VES 271.

Proseminar in Film & Visual Studies: Theory

Instructor: Professor David Rodowick

Office hours: Main Office, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Wednesdays and Thursdays 2-3 pm, or by appointment
Email: rodowick@fas.harvard.edu

Course website: http://isites.harvard.edu/k87329

Meeting times: Mondays 1-3 pm in CCVA 402

Course description

Since the 1990s advanced research in Film Studies has become the foundation for a broader concern
with contemporary visual culture. The original vision for the Carpenter Center for the Visual Artswhich
in the 1960s already recognized in the visual and performing arts the inter-relatedness of film, video,
mixed media, design, architecture, performance and installation arthas proven to be prescient. The
past twenty years have witnessed a particular and compelling institutional and intellectual convergence
between the history and philosophy of art and the cultural study of space on one hand, and film history
and theory on the other. This convergence is motivated by an idea of visual culture that embodies three
interlocking perspectives: one object-based (visual media and their interrelationships), one institutional
(the emergence of visual studies as an international, cross-disciplinary approach to research), and one
theoretical, the philosophical interrogation of the social nature of vision and visuality, especially through
the moving image. Art history and aesthetics are drawing inspiration from the renewed currency of the
visual in the present era, while recognizing both the power and complexity of cinematic and electronic
imaging. At the same time, film studies, art history, the history of science, and architectural theory have
begun a sophisticated dialogue concerning what the visual means, and how it means, for contemporary
society.

Within this context, we will examine current debates on the place of the moving image in contemporary
visual culture and art practice with respect to concepts of space, time, movement, and affect. The focus
of our discussions will be three primary issues: 1) the importance and placement of film studies with
respect to visual/cultural studies; 2) the decentering of film with respect to virtual images and screens
(electronic and digital); and 3) the place of the moving image in contemporary art.

This course is required of all graduate students in Film and Visual Studies, as well as students who wish
to declare a secondary graduate field in Film and Visual Studies; it is a complement to VES 270, the
Proseminar in Film & Visual Studies: History, which is also required. The two Proseminars may be taken
in any order.

Additional note. A proseminar is not an introductory course, even at a graduate level, and this course is
not meant to be an introduction to film theory. If you are looking for a survey of film theory or an
introduction to film theory, please speak to the Director of Graduate Studies about appropriate
alternatives.

Enrollment and registration

This course is restricted to graduate students only. There are no prerequisites. Preference will be given,
first, to graduate students in Film and Visual Studies and, second, to graduate students in the graduate
secondary field in Film and Visual Studies. Advanced undergraduates may petition for a place in the
seminar.
VES 271 2

Cross-registration. Students from other Harvard schools, M.I.T., or Tufts must cross-register through the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences (not the Graduate School of Design).

Student responsibilities

Seminar participation and discussion. Your first and most important responsibility is to keep up with
assigned readings and screenings and to think about them seriously. Each student will also be
responsible for organizing weekly discussion as part of a small group. This does not mean a formal
presentation. Rather, in each seminar there will be a group of students who will together prepare a set of
questions and topics around the weekly readings and films that they wish to discuss with the class. Each
group may also want to select clips from relevant films or videos as platforms for discussion.

Assessed work. Each student in the class will be responsible for three kinds of projects.

1. Critical book review. In the first class meeting an expanded bibliography on film and visual
studies will be circulated to the class. Each student will choose a different book from the list and
write a 3-4000 word review of publishable quality. This review will be published on the course
web site.

2. Critical review of an art work, exhibition, or cultural event. Each student will also write a 3-4000
word review and/or analysis of an art work or event current in the Boston area. This could be
anything from a film to a performance review, or a current exhibition or gallery show, a lecture, or
even the analysis of a single work of art on view in the Cambridge/Boston area. These reviews
will also be published on the course web site.

3. Research prospectus or conference paper with bibliography. During the course of the semester,
each student will also develop either a project for future research or a twenty minute conference
paper. (Proposals for fellowships or grants are also possible.) This project will consist of a 3-
4000 word prospectus plus a complete bibliography conforming to the Modern Language
Association stylesheet, or similar stylesheet appropriate to the students discipline.

All written work should be submitted electronically via email. File names should take the following form:
LastnameDescription.doc; for example, SmithBhabhaReview.doc. All written work should conform to
MLA Style Manual, or other professional guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style, depending on the
students discipline. This requirement is important, as one of the main points of these critical exercises is
to learn how to prepare articles for publication. Please note: late work will receive no editorial comments.
In addition, I will not accept incompletes except in cases of family or medical emergency.

Screenings. VHS and/or DVD copies of recommended videos are available for individual viewing at the
th
Film Study Library on the 4 floor of Sever Hall.

