Baers tiergarten 0312 spreads MS

2015

Antonioni’s Blow-Up, released in late 1966, is usually taken, on the one hand, to represent (celebratingly and scandalously) the youth culture of Swinging London and, on the other, the problems of (tenuous) relation between reality and its representation (the main protagonist thinks he discovers a murder by analysing photographs he has taken). Although most critics have attempted to link these two levels by means of some existential metaphor (most often: the main protagonist who represents the image-crazed youth of Swinging London encounters its biggest taboo, death, which is unrepresentable to boot), the paper proposes a more literal and political interpretation arguing that the abstraction of blurry grain of silver halide into which the image of the corpse finally dissolves in a series of photographic blow-ups is a way of representing something which also cannot have a proper image: the all-pervasive but no longer perceptible lowkey everyday violence which constitutes the propelli...

s a philosophical thriller, Blow-up (1966, UK), Michelangelo Antonioni's first foray into filmmaking outside Italy, marks a milestone in the evolution of the modern conspiracy film as it would emerge in the 1970s, by simultaneously anticipating and problematising the latter avant la lettre. [ii] Straddling both mainstream and art-house cinema in an elliptical story set in the heyday of fashionable and hedonist Swinging London, Antonioni employs what are by now stereotypical elements of the mystery and thriller genres, including the figure of the investigative protagonist, only to have their trajectories fizzle out, thereby leaving the spectator with permanent gaps of knowledge and transforming suspense into allegory.

From early cinematic depictions of quotidian urban life and “cinematic exploration of city space” like Charles Sheeler’s 'Manhatta' (1921) and Dziga Vertov’s 'Man with a movie camera' (1929) to dystopic masterpieces such as Ridley Scott’s 'Blade Runner' (1982) or Michael Radford’s '1984' (1984) the urban experience has inspired a large number of cinematic narrations through which the built environment – our cities – has been celebrated and social topics problematized. This paper attempts to focus on and analyse genuine urban films under a specific scope; randomness as the defining narrative element and urban deviation as the eventual spatial and cinematic practice. By this I am referring to films where the protagonists engage into a series of chance events which derive from the complexity and multiplicity of architectural/spatial and social situations encountered in the city – setting. These situations act as stimulis and therefore define the protagonists’ engagement with the urban milieu as well as the movie’s development. Which sociological and spatial aspects of New York and Los Angeles are prompted through movies like Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Schumacher’s 'Falling Down' (1993)? What is the relation between the Baudelairean flâneur and Antonioni’s 'Al di lá delle nuvole' (1995)? And how Tati’s 'Playtime' (1967) perceives and problematizes on the perplexing nature of post-modern architecture and the consequent alienation? This document is the full version of the paper presented for the annual meeting of the working group "Sociology of Arts" (Sites of Interest conference) that was held in Berlin, 11-13/5/2017

2018

This thesis aims to trace Central Park's filmic structure on two accounts: (A) The park-as the most filmed location in the world-consists of specific spatial and landscape configurations-of solids and voids-which enable it to bring surprise through a fluid intertwined system of framed views. In directing the eye by what it can't see, the park inherently becomes resistible to definition. An explanation of the park's resisting features shows how the park works as not only an opening in the city, but also as a lens-an optical quality that allows the park to produce dynamic rather than static boundary conditions. (B) Furthermore, this thesis aims to delineate not only the spatio-cinematic qualities of Central Park, but also how filmmakers use them to turn Central Park into a spatial structure for the movies' form and development. Therefore, this research aims to propose a filmic-driven methodology of exploring these views through an analysis of movies rather than through conventional architectural vocabulary. This thesis uses an application of Lacanian psychoanalysis to film and media in exploring the structure of the park's ocular logic deployed in films. Structure describes the specific relationships between interiority and exteriority, as well as the diagrammatic functions of psyche that are triggered by void-ness, movement and appearance. Discussing films such as Portrait of Jennie, Marathon Man, Manhattan and Wall Street, this thesis provides explanation of filmic techniques and dissection of the films' structure and form. It describes not only relationships between characters, space and the storyline, but also the structural relations that make the park an inseparable part of the films' cinematic space.

Drawing on recent interdisciplinary critical approaches to landscape in the field of performance studies, and adopting phenomenological methods of sensory analysis, this paper explores the cityscapes expressed in three fictional works that share a Symbolist/post-Symbolist aesthetic: in the novel Bruges-la-morte (1892) by Belgian Georges Rodenbach, in the novel A Caverna (2000) by Portuguese José Saramago, and in the film Inland Empire (2006) by North-American David Lynch. Instead of examining the three fictional cityscapes in terms of the usual modernist/post-modernist, industrial/post-industrial oppositional categories, this presentation adopts a micropolitical and ecophilosophical perspective—in the light of concepts by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Jacques Rancière—to demonstrate that there are more aesthetic/political continuities than discontinuities among the three urban scenarios. All three urban fictions are striking examples of how physical space—as a medium of cultural and symbolic production—not only creates and sustains social identity, but also fosters micropolitical imaginaries. The co-existence of the three fictional cityscapes in existing cities suggests a large number of fragmentary possible urban worlds, as well as creative gaps in our understanding of contemporary city space.

2016

Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Pour communiquer avec les responsables d'Érudit:

The subject of the city has long been central in studies and writings from different fields; architecture, urban and film studies, literature and photography. This is an exploratory paper, one that cuts across several disciplines with the intent of providing a wider knowledge on the cinematic of the city and its reproduction in filmic narratives. This paper explores not the complex relationship between film and place, but rather the ways in which the city has been represented through the ‘moving image’ both dramatised and envisioned, allowing us, as audience, to step into environments we have been before and/or will never directly experience. City space is both a filmic construction and an architectural construction. Filmic narratives of the city can also become an architectural practice: an art form of the city’s space. They are agents for building our views of the city, influencing the ways we live and perceive the city, and filmic representations will growingly be channelled into the city’s image. More than being a testament of the city’s history, could film be an instrument for testing and applying new perspectives to the city’s physical production? This paper suggests that filmic narratives are a major source for understanding the city and comprehending its processes of production. They can also be potential tools for recreating environments and ‘virtually’ explore the effects of the built environment on society and the urban whole. Both dramatised and envisioned cities are imagery constructs that allow reflecting about the conditions of urban life.

The City and the Moving Image

Street Signs, 2010