Pirkko Rathgeber, Nina Steinmller (Hg.

BildBewegungen

BildBewegungen
Pirkko Rathgeber, Nina Steinmller (Hg.)

Wilhelm Fink

Cinematography and the

Extended Now: From Bergson
to Video Art
Elie During
Bergsons famous analysis of the cinematographic illusion
has often been criticized for missing the true nature of cinematographic motion. The paradox is that cinema for the
most part seems to be a concrete realization of the Bergsonian idea of duration, harnessing as it does the qualitative organization of temporal flow. Focusing on the cinematic
representation of synchronous events helps us to understand
the real problem Bergson actually wanted to address: not so
much the artificial imitation of movement effected by the
juxtaposition of discontinuous stills, but the presupposition
of a global time illustrated, in the analogy, by the automatised mechanism by which film frames are run at a fixed rate
across a beam of light. We will reexamine the issue in light of
recent experiments by video artists such as VALIE EXPORT,
Mark Lewis, and Christian Marclay.
The cinematographical illusion: Bergson

Bergsons famous analysis of the cinematographic illusion underlying the common perception and conception of change
has often been criticised for missing the true nature of cinematographic motion. The paradox pointed by Marcel LHerbier, Bla Balzs, Elie Faure, Jean Epstein, Sartre and more recently Deleuze , is
that cinema may rightly be described as a concrete realisation of the
Bergsonian idea of duration, harnessing as it does the qualitative
resources of the temporal flow in a way that challenges the primacy
of the sensorimotor and optical organisation of space-time.1 In order
to see this, one had only to turn to the doctrine of real movement
(mobility) exposed earlier in Time and Free Will (1889) and Matter
and Memory (1896). Movement, Bergson explained, really unfolds
in time, not in space. This bold thesis opened onto a very singular
doctrine of the plurality of rhythms of duration within the evolving
universe. It took Deleuzes genius to realise that the cosmological
implications of this doctrine could be the touchstone of a Bergsonian re-evaluation of the whole cinematic experience. But this feat
could only be achieved by moving beyond the scope of Bergsons
256 | 257

original criticism of the cinematographic illusion. When developing his cinematographic analogy in the fourth chapter of Creative
Evolution (originally published in 1907), Bergson had a precise target
in mind: not so much cinema as we know it today the art of moving images , as the particular mechanism at work in the projecting
appliance known as the cinematograph2. In that respect, it is important to remember that the cinematograph is in the position of a
comparing element, not of an element being compared. The specific
operation that Bergson brought to light in the cinematograph served
as an analogon for a much more fundamental mechanism, that of an
inner cinematograph which, according to him, directed our entire
experience and thought of movement, down to its most elaborate
constructions. Hence, reflecting on natural perception, Bergson observed that movement is spontaneously analysed in terms of the successive locations occupied by a moving object. The full expression of
this tendency to strip out movement of its sheer mobility to spatialise it as it were is on display in the way motion is conceived and
represented by physics, and this is of course what the whole analogy
is ultimately about.
From that perspective, it is essential to bear in mind that
the device described by Bergson in Creative Evolution is as far as
one can judge completely automatised, with the hand surprisingly
absent.3 This detail has not received much attention from commentators. In Bergsons time, the dispositives available for the projection of animated views were still massively hand-cranked. This is by
no means peripheral. The nodal point of the analogy, what drives
it from beginning to end, is the uniform character of the film run
made possible by the automatisation of the apparatus. Bergson does
not even need to mention the presence of a motor: the point is that
the reels are set in uniform, continuous motion. This movement is
always the same,4 indifferent to the variety of real movements reproduced on-screen. That is what the cinematograph is really about:
not so much the discontinuity linked to the fragmentation of still
frames and their stroboscopic (intermittent) reproduction at regular intervals, as the artificial, seamless continuity of the uniform
run, nowhere visible on screen but hidden in the apparatus.5 In
fact, the neutralised duration of the underlying mechanism is the
transcendental condition for the arbitrary cuts represented by the
film frames. These would not make sense as photographic stills if
they were not organised from the outset as a series, waiting to be animated from outside. What the uniformity of the cinematographic
Elie During

