchange. In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wrote the following: “A subject under mescaline finds a piece of iron, strikes the window-sill with it and exclaims: ‘This is magic’: the trees are growing greener. The barking of a dog is found to attract light in an indescribable way, and is re-echoed in the right foot.”^[32] He further politicizes this experience by stressing that “synesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the centre of gravity of experience, so that we have unlearned how to see, hear, and generally speaking feel, in order to deduce, from our bodily organization and the world as the physicist conceives it, what we are to see, hear and feel”.^[33] This phenomenological elaboration of shifts in live-body perception can be useful for disability studies as a tool of deconstruction of medicalized perceptions.

A Shift in Perception (Dan Monceaux, 2006) makes use of animation techniques similar to those of Many Happy Returns, thus creating a comparable intoxicating or dream-like atmosphere which may offer a shift in perception as articulated by Benjamin and Merleau-Ponty. Yet this animated documentary adds the indexical voices of three blind women who bear witness to the oppression of a vision-centric society and to the sensual creativity it obligates. Although the animation’s imagery is also indexical, it is completely transformed and obscured by filming and editing techniques such as soft focus, speed manipulation and stop-motion. Despite the women’s talk about their everyday experiences, a large part of their dialogue focuses on their dreams, which also justifies the abstract imagery. Therefore the black and white set of dream-like images sends the spectators on a journey through a sensuous world. This meditative voyage, which resembles the one in Janela da Alma, is guided by the blurred and intoxicated images, and is organized by the voice-over which focuses on dreams. The phenomenological atmosphere created by this animation was noted in some of its reviews. David Finkelstein, for example, noted the following:

The best footage gives us a kinetic and tactile sense of the women’s experience, how touch, sound and smells are dominant in their experience. A sequence where the camera sits behind a shopping cart, wheeling around the aisles of a supermarket, helps us to immediately understand how the weight and feel of the cart itself helps Rhonda to navigate, and a shot of jangling keys clarifies how she so easily locates the store manager for assistance.^[34]

The haptic knowledge brought forth in the animation, especially in the depiction of dreams, is the same kind of knowledge that Vivian Sobchack (2000) claims spectators use at the movies. Drawing from Merleau-Ponty, Sobchack argues that we do not watch a film merely with our eyes, but rather with our entire bodies and senses. Cinema allows viewers to touch and be touched by images, to feel a visual atmosphere, to sense weight, suffocation and sometimes even smell or taste. In her phenomenological reading of The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993), Sobchack writes that it is not through vision or touch that we know what we are seeing, but also through our fingers, skin, nose, lips, tongue, stomach and all other parts of the body.^[35]

This haptic-bodily knowledge plays an important role in avant-garde animation which is often abstract, dreamlike, meditative and metaphorical, often making it difficult for the spectator to understand what s/he sees.^[36] Yet, it is this very visual uncertainty, stressed by animation, which offers the haptic spectatorship experience. Monceaux’s subjects, more so than any seeing subject in a film, cannot return the spectators’ gaze, but through the abstract nature of the film they blur the spectators’ vision and deny them of the privileged perspective. This political dimming of the standardized vision, or a sort of “criping” of the spectators, problematizes and de-neutralizes vision in filmic spectatorship. By deforming the material of the world, Many Happy Returns and A Shift in Perception accord with Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious, illustrating a world that spans beyond mere scopic awareness. By fogging conventional vision, they force spectators to touch sounds and images and thus realize Benjamin’s vision of the use of new technological abilities for emancipatory purposes.

The emancipatory purpose in this animation corresponds with the postmodern-phenomenological “touch ethics” articulated by Janet Price and Margarit Shildrick.^[37] Much like the discussed animation, Price and Shildrick reverse the sight-touch hierarchy and suggest that the sense of touch has the ability to cross boundaries:

Much has been written in broadly phenomenological literature about how our sense of touch is every bit as important as, if not more important than, sight in mapping our morphology of our bodies and of the spaces in which we move. Between sentient beings, touch, unlike sight, is quintessentially an interactive sensation in which the moment of touching is indivisible from being touched. There is never a point at which we can fail to reverse the sensation, nor at which we can distinguish clearly between the active and passive mode. Again, unlike sight, touch frustrates hierarchy, and crosses boundaries rather than creates distance.^[38]

The emphasis on touch constitutes a break from social boundaries – the boundaries between self and other, between one subject and another, between subject and object. Thus it is an ethical question since “in touching, we become more exposed to each other, immersed in each other, opening up the possibility of facing similar experience which could arouse fear and discomfort. […] the thought that ‘this could be me’.”^[39] Moreover, through the dimming of sight and the arousal of touch the boundaries between spectator and spectated may collapse too. The sounds and images are touched by the spectator and break boundaries. Hence these animations attempt to avoid the experience of an able-bodied person who gazes at a disabled one. Instead it forges an inter-subjective experience of a “touch ethics”.

In contrast to Many Happy Returns and A Shift in Perception‘s intoxicating abstract images, Ishihara‘s (Yoav Brill, 2010) imagery lies on the medicalized diagnostic. The cel animation artistically asserts that there is no such thing as normal vision. Ishihara‘s world is entirely constructed by cel animated colored dots from the Color Perception Test. Yet Brill transforms the restrictive role of the Ishihara dots by depicting various artistic ways to bend and blend them. The same test, which diagnosed the protagonist as color blind, is used to animate the visual world as both limited and fluid. In other words, all that we see is limited by the colored dots which can be reused. Thus the animated film questions to what extent our vision is socially constructed or restricted. In more simple terms, do we all see the same things?

In one scene, the teacher asks the students who are on a field trip to find a red poppy among the white ones. Yet the color-blind protagonist wonders “What poppy?”. Another student determines that the protagonist cannot see a thing as “he sees see-through”. The protagonist realizes that explaining what one cannot see is as impossible as feeling one’s own forehead for temperature. Furthermore, this external gaze directed at him marks his vision as transparent, thereby condemning him to equal translucence. In the words of the protagonist, he went from a person who could not see very well to one who is unseen. Consequently, the dot that represents him turns from brown to grey.

The final scene of the film takes place years later when the protagonist travels with friends to a beach in Sinai. A moment before sunset, a large male figure made up of the Ishihara dots approaches the protagonist, still represented by a small grey dot. The young man says that the sea is red during these hours. The dotted figure, which now seems to represent the protagonist, turns to the sea with its back filling the frame while the dots switch from shades of grey to distinct colors of brown, pink and red. The storyteller-protagonist concludes with the question “What sea?”. This scene further deconstructs notions of vision and visibility. The fluidity of the character and its crossing of boundaries lie not only in its transformation from one color to another, but, more radically, in its shift from a dot to a human being, and from a color-seeing character to a color-blind one.

Finally, Ishihara crosses boundaries between able-bodied and disabled people, yet it’s constant preferentiality to the medical test blocks the flow of associations which animations like Many Happy Returns and A Shift in Perception allows. The dream-like or intoxicating imagery of live-bodies in both these films offer exchanges in sensuous perception and thus disrupts the foundations on which the sensuous hierarchy is constructed. Sobchack explains this kind of spectatorship as “the way in which our equally available senses have the capacity to become variously heightened and diminished, the power of culture regulating their boundaries as it arranges them into a normative hierarchy.”^[40] Laura Marks argues that the sensuous normative hierarchy is determined by distance: the more a sense can overcome that distance, the higher it will be estimated.^[41] Thus, touch, which allows a political subversion of separation and segregation, is at the bottom of the sensory scale. Therefore the uniqueness of Many Happy Returns and A Shift in Perception lies in their foregrounding of tactility and in their applying of a “touch ethics” to spectatorship.

