DOI issue:
Zwrot kinematograficzny w praktyce i teorii sztuki / The Cinematic Turn in Art Practice and Theory
DOI article:Lipiński, Filip: Cinematic art (history) and Mieke Bal's thinking in film
Citation link:https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/artium_quaestiones2020/0030
24 Filip Lipiński
ready to be molded into the form of an emotion or action. It can also take the
shape of an image, as a result of a necessarily failed attempt to grasp affect.
Moreover, paradoxically, for Deleuze, affect rather than intellect is the most
effective trigger of thinking.69 If so, thinking in film would also be propelled by
the acknowledged affective power of (moving) images - as opposed to "solid,"
"fixed" knowledge deduced from them. This is another dimension of what
was already stated above: images move us while perceived, because percep-
tion as an extension or extensity (intensity directed externally) of the human
body and mind, directed towards its object, is infused with memories (affect
and memory, as proposed by Bergson, are virtual) which are "virtualities on
the move" or "in the act." In consequence, their agency becomes ours: they
make us act, as if from within,- the affective potential becomes actualized as
emotions, or motions.70 This is how Bal takes us to her final step in describ-
ing the potential of "thinking in film:" the performative, and - ultimately, the
political.
Before moving on to that, I wish to elaborate on Bal's discussion of ex-
hibitions in cinematic terms. The gallery space, with artworks and a mov-
ing spectator, is potentially a sphere where all the aforementioned aspects of
movement have a chance to become active. In her 2008 text "Exhibition as
Film," Bal proposes that film is not so much a model (throughout here career
she steers clear of imposing any formulas) but a conceptual frame and the
most productive metaphor for her experience of a 2003 show called Partners
curated by Ydessa Hendeles and organized at Kunst der Haus in Munich. Her
analysis is "performed" or, let us say, "re-acted" by an engaged subject/ scholar/
art critic, who acknowledges her bodily and affective involvement in the con-
frontation with the works on display. Thinking actually starts with the move-
ment of the body and hence, of the images, too: through juxtapositions, mon-
tage, interrelations, changes of perspective etc. These, in turn, may affectively
move the spectator. Photography, as the dominant medium in that exhibition,
can function as a kind of a "storyboard or visual scenario for a cinematic vi-
sion of art presentation."71 The exhibition under discussion by no means con-
69 Ibidem, p. 22.
70 Affect is another dimension which has long been neglected by art history As Bal
and Norman Bryson noted quite a long time ago, "What art historians are bound to exam-
ine, whether they like it or not, is the work as effect and affect, not only as a neatly remote
product of an age long gone." M. Bal, N. Bryson, "Art History and Semiotics," Art Bulletin
1991, 73(2), p. 175.
71 M. Bal." Exhibition as Film," in: (Re) visualizing national history: museums and na-
tional identities in Europe in the new millennium, ed. R. Rostov, Toronto 2008, p. 16.
ready to be molded into the form of an emotion or action. It can also take the
shape of an image, as a result of a necessarily failed attempt to grasp affect.
Moreover, paradoxically, for Deleuze, affect rather than intellect is the most
effective trigger of thinking.69 If so, thinking in film would also be propelled by
the acknowledged affective power of (moving) images - as opposed to "solid,"
"fixed" knowledge deduced from them. This is another dimension of what
was already stated above: images move us while perceived, because percep-
tion as an extension or extensity (intensity directed externally) of the human
body and mind, directed towards its object, is infused with memories (affect
and memory, as proposed by Bergson, are virtual) which are "virtualities on
the move" or "in the act." In consequence, their agency becomes ours: they
make us act, as if from within,- the affective potential becomes actualized as
emotions, or motions.70 This is how Bal takes us to her final step in describ-
ing the potential of "thinking in film:" the performative, and - ultimately, the
political.
Before moving on to that, I wish to elaborate on Bal's discussion of ex-
hibitions in cinematic terms. The gallery space, with artworks and a mov-
ing spectator, is potentially a sphere where all the aforementioned aspects of
movement have a chance to become active. In her 2008 text "Exhibition as
Film," Bal proposes that film is not so much a model (throughout here career
she steers clear of imposing any formulas) but a conceptual frame and the
most productive metaphor for her experience of a 2003 show called Partners
curated by Ydessa Hendeles and organized at Kunst der Haus in Munich. Her
analysis is "performed" or, let us say, "re-acted" by an engaged subject/ scholar/
art critic, who acknowledges her bodily and affective involvement in the con-
frontation with the works on display. Thinking actually starts with the move-
ment of the body and hence, of the images, too: through juxtapositions, mon-
tage, interrelations, changes of perspective etc. These, in turn, may affectively
move the spectator. Photography, as the dominant medium in that exhibition,
can function as a kind of a "storyboard or visual scenario for a cinematic vi-
sion of art presentation."71 The exhibition under discussion by no means con-
69 Ibidem, p. 22.
70 Affect is another dimension which has long been neglected by art history As Bal
and Norman Bryson noted quite a long time ago, "What art historians are bound to exam-
ine, whether they like it or not, is the work as effect and affect, not only as a neatly remote
product of an age long gone." M. Bal, N. Bryson, "Art History and Semiotics," Art Bulletin
1991, 73(2), p. 175.
71 M. Bal." Exhibition as Film," in: (Re) visualizing national history: museums and na-
tional identities in Europe in the new millennium, ed. R. Rostov, Toronto 2008, p. 16.