movement really stands for, in that respect, is the homogeneity of a

time indifferent to what takes place in it, the empty form of repetition acting as a connecting thread between every conceivable content.
The cinematographic mechanism of thought similarly performs the
extraction of a single representation of becoming in general6 out of
the variety of effective becomings. Bergson states: An infinite multiplicity of becomings variously coloured, so to speak, passes before
our eyes: we manage so that we see only differences of colour, that is
to say, differences of state, beneath which there is supposed to flow,
hidden from our view, a becoming always and everywhere the same,
invariably colourless.7
In the analogy of the cinematograph, the automated run
of the reels analogises the positing of this becoming in general,
an indefinite, undetermined becoming which is not the becoming
of anything in particular but the universal medium of change. The
passage that provides the key to Bergsons philosophical montage
states this idea very clearly: The process [] consists in extracting
from all the movements peculiar to all the figures an impersonal
movement abstract and simple, movement in general, so to speak: we
put this into the apparatus, and we reconstitute the individuality of
each particular movement by combining this nameless movement
with the personal attitudes. Such is the contrivance of the cinematograph.8 And such is the illusion.
Frame-time

Again, Bergsons concern is not primarily the one expressed

in the often cited critique of Zenos paradoxes of movement namely, the artificial composition of mobility out of immobile elements.9
What is at stake is the way the singular, differentiated durations that
make up the variety of concrete becomings are collectively framed
by positing an absolute and abstract time. The issue, then, is cosmological in nature. It has to do with the way a multiplicity of temporal
processes can be perceived as a whole, in extension. In that sense,
the cinematograph illustrates the general operation of what may be
called frame-time. It shows how a plurality of interlocking local
durations can be considered together, in their simultaneous unfolding, without necessarily being counted as one.
Let us call fibre-time the concept of time instantiated by each of
these local durations. A temporal fibre can be identified with the timeline of a process occurring in a limited neighbourhood of the world.
From a qualitative point of view, it is characterized by a determinate
Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

258 | 259

rhythm, a certain degree of tension of the duration associated with

that process. Frame-time is what allows fibre-time to be collected in
bundles. It can be characterised more precisely by two correlated operations. The first consists in bringing together temporal fibres in
order to refer them to a global, common form of representation (homogenisation). The second consists in laying out relations of simultaneity across space (coordination). These two operations pertain to
two related aspects of coexistence. In Bergsons parlance, frame-time
is what enables the problematic coexistence of flows to be cashed out
in terms of the coexistence of instants.10 As a result, the most heterogeneous durations become commensurate: they are made to coexist in the form of the simultaneous. A given shading in the gradual
transition from green to blue (qualitative change), a given step in
the process of transformation of the flower into a fruit, of the larva
into a nymph (evolutive change), a given phase in an activity such as
drinking, eating, fighting (extensive change): all these metamorphoses, along with their corresponding durations, are extensively woven
together at once, each appearing as a particular modulation of becoming in general.11 This in turn allows the imagination to freeze
duration and slice it into simultaneity planes, each of which provides
a material realisation of the extended now. One can say such things
as: I rose up with the sun, but also The bird took off at the precise
moment when I opened the window, and the like. Now appears
as wide as space itself, which is eventually confused with the true
medium of coexistence.
What is the phenomenological significance of the cinematographic analogy? Bergsons point is that cinematographic movement
is a movement without quality, a movement isolated from and indifferent to the plurality of real movements embedded in the projected
images. As such, it must remain imperceptible. This is consistent
with the fact that the time of physics is not primarily lived but conceived. But what about the phenomenology of film experience?
My contention is that on this ground too there is something to be
learned from Bergson, namely that there is no direct experience of
the overall stream of images, unless it is confused with the concrete
flow of the spectators consciousness acting as a substitute for absolute time. On that count at least, Bergson agrees Kant: we only
perceive phenomena in time, not the process of time itself. In fact
there is no such thing as the flow of time, or the passage of time in
the abstract. Time is what essentially subsists, it does not change.12
The image of the line tracing itself should not mislead us: time may
Elie During