In conclusion, these avant-garde animations about vision disability offer their spectators a shift in perception. Yet while Ishihara shifts medicalized perceptions of disability, Many Happy Returns and A Shift in Perception alter the very centricity attributed to vision in spectatorship. The latter create a dream-like or intoxicated-like atmosphere which is based on abstract and ambiguous imagery making what there is to be seen uncertain. This sort of visual uncertainty calls for a haptic interconnection and puts spectators “in-touch” with images, bodies with senses, highs with lows and able-bodied-seeing spectators with vision-disabled people. The live-bodies portrayed in the shorts are subjected to social orientation in the form of compulsory able-bodiedness in a vision-centric culture. Therefore a crip phenomenology analysis of the spectatorship experience of the abstract animations foregrounds their claim that we all fail to see straight. This failure is celebrated both by phenomenology and crip studies since it is a more haptic and un-unified alternative to spectatorship. Drawing from Frankfurt School, this shift in spectatorship may function as a possible antidote to the social hierarchy of the senses and bodies.

^[1] With sincere gratitude, I acknowledge the support and contributions made by Anat Zanger, Anton Kaes and the editor.

^[2] Such as: digital image manipulation, found footage, live action, pixillation, the use of a super 8 mm film, time manipulation, soft focus and cel animation.

^[3] Such as: music, digital sound manipulation, dubbing and the use of indexical voices in animated documentary.

^[4] David T. Mitchell, T. David, Snyder L. Sharon. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Michigan: The Michigan University Press, 2001.

^[5] Hansen, Miriam. “Introduction to Adorno, “Transparencies on Film (1966)” in New German Critique, No. 24/25, (Autumn, 1981 – Winter, 1982), 197.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7]Norris, Van. “Taking an Appropriate Line: Exploring Representation of Disability within British Mainstream Animation”, Animation Studies, vol. 3, 2008, p. 75.

^[8] Benjamin, Walter. “A Short History of Photography.” Alan Trachtenberg (ed.) Classical Essays on Photography. [1931] 1980, 142-151.

^[9] Hansen 1987, 217.

^[10] Ibid 210.

^[11] Siebers, Tobin. “Trauma Art: Injury and Wounding in the Media Age”, Disability Aesthetics. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, p. 108.

^[12] Ibid, p. 109.

^[13] Norden, Martin F.. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies. New Brunswick and New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994, 20.

^[14] Longmore, Paul K.. “Screening Stereotypes: Images of Disabled People in Television and Motion Pictures.” Why I Burnt my Book and Other Essays on Disability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, [1985]. 2003, 133, 143.DiMare, Philip. “Representations of Disability in Film.” Movies in American History: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Vol. 1: 2011, 1050.

^[15] The one-eyed hit man in the 1984 series Hot Pursuit or the dependent heroine in A Patch of Blue (Guy Green 1965). Longmore [1985] 2003, 133, 143, DiMare 2011, 1050.

^[16] Diana, Rocky’s blind girlfriend in Mask (Peter Bogdanovich 1985). Longmore, 142.

^[17] Bright Victory (Mark Robson 1951), Pride of the Marines(Delmer Daves 1945). DiMare, 1051.

^[18] Longmore, 137-141.

^[19] Oliver, Michael. Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996, 32-33. Wendell, Susan. “The Social Construction of Disability.” The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge, 1996.

^[20] Brylla, Catalin. “‘Documentary and (Dis)ability’ Symposium, University of Surrey, United Kingdom, 20 September 2013.” Studies in Documentary. 2014, 2.

^[21] See: Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Tran.). New York: Harper & Row, 2008 [1927]. Dreyfus, Hubert. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

^[22] Hansen, 211.

^[23] Benjamin, Walter. On Hashish. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2006.

^[24] Ibid, pp. 59-60.

^[25] Ibid, p. 60.

^[26] Ibid, p. 50.

^[27]Ahmed, Sara. “Introduction”, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 2.

^[28] Ibid.

^[29] Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2013, 16-17.

^[30] Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press. 2011, 2.

^[31] Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1968). “The Intertwining – The Chiasm,” Claude Lefort (Ed.), Alphonso Lingis (Tran.) The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, p. 137.

^[32] Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962, p. 229, in: Sobchack, Vivian. “What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh, 2000.

^[33] Ibid.

^[34]Finkelstein, Frank. “A Shift in Perception”, in: Film Threat, June 25, 2007. http://www.filmthreat.com/reviews/10793/ .

^[35] Sobchack, Vivian. “What my Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh”, in Senses of Cinema, Issue 5 2000.

^[36] An interesting perspective on synaesthesia and people with strong visual reaction to sound is portrayed in Samantha Moore’s animated documentary An Eyeful of Sound (2010).

^[37] Price, Janet and Margari Shildrick, 2006. “Bodies Together: Touch, Ethics and Disability Theory”, in: Marian Corker and Tom Shakespeare (ed.) Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory, Continuum, London, 62-75.

^[38] Ibid, 66.

^[39] Ibid, 71.

^[40] Sobchack, Vivian. “What my Fingers Knew”.

^[41] Marks, Laura U. “The Memory of the Senses.” The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. 194-242.

This essay explores the ways in which the Orcadian film-poet Margaret Tait’s creative processes, including the physical engagement between her body and the filmmaking materials, effect and inflect the interplay of Julia Kristeva’s concepts in her hand-painted audiovisual artwork Painted Eightsome, in which the music of a Scottish reel is combined with animated imagery painted frame-by-frame onto clear 35mm film. Methodologically, I am responding to the material itself and the materiality of semiotic and symbolic in Tait’s ‘painted surface’ as a maker of direct animation films, attuned to certain types of processes, in order to generate a particular reading of the work.

As a creative artist, Tait used a range of forms. She wrote prose and poetry, and made short films, usually shooting on 16mm with her clockwork Bolex camera. In her cinematic work she explored an array of highly experimental techniques, including painting and scratching on the film surface, from the beginning of her filmmaking career in Italy in the early 1950s. Tait regarded her short films, of which she made over 30 across almost half a century, as ‘film poems’. Notable for her experimentation, improvisation, and innovation, she pursued a uniquely individual and independent engagement with filmmaking in relation to concerns and interests arising from her concern with the everyday. In her hand-painted works she engaged directly with the materiality of film and the creative potential of its physical properties. Painted Eightsome, made over a period of 14 to 15 years and completed in 1970, combines music and painting within the artform of poetic film. The running time of the film, just over six minutes,^[1] is determined by the length of the accompanying music. The frames of the 35mm filmstrip are delineated with hand-drawn lines and have been painted with aniline dyes^[2] in a range of vibrant colours.^[3]

In her foreword to Sarah Neely’s book Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings (2012), the poet Ali Smith refers to Tait as a “film-poet”,^[4] in acknowledgement of her duality as an artist who created films that are visual poems and wrote poems that conjured cinematic images. Poetic language is distinct from our everyday verbal communication, in that our attention is drawn to the words through which meaning is constructed. To use Margaret Tait’s own words, “In poetry, something else happens”.^[5] The words are no longer transparent, we become aware of the language being used and the words themselves, their sounds and rhythms and juxtapositions.^[6]

The philosopher Julia Kristeva’s views are aligned to those of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan in her understanding that the speaking subject is a duality divided into a conscious mind and an unconscious mind.^[7] However, she positions the body within discourse and argues that we should consider unconscious and conscious processes of language, as both are needed to create meaning. For me, Kristeva’s re-imagining of Freud and Lacan, and her theorisation of the connection between mind and body, suggests a conceptual framework within which the film poem Painted Eightsome may be ‘read’ in order to open out thinking about Tait’s practice. Kristeva’s emphasis is on the maternal and pre-oedipal in the constitution of subjectivity, in that she is interested in the development of subjectivity before Freud’s oedipal stage or Lacan’s ‘mirror’ stage, and foregrounds the interplay between the ‘symbolic’ structure of language and the ‘semiotic’ of rhythms and the maternal body.^[8] In Painted Eightsome, the dancing music of the Scottish reel that drives the animated imagery forwards, together with the materiality of the ‘hand-made’ visuals, foregrounds the presence of the filmmaker and her making processes. In addition, the continually mutating pictorial forms of Tait’s poetic moving image language convey an ‘open’ subjectivity, enabling a cascade of meanings to be generated through the interplay of the viewer’s conscious and unconscious.

