The Still/Moving Field: An Introduction
Eivind Røssaak
This collection of essays seeks to introduce an affirmative critique of and fasci-
nation for the different uses of stillness and motion in a wide variety of expres-
sions–pre-cinematic, cinematic, post-cinematic and new media. The debate on
stillness and motion is as old as art history, but within cinema studies, it became
the subject of widespread debate during thes. At its root, it was informed
by apparatus theory and the idea of negating movement through enlighten-
ment. Its axiom was that cinematic movement is an illusion, that movement is
an“ideological effect of the cinematic apparatus.”Any artistic deconstruction
of motion through ruptures or the revelation of a series of stills was rapidly
integrated into this critical program. The still image was the hidden or even
repressed basis behind the industrial illusion of cinematic motion.
Today, we are experiencing a broad range of cinematic turns within the art
scene as well as a technological revolution through the use of computer-gener-
ated imagery, which means that the entire critical program, based as it was on
the materiality of celluloid, has lost some of its initial urgency.The use of the
interplay between stillness and motion must be recontextualized. Fresh con-
cepts are needed to see these works in a broader, more complex media aesthetic
environment. We want to investigate the possibility of a thicker description,
which allows contributors to discover and open up the field through close ana-
lysis of specific works and media practices. Contemporary media rely on a com-
plex connection between the forces and intensities of time and speed relations,
which affect the body of the spectator or user. The body is not just the carrier of
a personal history, but a storage site and an intensified receptive surface in a
media-saturated society. Thus, the body belongs to a history of media and med-
iations. A crucial part of this embodied media history involves the encounters
with audiovisual material such as in Tobias Rehberger’s workOn Otto,dis-
cussed in Ina Blom’s article. Mediations and bodies participate in a larger collec-
tive and technical environment, which instantiates and re-imagines the history
of media and affects.