Always Only Once: Recovering a History of Ephemeral Cinema

Gregory Zinman, New York University

In The Virtual Life of Cinema, David Rodowick describes how film’s indeterminate aesthetic standing results in it being “an uncertain object” subject to continuously shifting debates regarding the nature of what might constitute a film medium. Recent theoretical challenges to the idea of medium specificity offered by Rodowick, Noel Carroll, and Jonathan Walley have helped to open up opportunities to find new connections between artworks and films previously thought to be wholly distinct.

In this paper, therefore, I hope to trace affinities between various projection and screen practices that are not based in mechanical reproduction, but rather utilize various handmade or hand-manipulated media to perform unique and unrepeatable cinematic events. Examples of such practices include Thomas Wilfred’s color instruments, Moholy-Nagy’s light experiments at the Bauhaus, Nicholas Schöffer’s various kinetic sculptures, the Joshua Light Show’s multimedia performances, Stephen Beck’s video synthesizers, and Bruce McClure’s multi-projector performances. These seemingly divergent cinematic practices find common ground in a craft-based approach to art, a shared interest in negotiating the status of the material nature of film, and often, a shared goal in pushing the boundaries of cinematic perception.

A mining of the procedural and conceptual approaches in these various strains of craft-based filmmaking will allow for the recovery of a suppressed history of the cinematic avant-garde—one that takes stock of diverging material concerns while acknowledging common effects.