Required texts (available at the Harvard Co-op or on reserve at Lamont)

Mulvey, Laura. Death 24x a Second.

D. N. Rodowick. The Virtual Life of Film.

Recommended text (available at the Harvard Co-op or on reserve at Lamont)

MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 3rd ed.

In addition, a number of required articles are available online from the course web site. These texts are in
the Adobe Acrobat PDF file format. You may obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader for free at:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html. Please note that the Required Readings folder
is protected. In the first three weeks of class, any student with a Harvard id and net access should be
able to download the articles. After the third week of classes, only students registered for the class will
have access to the Required Readings folder.
VES 271 3

Many of the source books for the required readings may be found used online, often very cheaply. You
are strongly encouraged to acquire these books. For a complete list, see the course bibliography after
the Weekly Topics section.

Weekly Topics and Readings

Film will not have a second century . . .
Chris Marker

Week 1 (September 10). Introduction to the seminar

CCVA opening: circa 1963 and Jesse Green/Michael Wang, Thursday, September 13, 5.30-6.30 pm
________________________________________________________________________________

Week 2 (September 17). The virtual life of film . . . and film study

Rodowick, D. N. The Virtual Life of Film

The Virtual Life of Film
The Old and the New
Cartwright, Lisa. Film and the digital in visual studies
Andrew, Dudley. The Core and the Flow of Film Studies

Complete sign-up for book reviews.

HFA screening: Double Tide (Sharon Lockhart, 2009), 7pm on September 17 in CCVA Lecture Hall

Artist talk: Sharon Harper, CCVA B-04, Thursday, September 20 at 4 pm.

________________________________________________________________________________

Week 3 (September 24). The moving image, modernity, and cultural memory
st
Schwartz, Vanessa and Przyblyski, Jeannene. Visual Cultures History: 21 Century Interdisciplinarity
th
and its 19 Century Objects
Bal, Mieke. Visual essentialism and the object of visual culture
Mitchell, W. J. T. There Are No Visual Media
Rodowick, D. N. Reading the Figural
Paradoxes of the Visual

Submit proposals for critical reviews via email

CCVA opening, Matt Saunders: The movies that were secret remain secret somehow and a nation
forgets its pleasures, Thursday, September 27, 5:30-6:30 pm

_____________________________________________________________________________

Week 4 (October 1). The moving image and (post)modernity

Jay, Martin. `Scopic Regimes of Modernity

Crary, Jonathan. Modernizing Vision
Bruno, Giuiliana. Streetwalking around Platos Cave, or the Unconscious is Housed
Hansen, Miriam Bratu. Benjamin and Cinema
________________________________________________________________________________
VES 271 4

Week 5 (October 8). Columbus Day: no class.

________________________________________________________________________________

Week 6 (October 15). Logistics of perception and inscription

Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine

Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
Hansen, Miriam. Mass Culture as Hieroglyphic Writing: Adorno, Derrida, Kracauer
Crary, Jonathan. Eclipse of the Spectacle
Rodowick, D. N. Reading the Figural
Reading the Figural

Artist talk: James Casebere, CCVA B-04, Thursday, October 18 at 6 pm

Turn in critical book reviews

________________________________________________________________________________

Week 7 (October 22). Passage de limage: the virtual image

Rosen, Philip. Old and New

Rodowick, D. N. The Virtual Life of Film
An elegy for film
The new media
Lost in translation: analogy and index revisited
Simulation, or automatism as algorithm
Bellour, Raymond. Of Another Cinema

Recommended:
Doane, Mary Ann. The Indexical and the Concept of Medium Specificity

CCVA opening: Parsis: the Zoroastrians of India, plus artist, Sooni Taraporevala, in conversation with
Homi Bhabha, Thursday, October 25 at 6 pm in CCVA Lecture Hall

________________________________________________________________________________

Week 8 (October 29). A matter of time

Doane, Mary Ann. The Instant and the Archive

Mangolte, Babette. Afterward: A Matter of Time
Rodowick, D. N. The Virtual Life of Film
An image that is not one
Two futures for electronic images
The digital event
Foster, Hal, An Archival Impulse

________________________________________________________________________________

Week 9 (November 5). The screen . . . passive, active, and interactive

Sobchack, Vivian. The Scene of the Screen

Manovich, Lev. The Screen and the User
Rodowick, D. N. The Virtual Life of Film
Trancoded Ontologies, or a guess at the riddle
VES 271 5

Mulvey, Laura. Death 24x a Second

The Possessive Spectator
The Pensive Spectator

Recommended:
Erkki Huhtamo, Elements of Screenology: Archaeology of the Screen

________________________________________________________________________________

Week 10 (November 12). Image, body, and performance

Sobchack, Vivian. Phenomenology and the Film Experience

Marks, Laura. The memory of touch
Bruno, Giuiliana. An Archive of Emotion Pictures
Phelan, Peggy. The Ontology of Performance
Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics
Foreword
Relational Form
Art of the 1990s

