Expanded Cinema

“The communications of humanity obviously are trending towards that future point at which virtually all information will be spontaneously available and copyable at the individual level: beyond that, a vast transformation must occur” (*)

-Gene Youngblood in Expanded Cinema, 1970

 

 O termo foi criado na década de sessenta e pretendia identificar a prática experimental de filmagem e video que explorava novas formas de observar cinema, transformando a história do cinema e o local de ver cinema, num local de “experiência cinematográfica” heterogénea, performativa e não objectiva/abstracta. 

 Os trabalhos de Expanded Cinema pretendem, também, envolver o espectador questionando-o em relação á ligação entre o tempo e espaço, reformulando e  estimulando o espaço e a narrativa do cinema, assim como, de outros contextos media.

Trata-se, assim, de uma alternativa e desafiadora forma de fazer cinema, de prática de artes visuais e de comunicação cultural.

VanDerBeek e o seu manifesto

Em Culture: Intercom, VanDerBeek pretende criar uma linguagem não-verbal universal. Esta “picture language” seria o meio de comunicação, através do qual, seria criada uma base de dados, à qual todos os homens poderiam aceder. Para isso, o artista criou um espaço para o efeito, ao qual deu o nome de “Movie-Drome”. 

O “Movie-Drome” é o foco do manifesto, no qual, ele antecipa a distribuição global dos teatros e bibliotecas de imagens que iriam ligar várias audiências locais. 

Consistia numa estrutura pré-fabricada abobadada, no qual, Stan Vanderbeek pretendia explorar a interacção entre a/o exibição/performance/artista e o espectador. Neste estúdio seriam apresentadas múltiplas projecções de múltiplos ecrãs que se interceptavam ou sobrepunham resultando num gigantesco mural e que envolveria dimensionalmente o espectador.

Stan VanDerBeek [1927 - 1984]

Over the past ten years, I have been working with a variety of media starting with painting and graphics, polarized light, constructions (heatpaintings, collages, etc.) developing an interest in motion pictures in 1957. I began work in animation, painting, stroke by stroke, animation: frame by frame, computers, on and off, and bit by bit, the sequence is inevitable; motion pictures as graphics in motion. Computers came to my attetion in 1965 with some of the graphic possibilities. I looked on the computer as a challenge. I consider the computer-logic systems and process of imagemaking; a fast, high speed car, that is difficult to learn how to drive, and like fast turns, is somewhat dangerous and unpredictable, however, in time-speed-memory-ideas and forms, it is breathtaking. I expect driving a computer down the road of art and sensibilities, will lead to flying: i.e. analog systems, and that will be very lovely and full of surprises that defy gravity and expected images, my own perspective as an artist and my instincts tell me that memory is the matrix of the human condition and computers are the pertinent extension of the real-time-mind of man, hooray for art and life. 

-Stan VanDerBeek, March 22, 1969 

Obra/texto base

It is imperative that we [the world’s artists] invent a new world language, that we invent a non-verbal international picture-language. I propose the following:

* The establishement of audio-visual research centers, preferably on an international scale. Thes centers to explore the existing audio-visual hardware. The development of new image-making devices (the storage and transfer of image materials, motion pictures, television, computers, videotape, etc.)

* The immediate research and development of image-events and performances in the Movie-Drom. I shall call these prototype presentations:Movie Murals, Ethos-Cinema, Newsreel of Dreams, Feedback, Image Libraries.

* When I talk of the movie-dromes as image libraries, it is understood that such life-theatres would use some of the coming techniques...and thus be real communication and storage centers, that is, by satellite, each dome could receive its image from a world wide library source, store them and program a feedback presentation to the local community that lived near the center, this newsreel feedback, could authentically review the total world image ‹reality› in an hour-long show.

* Intra-communitronics, or dialogues with other centers would be likely, and instand reference material via transmission television and telephone would be called for and received at 186,000 m.p.s., from anywhere in the world. Thus I call this presentation, a newsreel of ideas, of dreams, a movie-mural. An image library, a culture de-compression chamber, a culture inter-com.

Excerpt from Stan VanDerBeek, «Culture Intercom, A Proposal and Manifesto», Film Culture 40, 1966, pp. 15–18, reprinted in Gregory Battcock, The New American Cinema. A Critical Anthology, New York, 1967, pp. 173–179, quoted by Jürgen Claus in Leonardo, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2003, p 229