well be represented by a line, it is itself essentially imageless. Yet

again, time is not to be confused with duration. The former is the
business of analytic and scientific understanding: its focus is on the
abstract fact of succession and the possibility of establishing simultaneity relations between distant events. The latter encapsulates
the qualitative dimension of change, it concerns mobility as an act,
a progress in time rather than movement as a series of position
occupied in space.
This does not mean, however, that one should not examine
the interplay of local flows of duration and frame-time. For there are
many ways in which the frame-time can be refracted within the projected image in order to yield a new image of time. Once it is agreed
that there is no direct intuition of cinematographic frame-time, the
question to ask is: how does the difference between frame-time and
duration manifest itself in the cinematic image? The most obvious
place to look at is the films or video works which manage to somehow circumvent the ban on the intuition of cinematographic frametime by making room for an indirect representation of that time
at another level. Several examples come to mind. One may think
of Vertovs staging of the editing table in a famous scene of Man
with a Movie Camera (1929). Here, the director manages to make
visible the very still frames that are supposed to make up the film
being shown; but the way he achieves this is by stopping the reels
and freezing the frames to insert an abrupt cut or rather, by interspersing a shot in which this stoppage and this freezing are directly
exhibited in the form of a didactic meta-commentary on the making
of the film, thereby offering a nice illustration of cinematic metalepsis13. LHomme la manivelle (The Man with the Crank, ca. 1907),
a gem of early cinema, does not even need to step out of the diegetic
universe opened up by the film in order to reach a similar effect: in
this short film, a hand-cranked camera manipulated by a facetious
operator has the magical power of altering the pace of things at will.
The trick classically relies on accelerated motion, it heralds the more
sophisticated digital manipulation known as the bullet-time effect
(because of its intensive use in The Matrix14, 1999). Douglas Gordon
takes a different path with his anamorphosed rendition of Hitchcocks Psycho (24 hour Psycho, 1993): there, the erratic run of the
original still frames is brought back to the surface and made visible
by being considerably slowed down. Other examples would include
the presence and allegedly, the invention of the countdown by
Fritz Lang in Die Frau im Mond (1929), culminating in an emphatic
Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

260 | 261

Jetzt! the intertitle standing for zero, marking off a moment of

absolute simultaneity. One may also think of the running clock on
display in the split-screen interludes punctuating the episodes of a
series like 24. Clearly, displaying clocks or time-measuring devices
within the frame is not enough: what is required in addition to the
evocation of the insistent presence of global time in modern life, is
a reference of some kind to the real time of the projection unfolding beneath the diegetic time of action or cinematic narration. The
relation can be one of identity of durations (remember Cesare Zavattinis ideal of a film made from a single long take, describing one
day in the life of a man), or else one of disruption, if not downright
contradiction (as in the case of most pseudo-real time endeavours
of the 24 type). Sometimes it is very subtle mix of the two. We shall
see later how Christian Marclay achieves this in a virtuoso 24 hours
montage aptly entitled The Clock.
Fibre-time

But let us come back once more to the cinematographical

framing of time. This operation is best understood by contrast with
another way of dealing with the multiplicity of durations a solution
which, although more painstaking, is better suited to the diversity of
real movements and flows of duration. It points, as we shall see, to a
vital component of the cinematic image. Considering the movement
of a parade of soldiers, Bergson explains that one could cut out
jointed figures representing the soldiers, [] give to each of them
the movement of marching, a movement varying from individual to
individual, and throw the whole on the screen,15 somewhat like
in a shadow theatre.
This possibility reminiscent of digital animation techniques corresponds to a local or dynamic approach to our problem.
In the language of physics, each line in the flow of movements could
be described through a parameter of evolution. In space-time physics, this corresponds to the notion of proper time, which provides
an invariant measure of the concrete (causal) relation between events
affecting a single portion of matter. The underlying distinction between coordinate-time and parameter-time translates, on a purely
quantitative level, the aforementioned distinction between frametime and fibre-time. It points to two diverging approaches to temporal matters, two ways of treating time as a dimension or if one likes,
global
as essentially measurable. These strategies can be described as local
and global.16 The use of a time parameter amounts to conceiving
local
Elie During

