Conférence Dispositifs : Ute Holl (Université de Bâle)

Résumé de la conférence : 

The aesthetics of cinema can be traced back to the arts of attraction, entertainment and the fun fair, but also to the sobriety of experimental laboratories of the 19th century. There, human senses and sensoria were tested and that also meant at the same time: trained. Measuring instruments, as devised by Étienne-Jules Marey for instance, or by Hermann von Helmholtz, eventually developed into interfaces which connected human vision and hearing with technical devices. These allowed them to perceive their environment beyond the boundaries of human vision and hearing. What we now call media is actually a process of adaptation to these interfaces. Back in the new USSR, a neurologist, Vladimir von Bekhterev, devised a notion of feed-back which connected individuals and masses to technical media operations. One of his students continued to turn this into the basis for a theory and practice of social understanding with the help of the cinematic apperatus: Dziga Vertov. Ramifications of these experiments travelled across the Atlantic to form what was later to develop into the New American Cinema. The presentation will trace the genealogy of cinematic form from the nineteenth century laboratories to experimental cinema of the 20th, using cinematic examples of Dziga Vertov, Maya Deren and Jean Rouch to develop the notion of cinema as feed-back apparatus.

Toute personne intéressée est la bienvenue.