My own critically reflective praxis as an artist filmmaker gives me a spectatorial perspective on Margaret Tait’s direct animation that is inflected by my ‘know how,’ the term used by Robin Nelson for the “practical knowing-through-doing” of embodied knowledge and understanding that is acquired through practice.^[9] I have an understanding of film as a physical substance and the processes of direct animation filmmaking from working with the materiality of photochemical analogue film for over 20 years.

In Greek, a spectator or onlooker is θεατής, from which the word ‘theory’ comes. Philosopher Hannah Arendt states that thinking derived from Greek philosophy rests on the premise that only the spectator, who is removed from the action taking place, is in a position to see and comprehend the entirety of what is occurring before their eyes: “as a spectator you may understand the ‘truth’ of what the spectacle is about; but the price you have to pay is the withdrawal from participating in it … only the spectator occupies a position that enables him to see the whole play – as the philosopher is able to see the kosmos as a harmonious ordered whole.”^[10]

My position as a spectator is informed by my ‘know how.’ When I watch Tait’s film poem Painted Eightsome, her work ‘speaks’ to my body. I cannot ‘un-know’ the embodied knowledge of direct animation filmmaking acquired through years of experience. As an artist filmmaker, my research ispractice-led; as a researcher, I adopt a dynamic multi-layered approach that modulates across the modes of maker and spectator, accentuating the fluidity between these positions.

Tait described Painted Eightsome, completed in 1970 and made by her over a period of 14 to 15 years, as:

“An eightsome reel played by Orkney Strathspey and Reel Society, recorded in about 1955 – 1956, later transferred to 35mm optical stock with clear picture,^[11]and gradually painted over the years. Eights of different things – figures, antlers, or sometimes just blobs in tartan colours – dance their way through the figure of the reel.”^[12]

The eightsome reel is both traditional fiddle music and its accompanying energetic dance, a complex combination of a Scottish reel and the quadrille. Intended for four couples to dance at social gatherings, such as weddings, the beat is fast and regular, driving the motion of the dancers ever onward as they twirl and interlink. The dancers form into different positions and move to counts of eight beats, such as: all holding hands in a circle for eight steps and then moving back to their original positions, women and men each making a chain, with women moving clockwise and men anti-clockwise, and individual women taking turns to dance alone in the centre of the circle while the rest of the dancers move around.

Tait’s film has received few public screenings, but a digitised version is freely available for viewing online at the National Library of Scotland’s Scottish Screen Archive website. Here, at the Full record for ‘PAINTED EIGHTSOME’ page,^[13] a doughy white face with a quizzical look peers from a small video window, pressed against an almost-square pane of tropical turquoise. Despite the pixelation that presents the image as tiled, like a mosaic, I can discern that this is an image painted by hand with a brush using colours in liquid form. In the upper left corner, deep cerulean brushstrokes form the letters: PAI / NT / E.

An azure curl with an inner crotchet of orange-yellow curves around to make the left eye, the right eye a swirl of diluted orange squash. These shapes remind me of musical notes seen in a mirror, one crotchet or quarter note with its stem upmost, like the letter ‘b’ makes the left eye; the other crotchet, the right eye, has its stem pointing down, like ‘g’. The artist has left a dot of amber in the centre of each eye. Amber on cobalt makes greenish cheeks: slashes for the left cheek, a circular swab for the right. The muted peach hook of the right eye reaches down to suggest a nose, and the mouth sits on the windowsill as parallel strokes of pale gold and ultramarine.

As I look, I respond to the work as a maker, and become aware that my body is following the actions of the artist’s hand at the time of creating this image. My fingers’ memory feels their pressure on the paintbrush as Tait loads the sable hairs with liquid colour, pauses momentarily to concentrate the energy, then releases by stroking the surface of the picture. She has created the face from the transparent field of the unmarked film surface which appears here as a white ground, patching in a blue wash at the frame edges to leave a rough oval free of colour except for a suggestion of features. The face looks surprised and melancholic, as if caught inside the confines of a digital prison cell, its window branded National Library of Scotland / Scottish Screen Archive in white letters at the top right hand corner. This is accompanied by a white icon of an open laptop, or a book open at empty pages, pictured in stasis, caught in the act of flying away through an imaginary sky. So far, I have looked through the surface of my screen to the space beyond, where the face stuck in the frame implores me to press that flat dark grey square with a white arrowhead facing right, placed dead centre, seemingly on top of the picture. I adjust my focus, then click to set the face free, and animate…

Neely and Riach, among others, place Tait within the international avant-garde and consider her film poetry to share a common heritage with moving image work made by other avant-garde filmmakers such as Maya Deren.^[14] They observe that a “fecund relationship between cinema and poetry … developed through her experimental film work”^[15] and consider that the constraints of budget and equipment she experienced throughout most of her filmmaking career influenced the development of her unique film language. She was driven through necessity to economical and resourceful ways of capturing and representing the world cinematographically “in a way comparable to written poetry”.^[16]

Margaret Tait said of her filmmaking: “The kind of cinema I care about is at the level of poetry – in fact – it has been in a way my life’s work making film poems.”^[17] Her work explored the lyrical potency of the everyday, and sought to reveal the transcendence of the ‘ordinary’ she intuited through her deep connection to the things, places and people she loved. She often quoted the poet Lorca’s notion of “stalking the image”^[18] to explain her own position as a film-poet. Tait practiced an acute observation of the world and her embodied and knowing psychic responses to being in place, patiently lying in wait, hunting ‘mind images’.

Tait’s partner Alex Pirie wrote the following about her filmmaking in 1977:

In 25 years of unremitting application to the film medium, Margaret Tait has evolved the style that allows her to display and offer what Alfred Kazin, writing of Simone Weil, called ‘a loving attentiveness to all the living world’. That definition of her philosophy, of her method, holds true, whether the setting is an Edinburgh street, the banks of an Orkney burn, a domestic interior or a human face. Unlike so much that is called experimental and avant-garde, her films are not merely exercises in perception. Her film images are accessible (A thistle is invariably a thistle), they are of the everyday, and, at one level, a presentation of things as they are. But, in their framing, in their rhythmical patterning, in their duration, those images offer a vision of the mystery and ambiguity with which so-called common objects are saturated.^[19]

Her insights into her own creative process as a film-poet can be seen in Tait’s comments about her work. Of her film poem Where I Am is Here (1964), Tait wrote: “my aim was to construct a film with its own logic, its own correspondences within itself, its own echoes and rhymes and comparisons, all through close exploration of the everyday, the commonplace”.^[20] Tait’s notes for her seven short film poems,^[21] released in 1974 under the collective title Colour Poems, indicate the organic, evolutionary, ‘to and fro’ relationship between experience and psychic processing in the generation of film poetry: “memory gets somewhat lost in the present observation, although it never disappears, and there are reverberations back … Out of one’s own memory and thought one then finds (or arranges) the external scenes which can be filmed and made into something else again.”^[22]

Kristeva’s paradigm of ‘semanalysis’ (sémanalyse) combines de Saussure’s semiology, or semiotics (la sémiotique), with Freud’s psychoanalysis. She explains that the ‘bodily drives’ of the unconscious display their energy through language: Kristeva’s ‘living’ language is interwoven with the unconscious and its drives (energies/forces). The semiotic oscillates with the symbolic, it is preverbal, feminine, connected to the body, and associated with the maternal (although it is available to the masculine). Tait allowed the memories, dreams, and imaginings of her unconscious to emerge, catching these ‘mind images’ and then setting them free within the dynamic visual poetry of her films. When I watch Tait’s film poem Painted Eightsome, I feel her connectivity with the ‘living world’ she experienced and I am touched by its vibrant energies. I am, in effect, feeling ‘affect’, a collective term that embraces both feelings and emotions. When these embodied processes reach consciousness, they are perceived as feelings, and emotions when they are experienced as more complex physical sensations. Watching Painted Eightsome, I am ‘brought back’ to my body, and it is through this interwoven conscious and unconscious processing that I, the spectator, create meaning and the work becomes meaningful, significant, to me.