time as flowing along the trajectory described by the motion of a

material system (itself ideally represented by a single point). The time
coordinates associated with the time-axis, on the other hand, refer all
local processes to a common notion of time, enabling simultaneity
relations between distant events. One may say that the promotion of
cinematographic time amounts in Bergsons view to a shift from the
local figure of time, surveying the nuances and inflections of change
from place to place, to a global figure of time effecting the distribution of time over space a manoeuver that requires coordinating heterogeneous durations by referring events to planes of simultaneity, or
simultaneity slices (for example, maximal classes of simultaneous
events, sharing the same time coordinate).
Since this analysis chiefly concerns the making of scientific time, and since, moreover, Bergson did not show much philosophical interest in the aesthetics of the moving image as such, one
may still wonder in what sense his criticism of the cinematographical mechanism can have any relevance to questions pertaining to the
cinematic representation and production of movement. The answer
depends on our readiness to adopt a Bergsonian perspective in examining the fabric of time woven by the operations of the cinematic
image. I say Bergsonian, and this is not necessarily to be taken as
synonymous with Deleuzian. Deleuze, as mentioned earlier, emphasised the not-so-original claim that cinema is a truly Bergsonian
art, but by doing so he may have downplayed the significance of the
cinematographic analogy in favour of other aspects of the doctrine.
There is no point denying that Bergsons conception of movement
as the extensive manifestation of unfolding durations paved the way
for an intensive exploration of the possibilities of the cinematic image in relation to memory and the nebulous states of the virtual. But
wondering at the amazing resources of the time-image as a purveyor of purely spiritual movements should not spare us the effort
of examining how the coexistence of durations is actually effected
in relation to frame-time and its cinematic substitutes. As we shall
see, most often the cinematic montage of durations involves both
local and global time, in varying proportion. Linking the two in a
unified form is by no means easy: it requires conjoined operations
of deframing and reframing, synchronising and desynchronising. It
takes the whole art of montage for frame-time to operate concretely
on the plane of image. As Alain Badiou writes: The technical infrastructure [of cinema] governs a discrete and uniform unwinding,
which it is the business of art to overlook. The units of cutting, like
Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

262 | 263

the shots or the sequences, are ultimately composed not through a

time measurement, but in accordance with a principle of proximity,
recall, insistence, or rupture. The real thinking of this principle is a
topology rather than a movement. As though filtered by the compositional space that is present as soon as filming begins, false movement, in which the idea is given only as passage imposes itself. We
could say that there is an idea because there is a compositional space,
and that there is a passage because this space offers or exposes itself
as a global time.17
Hence, it is the task of montage to foster a global movement, an effect of temporal course, and finally a global time resulting from the meshing of myriads of local flows and durations. The
question we would like to raise is what part frame-time can play in
this meshing of fibre-times, once it is acknowledged that the whole
art of cinema is to conceal the mechanical movement involved in its
technical infrastructure, in order to obtain what Badiou calls false
movements. In the following, we would like to start unpacking this
and related issues with reference to the works of three artists experimenting with the cinematic image: Mark Lewis, VALIE EXPORT
and Christian Marclay. Each of them may be said to reflect the effectiveness of a particular strategy in achieving global time; each involves frame-time or its substitutes at some level.
Elie During

Neighbouring space-times and distributed attention: 1 Film still, from:

Mark Lewis

Airport (2003) and Downtown: Tilt, Zoom and Pan (2005),

two video works by Canadian artist Mark Lewis, provide a striking illustration of what may be considered a strictly local approach
to the constitution of global cinematic time. Frame-time as defined
above seems indeed almost totally absent. Yet, as we shall see, in
is taking
both cases a framing of some kind takes place.
Airport presents us with a lengthy (10:59 min) composition of barely perceptible flows of duration associated with vehicles
(airplanes, cars, carts, men) moving at various paces and in various
directions across an apron [Fig. 1]. The whole scene is shot from an
airport lounge: the activity taking place on the runway is contemplated through overlooking bay windows which offer a panoramic
and very pictorial view, while literally framing this multiplicity of
movements as in a tableau vivant. The result is an abstract diagram
of durations. The fixity of the camera is of course an essential ingredient in this long, mute take. After a while, our gaze stops focusing
and allows itself to drift: figures dissolve or rather become indifferent, the slowly moving patterns gradually lose touch with the ground,
they seem to be floating across the image as particles of dust in the
sunlight. It is as if the camera was strictly recording the interplay
Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

Mark Lewis, Airport,

2003.

