cinemedia

Issue #5.5: All the Colors of the Affect 

This issue is the culmination of video essays presented by a panel, titled All the Colors of the Affect: The Audiovisual in (Neo-)Giallo, which consisted of Ashkan Forouhi, Aaron Kerner, Birdy Hong, and David Mai (chaired by David Mai) at the 2022 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference. The panel explored (neo-)giallo aesthetics and its influence in transnational cinemas and the affective experience. The panelists looked at audiovisual elements found in giallo films, and the genre’s “vivid expressionistic colour schemes, psychedelic soundtracks, and an approach to violence that is deeply visceral and tactile,” as Lindsay Hallam states. Panelists explored genres and films outside of giallo, but that clearly take inspiration from giallo’s aesthetic treatment of mise-en-scène, sound design, and editing. Panelists considered the audiovisual strategies that elicit an affective experience or stimulate the sensorial. From characteristic close-ups (especially of eyes), to the movement of cameras that obscure and reveal bodies, to the flow of editing and movement in bodies, such stylistic strategies are considered central to the giallo’s ability to communicate to the viewing body. As the language track is an auditory element of the film, this too begged for a closer examination by comparing the original giallo soundtracks to the English dubs to reveal the differences in the affective experiences through an auditory perspective. How has giallo played in cinematic cultures—from its influence on American slasher films, to its illicit circulation in Taiwan, to its re-emergence in European “arthouse” cinema? In what ways has the genealogy of giallo films evolved, whereby giallo influenced other genres and filmmakers, and by what means has giallo made a mark on contemporary filmmaking cultures that emphasize aesthetics and affect?

Issue #5: Connections, Proximities, Mediations

Issue #3: Memory in a Digital Age

We seek submissions of critical essays, films, and other/new media forms that address the issue of memory and its permutations in a digital age. Rather than a traditional attempt to define the parameters of the topic, we offer the following more open-ended description and invite your related submissions:

Memory can involve veiling or unveiling.
Where what is out of context creates other contexts,
turning words and images over
until they take on new roles.
What’s new are the spaces between things
newly brought together—
It is also the oldest thing there is.
Let us play among the ruins and stroll
along the wandering paths.
Remapping the past.
It speaks, emotes, evokes.
Explore the fragments and make more of them,
make them something,
break them down to nothing.
I store my memory within and without,
in stories and images, through sounds and smells
and the taste of cigarettes.
Meet with spirits in the fog
and ghosts in the shadows,
Hazy, brief, and haunting.

Potential Topics

· Indices of memory (e.g., records, documentation)
· Storing memory and redundancy with digital memory
· Memory deletion and digital censorship
· Memory and temporality (e.g., time travel)
· Internet as a collective memory (e.g., Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Netflix, Hulu, Wikipedia)
· Traumatic memory (e.g., Holocaust, 9/11)
· The Persistence of Memory in a digital age
· Fragmented memory, random access, broken memory
· Cultural memory (e.g., tradition, ritual, and national identity)
· Memory and the perception of history; alternative history (e.g., teleological and topological history)
· Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and technological singularity
· Technological memory, false memory, and memory transfer (e.g., cyberbrain)
· Commodification of memory (e.g., targeted advertisements, browsing history, digital footprint)
· Spatial memory (e.g., memory palace, digital spaces)
· Tactile memory, sensate and bodily memory
· Mnemotechnics and cinema
· Video games and memory (e.g., save points, save files)
· Media archeology

Issue #2: Live!

In an age of ubiquitous media and digitization, what becomes of the concept of ‘liveness’? Does the term lose relevance as ever greater aspects of ‘real life’ come to be experienced only via some form of mediation or simulation? As the lines between virtual and reality become blurred, so does the concept of liveness. Individuals can now live tweet, live stream, and live video from nearly anywhere in the world. But what are the cultural, bodily, and historical implications of this new age of “live” experiences through the use of digital technology? Just as “live” only became a useful idea after the invention of recording media (prior, every event was necessarily live), we now find it expedient to refer to experiences that occur “in real life” or “in real time” in order to distinguish them from our increasingly common involvement in digital media technologies.

What does ‘live’ mean today—from “live-casting” to “real-time media” to systems that simulate the choices and even the creativity of ‘living’ beings. Topics may include:

• ‘Live’ sampling and recording, from musical performance to game-playing
• ‘Live’ bots (twitter bots, porn bots, etc.) and forms of Artificial Intelligence
• Examinations of time-based events and art practice
• ‘Live’ aesthetics and simulations of liveness (cinema verite, documentary footage, reality shows, slow cinema, first person shooters, social media interfaces)
• Spectatorship as ‘live’ engagement with media text
• Theories or media that address temporality or the ephemeral
• Historicity and real-time media
• Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter) and ‘Live’ communication technologies (FaceTime, Skype, text messaging)
• The impact of ‘live’ technologies on social issues
• Identity construction via ‘live’ technologies
• VR platforms and their cultural use

Issue #1: Cinema of Distraction

In his 1926 essay “Cult of Distraction,” Siegfried Kracauer drew attention to the recently constructed grand movie theaters of Berlin and other cities, calling them “palaces of distraction” and “shrines to the cultivation of pleasure.” In such palaces, he wrote—in terms that cannot help but remind of us of even broader role of distraction in the contemporary world—“the stimulations of the senses succeed each other with such rapidity that there is no room left for even the slightest contemplation to squeeze in between them.”

Yet, Kracauer also suggested that a more radical form of distraction, which would “expose” the cultural and political underpinnings of societal distraction, “instead of masking it,” might produce more positive effects. His suggestion was taken up by Walter Benjamin, who would argue that the rise of “distraction” had been brought about by the increased ability to reproduce and disseminate music, images, and moving images via technological reproducibility.

Today, of course, distraction seems to have intensified with the growth of digital technologies of reproduction, to the extent that the dispersion of images, sounds, and data now seems ubiquitous, at least in highly technological societies.

Yet, while distraction is generally seen today as negative, as a kind of loss or deficit of attention and focus, our desire for distraction—particularly in relation to films, videos and other media—seems only to increase. How, then, should we view and understand distraction today? Is distraction simply a harmless diversion, a social disorder, or on the other hand, does distraction offer new perspectives and approaches for living? Does distraction have a potential for social and political change or is it merely a tool for corporate profits while pacifying the public?