It seems to me that the playfulness of the animated imagery in Tait’s film evokes Kristeva’s semiotic, which has its origins in childhood play, before language. The painted drawings are unsophisticated and communicate the immediacy of Tait’s response as a film-poet to the everyday things of the world, and her remembered experience of the musical dance of the eightsome reel. She applies sufficient motor control to her mark-making within the 35mm frame to suggest shapes that can be recognised by the audience, but these childlike images have an affinity to Kristeva’s pre-oedipal chora, her term for the symbiotic dyad ofmother and child. The dyes, in the colours of Scottish tartan, were chosen for their affect, the feelings they generate and their emotional impact. Painted Eightsome is reminiscent for me of our first coming to language as children, and becoming part of the socialised world. The animated imagery presents a child’s view of the world, a sensorial encounter of kinaesthetic immersion that is initially experienced directly in relation to the mother’s body.In contrast, the formal structure and complex choreography of the dance aligns with the Kristevan symbolic, which can be seen as the child’s post-oedipal identity, when the child separates from the maternal, acquires language and submits to the ‘rules’ of the masculine in order to enter the social world of patriarchy. The eightsome reel is a dance for eight people, it is an ordered activity governed by a specific series of moves that requires an individual to be socialised, to ‘belong’ to the symbolic order.

Through my encounter as a spectator, Painted Eightsome conveys a fluid intertwining of semiotic and symbolic. Kristeva’s conceptualisation of the semiotic is as a pre-oedipal ‘underground space’ of bodily pulsations that interacts with, and gives meaning to, the ‘empty’ symbolic of syntax and grammar, and the judgement position of language is embodied by the energies of the semiotic rhythmic ‘bodies’ in motion. The animated coloured light enters my body and affects me, generating feelings of rhythmic motion, drawing forth sensory memories and tactile sensations and a deep, unspoken level of immersive engagement with the screen world of Tait’s film. The play of the pictorial forms on the screen and my body’s response to my experience of watching the film connects to Tait’s own movements as she painted the artwork and her recollections of the Scottish reel, woven through with the oscillating rhythms of the maternal chora.

Film has a specific size, weight, thickness, and material composition. Small rectangular holes punched through the material at regular intervals have rounded corners to avoid tearing when the film is advanced through the teeth, or sprockets, that pull or turn the strip. The picture area shown on the screen is within a ‘frame’. These ‘picture’ frames are arranged in a ladder formation along the width of the filmstrip, the rungs acting as a line between the bottom of one frame and the top of another. Each frame occupies the same area as the other when the filmstrip is projected or seen in a mechanical viewer. The filmstrip is moved at a regular pace so that the small changes in the images are not discernible by the spectator’s brain as individual frames, but are perceived to be a continuous flickering stream of movement or change of shape, colour or texture. The symbolic of film’s form and the controlled actions of its presentation therefore produces a structure which contains the semiotic of the marks within its frame borders, and creates a spectatorial experience of the moving image.

Photochemical analogue film has a material presence. Even if no image has been created photographically on the emulsion layer or marked by other means, the film surface on both sides picks up debris and detritus, dust, fluff, fibres and flakes of matter discarded from the body. The film is marked further through the touch of fingers and scratched by contact with hard objects and surfaces. Film only exists in a pure, pristine state when it emerges newly coiled and sealed in an airtight wrapping after its manufacture.

As a maker of films, when I watch Painted Eightsome, an immediate question is, ‘How is this made?’ From my position as a spectator, I can tell from the ‘look’ of the moving pictures on the screen that the imagery is painted by hand at a small scale, because of the quality of the brushstrokes (the traces of pressure and direction applied have resulted in changes of width and shape of the marks), and the imperfections caused by detritus caught in the coloured liquid medium used. From my ‘know how’, I understand that the artist has painted directly onto successive frames of movie film because of the visual ‘shiver’ produced by imperfect registration, and that the gauge used is 35mm because of the size of the flecks of dust and dirt embedded in the images, relative to the size of the frame. There is a pellucid quality to the colours onscreen that suggests the images were painted with dyes rather than with pigments.

The animated imagery of the title sequence unfolds, then a hiss and rustle on the soundtrack as the musicians of the Orkney Strathspey and Reel Society ready themselves and their instruments. A traditional Scottish reel begins, and the coloured figures appear to dance in time with the sound. To me, there seems to me to be a synchronous relationship between the up-and-down quick tempo of the music and the nimble shape shifting of the painted imagery. I want to know how Tait kept track of the music for this film during the decade and a half in which she painted the images, and how she contrived and maintained such a complex synthesis of audio and visual elements while she was making the animation.

According to Peter Todd, Tait worked through the visual elements of her films first, adding the sound components after the imagery was edited.^[23] Todd reports that, as an integral part of her filmmaking process, Tait would screen her 16mm work-in-progress to her partner Alex Pirie. This allowed her to experience her work ‘within an audience’ and to discuss the films as they evolved over a period of months, or even across several years of intermittent production.

Todd comments on the importance of editing for Tait, and describes her process in terms of an ‘evolution’.^[24] In filmmaking, Tait’s post-production was iterative and practice-led. She would edit, project the work-in-progress to her partner Alex Pirie, discuss it, then resume editing. Her method involved a triangulated engagement: firstly herself working with the film material; then the reception of the projected rough cut by a critical audience of herself and Pirie, feedback from him and her own response as spectators; and finally she would return to editing, reflexively informed by feedback from Pirie, her own response, and their subsequent discussion. Todd explains also that Tait would incorporate film from previous projects and “often reworked and reused bits of film and sequences.”^[25] She continually revised and re-edited her work, and there are several versions of many of her titles. For Tait, language is alive, and its heterogeneousness, its diversity and infinite possibilities, is stressed. The modalities co-exist: for Kristeva, the subject is always both semiotic and symbolic, and in process; in Tait’s film poems, film was material to be used, and creativity was fluid and constantly in process.

Other women makers of poetic film, such as Maya Deren and Marie Menken, share with Tait the key role of editing in the construction of their films. These artists also used the ambulatory hand-held camera as a ‘seeing eye’, feeling their way to capturing the world photographically in an intuitively choreographed dance. The filmmaker’s body here in contact with the ground, the mobile camera in hand, her eye looking there through the viewfinder, and her body moving towards the framed image. Deren in particular used editing as a process of organisation and transfiguration, reinforcing visual rhythms, patterns of movement, the relationship between a performer and the space of filming and the film space seen within the frame.

