Janet Harbord and Rachel Moore (Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London)
Film in our Midst: City as Cinematic Archive
This paper explores the ways in which properties of the cinematic have been relocated and embedded in the city to become part of its architectural fabric. Arguing that we need to think of cinema as a medium undergoing ‘reconstruction’, our interest here is in the cinematic as a feature of the environment, affecting how we move through and experience landscape, both urban and rural.
Screens have a now ubiquitous presence in everyday life, with a particular density in cities. In this paper we explore the work of two artist-filmmakers who have responded to this by resituating film within the landscape, intervening in our experience of time and space. The work of Idris Khan and Patrick Keiller bring the archive of film into the space of the city; through their prism, it is not simply that we move to the archive to find images of the city, but on the contrary, we may discover film as an archive within the city. Khan has created the first permanent installation of film into a London pavement: three screens embedded in a pathway display a range of archival postal films re-edited by the artist. Keiller has situated historical films within rural and urban landscapes. In this presentation, we explore how a relocated ‘cinema’ can affect our spatial practice in the city, as we walk past or across, or gather around screens. Simultaneously, these screens foreground the historically eclectic nature of the urban, and suggest that the city is itself an archive of many textual materials.
This research is part of a larger Leverhulme-funded project dedicated to tracking the screen in three cities: London, Shanghai and Cairo.
Screens have a now ubiquitous presence in everyday life, with a particular density in cities. In this paper we explore the work of two artist-filmmakers who have responded to this by resituating film within the landscape, intervening in our experience of time and space. The work of Idris Khan and Patrick Keiller bring the archive of film into the space of the city; through their prism, it is not simply that we move to the archive to find images of the city, but on the contrary, we may discover film as an archive within the city. Khan has created the first permanent installation of film into a London pavement: three screens embedded in a pathway display a range of archival postal films re-edited by the artist. Keiller has situated historical films within rural and urban landscapes. In this presentation, we explore how a relocated ‘cinema’ can affect our spatial practice in the city, as we walk past or across, or gather around screens. Simultaneously, these screens foreground the historically eclectic nature of the urban, and suggest that the city is itself an archive of many textual materials.
This research is part of a larger Leverhulme-funded project dedicated to tracking the screen in three cities: London, Shanghai and Cairo.