Turn in critical reviews

Turn in abstract for final projects

CCVA lecture: Christian Boltanksi, Thursday, November 15, 6pm

________________________________________________________________________________

Thanksgiving Break: no class

________________________________________________________________________________

Week 12 (November 26). Moving images into art

Iles, Chrissie. Film and Video Space

Round Table: The Projected Image in Contemporary Art
Bellour, Raymond. Double Helix
Iles, Chrissie. Between the Still and Moving Image

Recommended:
Paini, Dominique, Should We Put an End to Projection?

_______________________________________________________________________________

Week 13. (December 3). Visual art in the post-medium era

Mulvey, Passing Time

Burgin, The Noise of the Market Place
Baker, George. Photographys Expanded Field
Krauss, Rosalind. A Voyage on the North Sea

Turn in final projects by noon, Monday, December 10

________________________________________________________________________________
VES 271 6

Bibliography
Rodowick, D. N. The Virtual Life of Film. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007.

Cartwright, Lisa. Film and the digital in visual studies: film studies in the era of convergence, Journal
of Visual Culture 1.1 (2002): 7-23

Andrew, Dudley. The Core and the Flow of Film Studies. Critical Inquiry 35.4 (2009): 879-915.
st
Schwartz, Vanessa and Przyblyski, Jeannene. Visual Cultures History: 21 Century Interdisciplinarity
th
and its 19 Century Objects. The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge,
2004. 3-14.

Bal, Mieke. Visual essentialism and the object of visual culture, Journal of Visual Culture 2.1 (2003): 5-
32.

Mitchell, W. J. T. There Are No Visual Media, Journal of Visual Culture 4.2 (2005): 258-266.

Rodowick, D. N. Paradoxes of the Visual. In Reading the Figural, or, Philosophy after the New Media.
Durham: Duke UP, 2001. 30-44 + 236-237.

Jay, Martin. `Scopic Regimes of Modernity. In Vision and Visuality. Ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay
Press, 1988. 3-27.

Crary, Jonathan. Modernizing Vision. In Vision and Visuality. 29-49.

Bruno, Giuiliana. Streetwalking around Platos Cave, or the Unconscious is Housed. In Streetwalking
on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
35-57 + 337-345.

Hansen, Miriam Bratu. Benjamin and Cinema: Not a One-Way Street, Critical Inquiry 25.2 (Winter
1999): 306-343.

Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. In The Virilio Reader. Ed. James Der Derian. Malden: Blackwell,
1998. 134-151.

Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. October 41 (Summer 1987): 101-118.

Hansen, Miriam. Mass Culture as Hieroglyphic Writing: Adorno, Derrida, Kracauer. New German
Critique 56 (Spring-Summer 1992): 43-7

Crary, Jonathan. "Eclipse of the Spectacle," in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian
Wallis. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984. 283-294.

Rodowick, D. N. Reading the Figural. In Reading the Figural, or, Philosophy after the New Media. 45-
75 + 237-240.

Rosen, Philip. Old and New: Image, Indexicality, and Historicity in the Digital Utopia. In Change
Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2001. 301-349 + 422-434.

Bellour, Raymond. Of Another Cinema. In Art and The Moving Image: A Critical Reader. Ed. Tanya
Leighton. London: Tate Publishing, 2008. 406-422.

Doane, Mary Ann. The Indexical and the Concept of Medium Specificity. Differences 18:1 (2007): 128-
152.
VES 271 7

Doane, Mary Ann. The Instant and the Archive. In The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity,
Contingency, the Archive. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002. 206-232 + 262-266.

Mangolte, Babette. A Matter of Time. In Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette
Michelson. Eds. Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey. Amsterdam: U of Amsterdam P. 261-274.

Erkki Huhtamo, Elements of Screenology: Archaeology of the Screen, Iconics, 7 (2004): 3182.

Foster, Hal, An Archival Impulse. October 110 (Fall 2004): 3-22.

Sobchack, Vivian. The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic Presence. In
Materialities of Communication. Eds. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer. Stanford: Stanford
UP, 1994. 83-106.

Manovich, Lev. The Screen and the User. In The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT P, 2001.
94-115.

Mulvey, Laura. Death 24x a Second. London: Reaktion Books, 2006.

Sobchack, Vivian. Phenomenology and the Film Experience. In Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing.
Ed. Linda Williams. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1997. 36-58.

Marks, Laura. The memory of touch. In The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and
the Senses. Durham: Duke UP, 2000. 127-193 + 254-256.