264 | 265

of kinetic intensities minute differentials in speed, alternations of

condensation and dispersion, tension and release , in the same way
varying shades and intensities of colour play against each other on
the surface of a canvas. This, I believe, is not unlike what Bergson
had in mind when thinking about pure movement a movement severed from something that moves, as well as from an underlying space.
And yet the temporal span of the experience is somehow framed so
that these neighbouring durations are finally brought together rather
than left to their natural state of dispersion.
Granted, the operating principle behind this extensive
weaving of durations remains uncertain. Christine Ross describes
the window structure as an interface between the frozen (hence
more photographic) foreground and the active (hence more filmic)
background.18 The tension resulting from the conflicting temporalities of these two media19 certainly plays a role in the slightly
hypnotic and very effective montage of durations which Airport
achieves in the lived present of the spectators gaze, and so does
the soft monochromic greyness of the whole, which endows the
scene with an ethereal dimension.20 All these factors, along with
the state of unfocused attention mentioned earlier, can be said to
envelop the photographic and filmic tensions to provide a sense of
duration to the scene.21 Yet what makes it possible to speak of one
overall sense of duration? It certainly does not hinge on any particular movement exhibited within the frame. Nor does it involve
an overarching camera movement, a pan or tracking shot, or even
the kind of slow, almost sensuous breathing of the image induced by
the reverse dolly shot in Brass Rail (2003).
Other works display more traditional techniques for organizing the coexistence of heterogeneous durations. Downtown:
Tilt, Zoom and Pan gives up the game in its very title [Fig. 2]. This
subtle composition consists in a three-fold deployment corresponding to three somewhat loosely connected peri-urban sites. The film
lasts 4:28 minutes; constructed out of two different but seamlessly
joined shots, it alternates sweeping camera moves and seemingly frozen frames exhibiting a variety of space-times, some of them folded
or nested within each other see the insect finding its way around a
red plastic cup by a muddy patch filmed in close-up framing , others
merely juxtaposed in a disconnected fashion the swamp, a parking
lot, the landscape of what may possibly be downtown Toronto, a car
parked by a warehouse space, a railway track. To which one should
add the variety of movements occurring within the frames in these
Elie During

successive settings: the insects erratic moves, a car strangely manoeuvring in reverse motion, shrouded by a cloud of dust, the smooth
and slightly unreal translatory motion of a merchandise train, etc.
The interlocking or merely contiguous spheres of existence involve incommensurable scales and motions, they differ in
content and overall tonality, sometimes like night and day, dusk
and morning. From the scale relations between the successive settings, one may infer the deployment of a foreground, middle ground
and background, yet this does not really help making sense of this
hybrid, disunified space. The fact that the film is shown in reverse
is almost imperceptible, but it certainly fuels the overall sense of
uncertainty that pervades this highly contrived composition. And
since no all-embracing, embedding space is readily available to host
the heterogeneous durations unfolding in these different milieus,
the only way to go is to actually try and string them together piecemeal by moving like insects or butterflies across overlapping and
yet seemingly disconnected neighbourhoods. The unlikely cohabitation of all these perspectives in a single take stands comparison with
the multifarious animal worlds or Umwelten described by Jakob von
Uexkll. The use of the pan shot brings to mind what Kracauer had
to say about cross-section films such as Walter Ruttmanns 1927
symphonic depiction of Berlin, the Grostadt22, except that in the
case of Lewis Downtown the City has almost totally vanished as a
unifying element, surviving only as a pictorial, photographic and
even postcard-like reminiscence in the form of a cityscape placed in
the background. The film happens to be shot at the outskirts of the
city, literally in its fringes a typical instance of non-place23. The
question it raises is one of ecological and even cosmological magnitude. It can be roughly put this way: in the absence of a ready-made
embedding space call it nature or urban space , in what sense
do these local durations belong to the same world? How can they be
totalised, if not by connecting them one at a time? And what does
it take to connect them, besides the camera moves (pan, tilt and
zoom) and the natural montage effect obtained by sweeping across
the motley scenery?
Mark Lewis himself does not offer any authoritative answer to the question of how to achieve a sense of global time on such
premises, but he certainly shares a common concern with Bergson
who acknowledged, besides the simultaneity of two instants, and
anterior to it, the simultaneity of two or more flows between which
our attention can be divided without being split up.24 He writes:
Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

266 | 267

2a, b Film stills,

from: Mark Lewis,
Downtown: Tilt,
Zoom and Pan, 2005.