However, the making of work for cinema through the direct animation techniques used by Tait for Painted Eightsome requires a different set of strategies and psychological processes. Here, the artwork is a continuous strip of ‘found’ 35mm film, the length of which is fixed by the soundtrack it contains: in order to retain the flow of the Scottish reel, the film cannot be physically edited. In contrast to Tait’s methodology used in her ‘photographic’ work for cinema, for her films which were entirely hand-painted, the audio pre-existed the visual element: the music track was laid along the edge of a 35mm filmstrip, leaving the ‘picture area’ empty so that Tait could paint each frame using aniline dyes, intense colours that stain the analogue film base. The imagery of Painted Eightsome is created entirely through colour, which is for Kristeva,pure semiotic.^[26] The presence of the drive energies is a continual manifestation on the screen. Even where Tait has used a line to ‘contain’ an infill of colour, the line is itself coloured, a gestural mark rather than a controlling perimeter. The pictorial forms are crudely sketched, the coloured squiggles suggest representation and their interpretation remains with the viewer – a wiggling hoop of reddish-brown becomes a worm, then the body of a writhing snake, as an exuberant kaleidoscope of carnival flags, bright yellow sun, forget-me-not blue sky, and swathes of rose pink, plays within the frame. For Kristeva, “all colours… have a non centred or decentring effect” and therefore bring the spectator back to the maternal chora.^[27]

I would suggest that Tait followed a similar ‘evolutionary’ method for her ‘hand-made’ films to that used in making her ‘photographic’ films, and that she and her partner would have viewed and reviewed Painted Eightsome ‘in progress’ at several times during its 15 year period of making. Whilst I have found no record of Tait owning a 35mm projector, Todd mentions that Tait edited her 16mm films on a pic sync, a film viewing device that allows the film-in-progress to been seen at speed and for its accompanying soundtrack to be heard. Once editing was completed, she then sent her films to London for sound dubbing and printing in the laboratory.^[28] It is likely, therefore, given her self-sufficiency and independence as a filmmaker, that she would have had a 35mm pic sync or other motorised editing device, such as a Moviola or Steenbeck flat-bed editing table, which allow the filmmaker to control the speed at which the film moves through the machine and enables the soundtrack encoded in the filmstrip to be heard at the same time as viewing the moving images. If this is not correct, then Tait could have arranged to have access to 35mm projection in a cinema, as she did for checking her 35mm Calypso filmprint when she moved to Edinburgh from Italy in 1954.

The self-reflexivity of Tait’s methodology sustained her creative focus and the evolution of animated imagery over a lengthy period of time, during which she made several other films. From my ‘know how’ as an experienced practitioner, I would suggest that the symbolic structuring of the film’s material specificities to enabled Tait to return repeatedly to the process of making the visual artwork, the semiotic drives within her body responding to the music as she conjured rhythmic patterns with her brush loaded with coloured dye, for almost one and a half decades. In addition, it seems to me that Tait demonstrates an integrated shifting between modes that is symbiotic, a form of ‘dispersed subjectivity’ described by Kristeva’s ‘subject-in-process’, who, “accentuates process rather than identification, projection rather than desire, the heterogenous rather than the signifier, struggle rather than structure.” (Author’s emphasis)^[29] For Painted Eightsome, its process – the extended act of making – remains visible in the work and the space of the film frames in which the creation occurred; when projected, or viewed as a moving image work on a screen, the spectator is aware of the filmic material and its materiality through the presence of brush marks and accumulations of detritus; it is heterogeneous – as a dynamic procession of continually evolving and mutating coloured shapes, its meaning is contingent; and struggle is evident in the instability of the pictorial elements, as the figures made of coloured dyes wrestle to emerge from the clear ground and continually refresh the imagery.

Additional research would be most welcome in order to confirm the methodology used by Tait for Painted Eightsome and John MacFadyen (The Stripes in the Tartan), the artwork for which is contained on the first part of the same, unbroken roll of 35mm film with its optical soundtrack. Records available at the time of writing, by Winn and from the Scottish Screen Archive, and LUX, among others, indicate that Tait hand-painted these two films ‘consecutively’ between 1955 and 1970. The total length of the combined length of the artworks is given as 880 feet,^[30] with John MacFadyen having the first 316 feet of the roll and Painted Eightsome having the remaining 564 feet. From my ‘know how’ as an experienced practitioner of direct animation, I know that an artist can unravel hundreds of feet of 35mm film in order to work directly onto the surface of the film in a precise manner, without any specialist film equipment, although one must take care not to damage the sprocketholes, which are vulnerable. Also, the dyes can take several hours to dry, especially if colours are overlaid as they are in Painted Eightsome, and newly painted artwork must be left exposed to the air until all the moisture has evaporated, and the surface is no longer tacky, before ‘winding on’. From making Calypso with Peter Hollander’s assistance whilst in Rome, Tait was already an experienced practitioner in the art of painting on film, and Winn notes that Tait began work on Painted Eightsome shortly after Calypso, and it is likely that she used the same aniline dyes. However, from the records available to me, I cannot know for certain whether Tait was able to listen to the Painted Eightsome soundtrack during her making process – as I believe she did – and, if so, exactly how she did this.

Tait was familiar with the Len Lye’s A Colour Box, made in 1935 for the GPO Film Unit, and was inspired by this work, which chimed with her own ideas of making a film to a ‘musical beat’. From his conversations with Tait in the 1970s, Mike Leggett reports her as saying:“I had always enjoyed the Len Lye films which used to appear in the cinemas in the ‘30s… The use of sheer colour, screen-wide, coloured my idea of film (and perhaps colour) from then on.”^[31]

A Colour Box on a large cinema screen is a powerful experience, and stunned audiences around the world from its release in the mid-1930s. Horrocks considers it a “breakthrough film,” which “demonstrated the potential of the direct method in such a thorough and sophisticated way that the paint-brush had to be accepted … as a viable alternative to the camera.”^[32] Lye was drawn to experimental film by the potential the form offered for movement and colour, and used “expressionistic automatic drawing and free association techniques”.^[33] Although it is not known whether Tait had a deeper knowledge of Lye’s hand-made film practice, in particular his interest in Freud’s theories of the unconscious and psychoanalysis, it is clear that A Colour Box influenced Tait’s decision to paint visual music onto film. Joss Winn cites several similarities between Lye’s film and Tait’s first hand-painted work Calypso, such as, the adoption of the hand-painting process as a means of making a short film ‘on the cheap’ – because it didn’t require a camera and didn’t use much film stock; the exuberant rhythmic style of mark-making, and both films painted with the aniline dyes used in histology to study cell structures.^[34]

Tait was familiar also with the work of Scottish-born experimental animator Norman McLaren, including his innovatory techniques in expressing music as imagery through direct animation.^[35] His films inspired the making of her first hand-painted film Calypso (1955), which used as source material an unwanted 35mm optical track of some music, ‘found’ while she was in Rome. Lye’s A Colour Box was a pivotal influence for McLaren, who reported that he was “electrified and ecstatic” when he saw the film for the first time: “Apart from the sheer exhilaration of the film, what intrigued me was that it was a kinetic abstraction of the spirit of the music, and that it was painted directly onto the film.”^[36] This experience was such a powerful one for McLaren that he was compelled to watch the film over and over again at every opportunity, and said that he “felt like a drug addict”.^[37] McLaren’s reflection is resonant for me with the Kristevan chora, a pleasurable immersion in the materiality of existence, a chaotic swirl of undifferentiated feelings, needs and perceptions when one feels a ‘one-ness’ with the mother and the world.

McLaren was a pioneer in experimentation with film sound and developed a sophisticated notation system for creating music by marking the optical track area of a 35mm filmstrip, which he referred to as ‘animated sound’. I would suggest that Tait was aware of his use of the optical track to inform the painting of sequences within the picture frames of the filmstrip. There is a regular ‘beat’ marked along the edge of Tait’s 35mm artwork for Painted Eightsome – a painted mark along three frames at intervals of approximately every nine frames – which I think would be used during the making process as a visual reference for rhythm.^[38] Throughout the lengthy process of painting over nine thousand individual frames, the visual representation of the film’s sound was a constant presence.^[39] Tait was highly observant and attuned to small changes in things: “It’s the looking that matters, / The being prepared to see what there is to see. / Staring has to be done: / That I must do.”^[40] She looked at the world in detailed close-up with an intensity of vision, and I believe she used the wavering lines of the optical track an additional guide or score as she painted the frames, though not necessarily in an analytical manner – the visual appearance of the miniature optical code’s symbolic structuring providing an opportunity for the embodied semiotic of the film-poet’s imaginary to emerge as chromatic mark-making.