Bruno, Giuiliana. An Archive of Emotion Pictures. In Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture,
and Film. New York: Verso, 2002. 247-279 + 445-449.

Phelan, Peggy. The Ontology of Performance. In Visual Culture: Critical Concepts Media and Cultural
Studies. Vol. IV. New York: Routledge, 2006. 327-342.

Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics. Trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods with the
participation of Mathieu Copeland. Dijon : Les Presses du rel, 2004.

Iles, Chrissie. Film and Video Space. In Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art. Ed. Erika
Suderburg. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2000. 252-262.

Iles, Chrissie. Between the Still and Moving Image. In Into the Light: The Projected Image in American
Art 1964-1977. Ed. Chrissie Iles. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art/ Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
32-69.

Paini, Dominique. Should We Put an End to Projection? October 110 (Fall 2004): 23-48.

Round Table: The Projected Image in Contemporary Art, October 104 (Spring 2003): 71-96.

Bellour, Raymond. "The Double Helix." In Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation. Ed.
Timothy Druckery. New York: Aperture Foundation, 1996. 173-208.

Mulvey, Laura. Death 24x a Second. London: Reaktion Books, 2006.

Passing Time. 17-32 + 197-198.

Burgin, Victor. The Noise of the Market Place. In The Remembered Film. London: Reaktion Books,
2004. 7-28 + 111-114.

Baker, George. Photographys Expanded Field. October 114 (Fall 2005): 120140.
VES 271 8

Krauss, Rosalind. A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition. New York:
Thames & Hudson, 1999.

Recommended viewing
Additional recommendations are welcome from seminar participants.

Week 2 (September 17). The virtual life of film . . . and film study

Level 5 (Chris Marker, France, 1997), 106m

Histoires du cinema (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1988), 51m

Capitalism: Child Labor (Ken Jacobs, USA, 2006), 14m

Week 3 (September 24). The moving image and/in visual culture

Prosperos Books (Peter Greenaway, UK, 1991), 129m

The Pillow Book (Peter Greenaway, UK, 1996), 126m

Week 4 (October 1). The moving image and (post)modernity

The Draughtmans Contract (Peter Greenaway, UK, 1982), 103m

Chris Marker (France)

Pictures at an Exhibition (on line http://www.chrismarker.org, and you tube)
Immemory, (1998, re-release 2008) CD-Rom.

Lorna Simpson (US). Corridor (2003), 13m

Week 6 (October 15). Logistics of perception and inscription

[All of the above]

Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, France, 1983), 100m

Week 7 (October 22). Passage de limage: the virtual image

In Praise of Love (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 2001), 97m

The Lady and the Duke (Eric Rohmer, France, 2002), 129m

Lossless 2-5 (Rebecca Baron and Doug Goodwin, USA, 2008)

Week 8 (October 27). A matter of time

Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia, 2002), 96m

Jerome de Rijke and Willem de Rooij (Netherlands)

Bantar Gebang (2000), 10m
Untitled (2001), 10m
Carpenter Center Lecture (24 February 2005)
VES 271 9

Kodak (Tacita Dean, 1999), 44m.

Sam Taylor-Wood
Sam Taylor-Wood (the EYE interview, 2003), 26m [PAL]
Showreel: Single Screen Films (Matthew Marks, 2003)

Of Camera (Steven Eastwood, UK, 2003), 14.40m

Week 9 (November 5). The screen . . . passive, active, and interactive

La Jete (Chris Marker, France, 1962), 28m

Ouvroir (Chris Markers space on Second Life) <secondlife.com/destination/ouvroir-chris-marker>

Immemory, (Chris Marker, France, 1998; re-release 2008) CD-Rom

nostalgia (Hollis Frampton, USA, 1971), 36m

Cinemnesis. Martin Arnold (Austria)

piece touch (1989), 15m
passage lacte (1993), 12m
Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998), 15m

Week 10 (November 12). Image, body, and performance

Mona Hatoum (Lebanon/UK)

Measures of Distance (1988), 15m
Changing Parts [online only]
Corps tranger [ICA]

Sniff (Ming Yuen J. Ma, 1997), 5m

Blindness Series (Tran T. Kim-Trang, 1992-1997), 67m

Friday Night (Claire Denis, France, 2002), 90m

Week 12 (November 26). Moving images into art

Third Memory (Pierre Huyghe, France, 1999), 9m

Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, France, 1983), 100m

Amy Siegel (USA)

Establishing Shots (2002)
Berlin Remake (2005), 14m

Week 13. (December 3). Art in the post-medium era

The Order [From the Cremaster Cycle 3] (Matthew Barney, USA, 2002), 182m

Burgin, Victor
Listen to Britain (2003)
Htel Berlin (Galerie Campagne Premire, Berlin, 2010) 9m