Elie During

Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

268 | 269

When we are seated on the bank of a river, the flowing of the water,
the gliding of a boat or the flight of a bird, the ceaseless murmur in
our lifes deeps are for us three separate things or only one, as we
choose. We can interiorise the whole, dealing with a single perception that carries along the three flows, mingled in its course; or we
can leave the first two outside and then divide our attention between
the inner and the outer; or, better yet, we can do both at one and the
same time, our attention uniting and yet differentiating the three flows,
thanks to its singular privilege of being one and several.25
Clearly, what Bergson is suggesting here is a method for
reaching global time in a local manner, without framing. The unique
capacity of consciousness to divide itself without splitting up, and
more interestingly to unite and differentiate at once what falls within
its field of perception, underlies what is sometimes called unfocused
or distributed attention. Thus, temporal unification can be achieved
in a local fashion, by patching together limited regions of space-time
which our consciousness holds together and differentiates in the
Thelimit of Bergsons analysis, if one wants to apsame stroke. Yet the
ply it to the cinematic experience, is that the temporal unity of the
film itself cannot be entirely predicated upon the alleged unity of the
spectators lived duration. For the latter is in turn continuously modulated by filmic duration, and framed accordingly. So the logic of
distributed attention must be pitched against the generic procedures
by which cinema achieves new forms of temporal unification.
Cinema has often been described as that art which conjugates the capture of unfolding movements in the sequence shot with
the composition of parallel durations and simultaneities through the
unlimited resources of parallel editing or cross-cutting. The flow of
images on the screen, the fluidity of the tracking shot, bear a dialectical relation with the disjunctive power of the cut and the underlying,
virtual presence of the still-frame. But the truth conveyed by Lewis
cinematic experiments, the particular tension it installs between the
duration of the filmic and that of the photographic image, is that
the operations of the long take and the tracking shot are themselves
constantly challenged by the unresolved heterogeneity of the local
durations they strive to string together, that the kind of temporal
framing effected by the shot cannot be separated from a process of
continuous reframing (Mitry) or unframing (Bonitzer) whereby
the cinematic image can be said to embed a virtual infinity of conflicting images. Attention does not split up, but it can rest in a state
of prolonged dispersion.
Elie During

In the midst of this dispersion, Mark Lewis manages to picture or at least convey a fractured experience of simultaneity the
unlikely coexistence of the insect, the train and the dust cloud. He
does this without immediately conjuring up the conception of the
extended now, and yetthere is a strange sense of global togetherness
to the scene, a sense of simultaneity without synchronicity.26 I am
interested in thinking about how film might be able to inscribe different times simultaneously in the same sequences of images, Lewis
writes.27 But can this be accomplished without framing in any sense?
Does the film rely solely on the multiplicity of overlapping or disconnected local nows captured by the pan, tilt and zoom? Despite the
obvious cinematic dimensions of his productions, it is important to
remember that Lewis is a video artist. When the global situation of
his work is taken into account, one may suspect that the loop repetition of a relatively short film, combined with the experience of wandering in the projection room, restores a sense of unity that acts as
Hence
a substitute for frame-time. To conclude, one may want to side-step
frame-time altogether through the disjunctive use of a shot cutting
across an unresolved heterogeneity of coexistent durations. This
procedure may well reveal the essence of the travelling shot. But the
framing, as we have suggested, is bound to take place at another level.
Adjoined dislocations: VALIE EXPORT

Let us now turn to a more formalised version of the problem. Adjungierte Dislokationen (1973), a piece by Austrian performance artist VALIE EXPORT, presents itself as a triple projection.
Three separate sequences of images are juxtaposed in the space of a
large rectangle: on the right, two superimposed 8 mm projections;
on the left, a single projection equal in height to the ones on the
right, in 16 mm. The large image reveals the organizing principle of
the performance. The artist has strapped two cameras to her body,
which functions as a mobile tripod: the first looks out straight ahead,
from the level of her collarbone; the other is placed in the middle of
her back, pointing in the opposite direction. These are the two 8 mm
cameras whose footage is projected on the right part of the screen.
At first, VALIE EXPORT walks about in an anonymous urban environment: a city square, streets, the courtyard of a building; then
through more bucolic surroundings, climbing the slope of a low hill,
crossing a field, and so on.
The title of the work speaks of adjoined or conjoined
dislocations [Fig. 3]. But what exactly has been dislocated here?
Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

270 | 271

3a, b Film stills,

from: VALIE EXPORT,
Adjungierte Dislokationen, 1973.