Additionally, there is evidence that Tait had an interest in codes. Peter Hollander, Tait’s fellow student at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematographia in Rome and collaborator, remembers that she “devised an arcane system to indicate the opus numbers of our films in their titles”, which he referred to as “Margaret’s code”.^[41] I believe that Tait would have been interested in the visual coding of music within the 35mm filmstrip, and would respond to it during the protracted period in which she painted the frames. There is no evidence that Tait attempted a detailed analytical correlation between the visual waveform and the marks she made, and I am not suggesting this. Tait, with her acutely ‘peering’ eye, did refer to the variations of the sound wriggles as she painted. This affected her mark-making performance and reinforced the “elasticity and multiplicity of meaning” which, as Ali Smith observed, is embedded deep in Tait’s cinematic work.^[42]

So that the reader may gain a deeper understanding the translation processes by which live sound is recorded and then played back during the traditional making and presentation of a cinematic film such as Painted Eightsome, I describe the key stages of coding and decoding:

Music is played and recorded onto magnetic audiotape. Sound waves, produced in the air by the actions of the musicians’ bodies upon their instruments, vibrate the diaphragm of a microphone, which registers the changes in atmospheric pressure and converts them into a variable electric current. An electromagnet then represents the acoustic sound wave as magnetic particles of ferric oxide arranged on a thin plastic tape. This audio analogue is transposed cinematographically into juddering waves of light embedded within a perforated strip of cellulose acetate or polyester film: the audio waveforms are translated into a visual code, rendered photographically by the laboratory as an optical soundtrack printed throughout the length of the filmstrip next to the sprocket holes. This is an analogue of the stereo sound waves, their variations of loudness and frequency converted to changes in the shape of two clear (white) lines. In 35mm film the optical track takes the form of a pair of wavering clear lines within the black ground of the film stock, running alongside the perforations on the left hand side.^[43] These allow varying amounts of light to pass through: changes of brightness correspond to changes in volume and pitch. When decoded via the bright light of a projector or pic sync, the embedded optical track can then be heard by the listener: the film projector converts the optical code to electrical pulses, which move the diaphragm of a loudspeaker, an electroacoustic transducer, to create changes in atmospheric pressure, audio waves which act upon the bodies of the listeners and re-embody the original sound.

The optical sound embedded in the Painted Eightsome filmprint is an analogue of the music. Its waveforms bear a direct relation to the original audio recording and to what the audience will hear ‘played back’ during projection. In the film, the animation is integrated with the sound and becomes visual music, a film poem in which the body’s presence is reinforced by the highly mobile, intensely coloured imagery that seems inseparable from the Scottish reel.

My ‘know how’ suggests that the eightsome reel’s swell of tiny waves, with its pattern of troughs and crests, informed the creation of the film’s visuals in a similar way to that in which Tait’s experiential observations were processed, embodied, then flowed… and became inscribed rhythmically and metaphorically in her poems. These short lines capture of the relentless pushing and pulling movements of the Orcadian sea in its watery connection to the Earth’s lunar satellite: “It never gets anywhere except to where it came from, / But keeps up that regular surge and heave / Of the tides / As it hurls itself / for ever towards the moon”.^[44]

Then, in these lines from another poem, she draws on a deep genetic and cultural memory to evoke the dominant force of the Vikings, who came first to Orkney at the end of the eighth century: “With the swift sides of their longships entering between two lips of water / And at speed rushing … And the dream of the deepest sea in their eyes / Took them spinning down the coasts, / Ripping out into the ocean”.^[45]

For Kristeva, human subjectivity is a dynamic open system ‘driven’ by the constant movement and ‘ceaseless heterogeneity’ of the maternal chora that underlies the process of subjectivity and ‘significance’, a term used by her to indicate the infinitely changeable, unbounded and never-ending vibrations of the drive energies, which transform language through an vibrant fluctuation of organisation and superabundance.

All Tait’s work, both films and writing, carries many layers of meaning within it. This is evident particularly in her use of light. Throughout her career Tait was fascinated by the phenomenon of light and its perception, and was clearly aware that is electromagnetic radiation that has observable behaviours such as refraction and reflection, and with different colours being ‘seen’ because of absorption. In her poem The Scale of Things, she refers to the “stunning frequencies” that are absorbed close to the ground so that the “full light of the sun” becomes calm, but not too blue.^[46] As well as her detailed observation of light and its affects in microcosm, Tait also possessed a ‘macrocosmic’ understanding of the seasonal rhythms and cyclical changes of light, particularly on Orkney. In her long form poem Cave Drawing of the Water of the Earth and Sea, Tait wrote of making “an abstract picture out of magic water”, and how a rainbow can be “water particles, refracted light, curvature of space” yet still “irrefutably a miracle.”^[47]

This deep knowingness of ‘how things work’, and the interconnectedness of the world and ourselves, can be clearly seen in these lines:

“The world is reeling out to its very utmost once again
Until it must shudder to stop and turn
And let the light back to us,
Back into the lower dark storeys and the foot of the valleys.
It is revolving in the darkest possible way now for us in the North,
And the time of all-light is half a year away”^[48]

Finally, to return to my point about Tait’s likely use of the 35mm filmstrip’s optical sound code to inform her mark-making for Painted Eightsome, in her poem Light, she refers directly to the electromagnetic waves of which light is constituted, with its final lines evoking Kristeva’s immersive semiotic:

“Did you say it’s made of waves?
Yes, that’s it.
I wonder what the waves are made of.
Oh, waves are made of waves.
Waves are what they are,
Shimmeringness,
Oscillation,
Rhythmical movement which is the inherent essence of all things.” (Author’s emphasis)^[49]

In cinema, previous frames of films, ‘aspects of experience’, are ‘expelled’ from the mind as their place is taken by a succession of new images. The phenomenon of cinema can only come into being because we cannot recall, precisely, the single, still images once they are not present before our eyes for the fraction of a second they appear on the screen. We see an illusion of movement and change: distance travelled, shifting form and changes of colour, texture and pattern. By the stroking action of her brush, Tait ensures that we cannot sink beneath the surface, and drown in the seamless, illusory moving image stream, unaware of the underlying material processes by which it is constructed. Each frame is newly created, unique; a dynamic moment that enfolds past, present and anticipated future. In parts, alternating images produce a flickering effect in the brain, sand and ocean seen in a rapid shimmer of yellow blue. This oscillating instability ensures that we retain the awareness that we are watching a series of static frames whilst simultaneously perceiving the phenomenon of moving image. The coloured light has no indexical link to a material presence in the world, other than its own materiality. The marks and washed grounds are simultaneously suggestions of recognisable objects and coloured splodges, “figures, antlers, or sometimes just blobs in tartan colours”,^[50] continually forming and re-forming, becoming a multiplicity of possibilities. In Tait’s poetic film Painted Eightsome, this contingency is the ‘structuring and de-structuring practice’ of signification. Tait’s hand-painted animation embodies what Kristeva refers to in her doctoral thesis, Revolution in Poetic Language, first published in 1974, as the ‘negativation’ of representation, in which ‘revolution’ signifies the disruption to subjectivity.^[51] In Painted Eightsome, nothing is still. Like the sea, there is change in each moment of consciousness, every frame, as it is eclipsed by memory. The film is a life lived, a linear event wound on a reel, energised by the revolutionary action of the projector, made visible by the light that shines through its frames, and transformed in the mind and body of the audience to the ‘animated shiver’ that signifies the living.

