tion;) that cinema and photography cannot be, in the last instance, opposed, as
they typically have been, for the simple and precise reason that both comprise
technical artifactualizationsof the very same temporal phenomenon, of the very same
time. Bearing in mind these two points will help us understand Hollis Framp-
ton’s very strange, and very prodigious conception of the“infinite film”–and to
understand it not simply in its initial formulation, but as it evolves during the
final decade of his art practice and as it continues to evolve in relation to the
changes ushered in by new media technologies.
Frampton introduces the infinite film as the cornerstone of what he calls the
metahistory of film, in the famous article that bears this phrase in its title. In
order to sidestep the supposedly“vexed question”of the relationship between
cinema and still photography and to elude the received wisdom that“cinema
somehow‘accelerates’still photographs into motion”, Frampton shifts gears en-
tirely, offering a metahistory of cinema that suspends the empirical record ac-
cording to which“photography predates the photographic cinema”. Hence the
conception of the“infinite cinema”:
A polymorphous camera has always turned, and will turn forever, its lens focussed
upon all the appearances of the world. Before the invention of still photography, the
frames of the infinite cinema were blank, black leader; then a few images began to
appear upon the endless ribbon of film. Since the birth of the photographic cinema,
all the frames are filled with images.On this metahistorical account, far from being the source of cinema, its“origin-
ary instance”,photography comprises a particular phase in the (logical) evo-
lution of cinema: the phase in which cinema’s leader becomes filled with
images. Following this premise, the relation between photography and cinema
is entirely liberated of all the baggage associated with any historical account.
We no longer need to ask how cinema emerged from photography or entertain
the notion that cinema is just the animation of still images–something that one
day simply happened to befall photography: “History”, notes Frampton,
“views the marriage of cinema and the photograph as one of convenience; me-
tahistory must look upon it as one of necessity.”Even more importantly, we
become free to reconceptualize the relationship of still to moving image accord-
ing to a logic of inclusion or immanence rather than one of media specificity:
“There is nothing in the structural logic of the cinema film strip that precludes
sequestering any single image. A still photograph is simply an isolated frame
taken out of the infinite cinema.”
Rethinking the correlation of still and moving images following this logic of
inclusion allows us to introject the temporal heterogeneity of photography into
the mechanized temporal flux of cinema. Following such an introjection, the
traditional picture of cinema as the simple animation of still images becomes
60 Mark B.N. Hansen