The answer becomes obvious when, after a few minutes of split (or
distributed) attention, the viewer realises that the overall feeling of
simultaneity he naturally expected to obtain between the three images is broken and dislocated in a thousand ways. First of all, the
small image at the top right is not synchronised with the one below
it; nor do the two images taken together seem to correspond in any
systematic fashion to the large image on the left. The sense of dislocation becomes more pronounced as the film goes on. Apart from
two or three moments of apparent coincidence or symmetry, there
is no way whatsoever to reconstruct, on the basis of these queerly
conjoined segments, anything like the sort of coherent sequence
shot one might otherwise expect to obtain by combining the two
small images and the large one to create an improbable 360 perspective. Dis-lokation in this case also signifies that any attempt
to reconstitute the continuous movement documented by these images is hindered at each instant so that the overall features of the
surrounding space, and indeed the form of time itself, the very sense
Elie During

of a continuous route traced in space-time, ends up being hopelessly

blurred. There is no way to recover the sense of an unfolding trajectory, with its particular rhythm of duration. In place of the expected
effect of a global temporal course, one is left with a rhapsodic succession of increasingly abstract shots, albeit with episodic synchronisations and occasional points of reconnection.
Yet perhaps the most surprising thing about this montage
is not so much the discrepancy or deliberate dislocation of the 8 mm
shots in respect of each other as the relationship that they both enjoy
with the larger image to their left. This larger view, one soon deduces,
is filmed by a third camera that never appears in any of the 8 mm
shots. In principle, this large image should be the key of the whole
performance, and it does fulfil this function to the extent that it
shows us how the exercise was carried out: it reveals, from an encompassing vantage point that seems somehow to be exempt from the
play of shifting perspectives like a blind-spot , the mobile site from
which the smaller projections look out upon the world, in opposite
Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

272 | 273

directions. In that respect, it amounts to framing of the overall situation. Yet the framing turns out to be merely formal: from a temporal
perspective, it only emphasises the dislocation of simultaneities displayed by the two smaller lateral views.
To conjoin forward- and backward-looking perspectives
whose lines of sight never intersect, and then to flatten them, so to
speak, by aligning them on the same plane the wall of a gallery is
already a splendid idea, and by no means a simple one. But to relate the progressive dislocation of the two smaller views to a blind
witness-image, a central perspective that in reality witnesses nothing at all, apart from the performance itself, amounts to plunging
the whole composition into a state of complete indeterminacy with
regard to the natural space-time coordinates of filmic experience.
The cinematic journey, it would seem, remains utterly unframable.
Cinematic perspectives do not fit together in any obvious way; global time, absolute simultaneity, and the very sense of an extended
now are irremediably absent, or at any rate relativized, just as in
relativity physics.
Pseudo real-time: Christian Marclay

By contrast, Christian Marclays The Clock, a 24-hour

cinematic montage navigating across the multifarious landscape of
movie culture, seems entirely guided by a principle of convergence
that tends to smooth out temporal disruptions [Fig. 4]. The protocol consists, very simply, in installing a more or less strict one-toone correspondence between the time in the image (staged time,
refracted through watches, clocks and the like) and the time of the
Elie During

image (as indicated by the time-measuring devices available in the

projecting room). In order to achieve this, Marclay and his crew
collected clips from hundreds of different sources. I see The Clock
as a structural film, Marclay writes. I have 60 minutes to fill in
an hour, and if a clock in a clip reads 5:06, I can only put the clip in
that minute of that hour. Its not a scientific clock, there is a little
fluctuation never more than a minute or so although if I had for
example two clocks with the seconds visible I couldnt reverse the
order of the clocks, so theres a certain logic there. But a minute is a
long amount of time in which many things can happen, so I could
put a clip at the beginning or at the end or in the middle of the minute, and that position would be dictated by the action, and how the
different narratives fit together. Certain actions can only precede
others. In a way it was full of limitations.28
Much has been written on the phenomenological aspects
of the almost hallucinogenic experience of watching several hours
of Marclays film, sometimes late in the night.29 The result is at
once very effective and very intriguing from a formal point of view.
The first thing to observe is that Marclays The Clock is itself a clock
in a very literal sense, although not a very accurate one, as the artist
acknowledges. The viewers attention is constantly drawn to the fact
that events are unfolding not so much in real time at any rate in
the usual sense of that expression, involving a continuous narrative thread whose duration is supposed to coincide with that of the
viewer , but in literal synchrony with the actual time of the projection, the unwinding of the reel. Thus, every indication of time on
screen (the glimpse of a watch or a clock face, the minute hand of a
Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

4 Film still, from:

Christian Marclay,
The Clock, 2010.