In her later work, Powers of Horror, Kristeva links the maternal to abjection: that which is revolting and repressed becomes revolutionary through its emergence in patriarchal symbolic systems.^[52] Here, Kristeva’s key notion is that subjectivity is established through expulsion. In other words, in the dynamic system of subjectivity, something must be expelled, excluded, cast out beyond the border into formless death-womb, the abjected maternal, as an integral part of the process of significance and the maintenance of one’s identity and psychic health. This aspect of Kristeva’s thinking is developed from her theorisation of the anal stage, in which the young child expels faeces from its body and derives pleasure from this expulsion. The waste matter is an excess, something that cannot be contained indefinitely within the biological body, and must therefore be ‘rejected’. However, for Kristeva, the prompt for the child’s process to language and subjectivity is generated by the jouissance of pleasure and material excess, rather than a merely a lack and separation, as argued by Freud and Lacan.

Tait left the residues of excess dye to dry on the surface of her filmstrip, unlike Lye, who cleaned his painted film artwork.^[53] During drying, these deposits have accumulated flecks of fluff and dust. This waste matter, expelled from the body of the world, is caught in the surface of the dried aniline dye. The dancing flickers of dust seen by the spectator on the screen are a disruption to the visual synthesis of the painted animated imagery. They mark the presence of an excess of materiality, an over abundance of jouissance. There is a knowing pleasure for the spectator in this: the dust reinforces awareness of the materiality of film, and the time and place of making is inscribed in the work through the particles of air-borne matter that landed on the sticky dye residue, and which cannot be erased.^[54]

Kristeva argues that the ‘logic of signification’ is present within the materiality of the body from birth. The infantile body incorporates food, digests and expels what is left over as waste, prefiguring the identification and differentiation processes that create and maintain signification. The mother regulates these bodily functions, and therefore ‘maternal law’ predates and displaces the ‘paternal law’ with its threats of castration. The Kristevan paradigm is counter to that of Jacques Lacan, who, following Freud, foregrounds separation (a lack) as the causal event of the mirror stage, through which castration, or signification, is effected. Kristeva’s semanalysis argues that the corporeal body of the young child carries within it the ‘logic’ that will lead to signification.

The artist, the mother/parent and the psychoanalyst all share a similar relationship to the semiotic. The artist channels her drives and gives this energy form; a mother/parent teaches their infant to recognise and then control its bodily rhythms; the psychoanalyst gives structure to their patient. Each of these roles brings the pre-verbal, and the non-verbal, into the structuration of the symbolic where socialisation may occur, and so facilitates access to culture and language. In recent work, Kristeva refers to a lively, poetic and musical language as revealing, “a carnivalesque, playful body that joins opposites and exults in its skillfulness in manipulating language.”^[55] It seems to me from my ‘know how’ as a maker of direct animation, that in Painted Eightsome Tait is speaking to us with what she called the “blood poetry”,^[56] using a chromatic pictorial language that emerges from the maternal chora and is ‘directed’ by jouissance, the unbounded, embodied pleasurable exuberance of the feminine, being alive and in the world, interwoven with the symbolic of the film structure as a material in ‘living motion.’ The abstracted animated imagery of the choral drive energies in Painted Eightsome push to the very limits of possibility, threatening to burst forth at any moment from the screen to rupture the symbolic order. Within the affective dimension, the sensorium of Tait’s audiovisual Scottish reel recreates itself anew through the fluency of her ‘mother tongue’ each time I play the film.

The avant-garde artist is allied to the avant-garde poet in that both rupture and break apart the meaning, syntax and grammar of their respective realms of language in order to render visible and/or audible what is unnameable. For the film-poet Margaret Tait, sight was the primary sense that connected her to the world. She transformed wave particles of light into film poetry. In Painted Eightsome, as in much of her cinematic and written work, we, as viewer-audience/reader-listener, ‘become’her experience of seeing and being. Tait’s vision is mediated through her embodied experience of living. She connected with the things she saw and her seeing became transmuted through time spent within her body. Sight emerging from embodied memory, as the ‘blobs of tartan colours’ are transformed through animation into something ‘other’: the transcendent visual poetry of the screen.

^[1] There is another, longer and slightly different version of Painted Eightsome, at Scottish Screen Archive, “Full record for ‘8SOME’”, reference number 4444A, accessed 14 May 2014, http://ssa.nls.uk/film/4444A

^[2] Aniline dyes are synthetic organic compounds used to stain biological samples in order to make cell structures more visible when studied through a microscope. They come in a range of colours, from deep saturated primaries to subtle hues. Margaret Tait was medically trained, and was familiar with aniline dyes and their use in the laboratory.

^[3] Joss Winn, “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”, (MA diss., University of East Anglia, 2002). For Winn’s technical report on the artwork for Painted Eightsome and another hand-painted film by Margaret Tait, John MacFadyen (Scottish Screen Archive, 4445), both of which are contained on the same roll, see pdf 24 – 26 (University of Lincoln, 2004), accessed 11 January 2011, http:eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/2004/ Also available, Joss Winn, 2009, accessed 14 May 2014, http://tait.josswinn.org/tag/london/

^[4] Ali Smith, “Foreword”, (2011), in Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings, ed. Sarah Neely (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2012), p. xiii.

^[5] Ibid, p. xiv.

^[6] Ruth Robbins, Literary Feminism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), p. 126.

^[7] In the context of this essay, I intend ‘consciousness’ to mean our awareness of various mental processes such as thinking and speaking, and also the rational aspects of our being. I refer to ‘unconsciousness’ as the mental processes which are generally ‘hidden’ from the conscious mind, and the bio-physiological processes of the corporeal body. The unconscious may be accessed in the recollection of dreams and is evident in the ‘gaps between’ consciousness, such as ‘slips of the tongue’.

^[8] Julia Kristeva, The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi, trans. Séan Hand and Léon S. Roudiez (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).

^[9] Robin Nelson, “Modes of Practice-as-Research Knowledge and Their Place in the Academy”, in Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen, ed. Ludivine Allegue, Simon Jones, Baz Kershaw and Angela Piccini (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 112 – 130; and Robin Nelson, ed., Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

^[10] Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: Thinking and Willing (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 93.

^[11] Winn, “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”, 25. Tait used a Kodak black and white Comopt (optical) print of the music recording, as a single roll.

^[12] Scottish Screen Archive, “Full record for ‘PAINTED EIGHTSOME’”, reference number 4444, accessed 14 May 2014, http://ssa.nls.uk/film.cfm?fid=4444

^[13] Ibid.

^[14] Sarah Neely and Alan Riach, “Demons in the Machine: Experimental Film, Poetry and Modernism in Twentieth Century Scotland”, in Scottish Cinema Now, ed. Jonathan Murray, Fidelma Farley and Rod Stoneman (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 1-19.

^[15] Ibid, p. 3.

^[16] Ibid, p. 6.

^[17] Luxonline, “Margaret Tait”, (2005) accessed 14 May 2014, http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/margaret_tait/

^[18] Ali Smith, “The Margaret Tait Years”, in Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader, ed. Peter Todd and Benjamin Cook (London: LUX, 2004), p. 26.

^[19] Scottish Screen Archive “Full record for ‘COLOUR POEMS’”, reference number 3697, accessed 14 May 2014, http://ssa.nls.uk/film/3697

^[20] Todd and Cook, ed., Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader, p. 161.

^[21] Winn, “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”, p. 14. Joss Winn quotes Tait as saying that this title contains nine short films.

^[22] Scottish Screen Archive “Full record for ‘COLOUR POEMS’”, 3697.

^[23] Peter Todd, “Margaret Tait”, January 2004, in Luxonline, 5, accessed 14 May 2014, http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/margaret_tait/essay(5).html

^[24] Ibid.

^[25] Ibid.

^[26] Julia Kristeva, “Giotto’s Joy”, in Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 210 – 236.

^[27] Ibid, p. 225.

^[28] Todd, “Margaret Tait”, p. 5.

^[29] Rosalind Coward and John Ellis, Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the Subject (Boston and London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1977), pp. 145 – 146.

^[30] Winn, “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”, pp. 24 – 26.

^[31] Ibid. The original source is Mike Leggett, The Autonomous Film-Maker. Margaret Tait: Films and Poems 1951 – 76 (unpublished article, 1979).

^[32] Roger Horrocks, Len Lye: A Biography (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2001), pp. 141.

^[33] Ibid, pp. 52 – 56. For more detail on the development of Lye’s first engagement with film, and his initial “fiddly scratches”, please see the chapter on kinetic theatre.

^[34] Winn, “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”, pp. 10 and 19.

^[35] Todd, “Margaret Tait”, p. 3. Shortly before her death, Tait suggested McLaren’s direct animation Fiddle-de-Dee (1947), in which he painted onto clear film stock, for inclusion in a programme about animation in film. McLaren broke new ground with this work, and largely ignored the lines to the top and bottom of the frames, although there are some animation sequences created frame-by-frame.

^[36] Winn, “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”, p. 9. The original source is Horrocks, Len Lye: A Biography, 2001, p. 145.

^[37] Ibid.

^[38] The beat punctuates sections of 12 frames, which last for half a second.

^[39] The running time of Painted Eightsome is 6 minutes 16 seconds at the customary cinema projection speed of 24 frames per second; this is equivalent to 376 seconds, or 9024 individual ‘picture’ frames.

^[40] The opening lines to Tait’s poem “Seeing’s Believing and Believing’s Seeing”, dated 7 November 1958, reprinted in Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings, ed. Sarah Neely, 2012, p. 109.

^[41] Winn, “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”, p. 7. Winn quotes from Hollander’s unpublished autobiography.

^[42] Ali Smith, 2005, “Margaret Tait: 2. Where I Am Is Here”, Luxonline, accessed 14 May 2014, http://www.luxonline.org.uk/tours/margaret_tait(2).html

^[43] The edge along which the soundtrack runs is termed the ‘S side’ or ‘sound side’ of the filmstrip; the opposite, right hand edge is the ‘P side’, or ‘picture side’.

^[44] Neely, ed., Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings, 2012, pp. 50 – 51. From “Cave Drawing of the Water of the Earth and Sea”, published in Tait’s collection origins and elements, 1959.

^[45] Ibid, p. 113. From “That’s Them off on Their Spring Forays”, published in The Orkney Herald, 13 January 1959.

^[46] Ibid, p. 85. From “The Scale of Things”, published in The Hen and the Bees, 1960.

^[47] Ibid, pp. 49 – 55. From “Cave Drawing of the Water of the Earth and Sea”, published in Tait’s collection origins and elements, 1959.

^[48] Ibid, p. 122. Tait’s unpublished poem “Winter Solstice”.

^[49] Ibid, p. 88. Poem dated March/April 1958, originally published in The Hen and the Bees, 1960.

^[50] Scottish Screen Archive, “Full record for ‘PAINTED EIGHTSOME’”, reference number 4444, accessed 14 May 2014, http://ssa.nls.uk/film/4444

^[51] Julia Kristeva, “Revolution in Poetic Language”, in Julia Kristeva, The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi, trans. Séan Hand and Léon S. Roudiez (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 89 – 136.

^[52] Julia Kristeva, “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection”, trans. Léon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).

^[53] Winn, “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”, p. 22.

^[54] The aniline dyes used by Tait are soluble in water and alcohol. It is possible to clean up the film artwork to some extent, but even gentle rubbing with a dry cloth will remove some of the surface material and density of the dyes.

^[55] Julia Kristeva, “The Impudence of Uttering: The Mother Tongue”, trans. Anne Marsella, in Julia Kristeva, 2010, accessed: 11 July 2014, http://www.kristeva.fr/impudence.html Originally published as “L’impudence d’énoncer: la langue maternelle”, in Julia Kristeva, La Haine et le Pardon (Paris: Fayard, 2005), pp. 393 – 410. Published in English, trans. Patrícia Viera and Michael Marder, in The Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 97 no. 4. (New York, NY: Guildford Press, 2010), pp. 679 – 694.

^[56] Sarah Neely, “Introduction”, in Sarah Neely, ed. Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings, 2012, pp. 17 and 18.

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind: Thinking and Willing. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.

Coward, Rosalind and Ellis, John. Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the Subject. Boston and London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1977.

Horrocks, Roger. Len Lye: A Biography. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2001.

Kristeva, Julia. “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection”, trans. Léon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Kristeva, Julia. “Giotto’s Joy”. In Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, translated by Leon S. Roudiez, pp. 210 – 236. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

Kristeva, Julia. The Kristeva Reader, edited by Toril Moi, translated by Séan Hand and Léon S. Roudiez. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

Kristeva, Julia. “The Impudence of Uttering: The Mother Tongue”, translated by Anne Marsella, 2010. In Julia Kristeva, 2014. Accessed: 11 July 2014. http://www.kristeva.fr/impudence.html

Leggett, Mike. The Autonomous Film-Maker. Margaret Tait: Films and Poems 1951 – 76. Unpublished article, 1979. Luxonline, 2005.

“Margaret Tait”. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/margaret_tait/index.html

Neely, Sarah and Riach, Alan. “Demons in the Machine: Experimental Film, Poetry and Modernism in Twentieth Century Scotland”. In Scottish Cinema Now, edited by Jonathan Murray, Fidelma Farley and Rod Stoneman, pp. 1 – 19. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Neely, Sarah, ed. Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2012.

Nelson, Robin. “Modes of Practice-as-Research Knowledge and Their Place in the Academy”. In Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen, edited by Ludivine Allegue, Simon Jones, Baz Kershaw and Angela Piccini, pp. 112 – 130. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Nelson, Robin, ed. Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.Robbins, Ruth. Literary Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Scottish Screen Archive. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://ssa.nls.uk/

Smith, Ali, “The Margaret Tait Years”, in Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader, edited by Peter Todd and Benjamin Cook, pp. 7 – 27. London: LUX, 2004.

Smith, Ali. “Margaret Tait”. In Luxonline, 2005. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://www.luxonline.org.uk/tours/margaret_tait(1).html

Smith, Ali. “Foreword”. In Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories and Writings, edited by Sarah Neely, pp. xiii – xiv. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2012.

Todd, Peter and Cook, Benjamin, ed. Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader. London: LUX, 2004.

Winn, Joss. “Preserving the Hand-Painted Films of Margaret Tait”. MA diss., University of East Anglia, 2002. In Joss Winn, 2009. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://tait.josswinn.org/tag/london/

Filmography

8Some. 1970. Margaret Tait. Ancona Films. Scottish Screen Archive. Reference number 4444A. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://ssa.nls.uk/film/4444A

A Colour Box. 1935. Len Lye. GPO Film Unit.

Calypso. 1955. Margaret Tait. Scottish Screen Archive. Reference number 6226. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://ssa.nls.uk/film/6226

Colour Poems. 1974. Margaret Tait. Ancona Films. Scottish Screen Archive. Reference number 3697. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://ssa.nls.uk/film/3697 John MacFadyen. 1970. Margaret Tait. Ancona Films. Scottish Screen Archive. Reference number 3697. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://ssa.nls.uk/film/4445

Painted Eightsome. 1970. Margaret Tait. Ancona Films. Scottish Screen Archive. Reference number 4444. Accessed 14 May 2014. http://ssa.nls.uk/film/4444