274 | 275

clock shown in close-up, the ringing of a bell, voices telling the time,
etc.), matches the time the spectator can read off his watch. Such a
correspondence involves more than a mere equality of durations:
what the actual display of digits and clock readings are meant to
convey is, more precisely, a sense of simultaneity the simultaneity
of instants, as Bergson would put it. Thus each frame of Marclays
film seems to cry out Jetzt!, dramatizing the sheer evidence of
an absolute now effecting at each moment the coordination of
simultaneous lines of action that is, coordinating them with one
another and with the time of the spectacle itself. As Zadie Smith
nicely puts it, you dont feel that you are watching a film, you feel
you are existing alongside a film.30
There is no doubt that the insistent recurrence of seemingly
synchronised clocks within the image is instrumental in conveying
the sense of an overarching global time virtually marking off every
instant of the film experience, even though in most cases the spectator completely loses track of time after a while. In that respect, Marclay is right in claiming that part of The Clocks seduction lies in the
fact that the viewers own time becomes part of the work: What
cinema usually does is to transport viewers to a different or abstract
time where everything is compressed and someones whole life can
pass by in two hours. We accept that even though we know its an
illusion, but in The Clock, when everythings happening in real time,
its an illusion that also enters into reality.31 However, one cannot
overlook the fact that the global framing effected by the cinematic
clock required editing a huge amount of fragments which, considered
in isolation, do not have anything to offer but hints and cues for a virtual frame-time that could only be actualised if the source-films were
shown in full instead of being cut-up and spliced. In other words, the
global frame-time attached to the films total run the time that is so
often described as real time turns out to be a complete artefact. Its
presence is somewhat spectral: although its traces are disseminated
everywhere, displayed in every shot, it is never shown in person, so
to speak. Frame-time is really the result of a push-and-pull between
two sets of limitations: those of universal time (the external time
marked off by actual clocks in our environment), and those of the action, unfolding here in a multiplicity of disconnected narrative cells
that are somehow fitted together in spite of their bearing a priori no
relation to each other. To use a Kantian concept, what is at work here
is an instance of free play between understanding and imagination.
The inflexible measure imposed by universal time (global time) must
Elie During

compose with the necessity of inventing creative bridges between

non-measured, heterogeneous durations (local time).
In the end product, the movie-clips are so nicely knit and
paced that the whole 24 hours feel like a real feature film, instead of
presenting us with an utterly staggered, fragmented and dispersed
time. Marclay cuts seamlessly through dozen of films and organises
them in what appears like a single sequence. Thematic threads are
suggested by relations of contiguity and resemblance, enhanced by
shot reverse shot effects and occasional cross-cuttings between two
or more sequences borrowed from different sources: guns or phones
in one film meeting guns or phones in another, etc. All these tricks
conspire in conveying a sense of overall continuity and sometimes
community in spite of ceaseless jump cuts. In that respect, one
might say that Marclay has invented his own variety of the cinematographical illusion: an illusion of real time superimposed upon a
tapestry of local durations that never truly communicate beneath the
network of analogies and counterpoint relations achieved through
editing, yet somehow manage to sustain the continuous feeling of an
overarching global flow. Fictitious as it is, this global framing proves
effective; it accounts for the peculiar experience of viewing The Clock
according to its own duration, as one single film. It is as if the gap
between the invisible cinematographic frame-time and the motley
fabric woven from innumerable cinematic temporal threads was being performed at every minute at the surface of the screen; as if the
screen itself was an interface mediating between external clock-time
and internal cinematic duration. The result is at once captivating and
unsettling. Time is not out of joint, it is floating.

Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

276 | 277

Endnoten
1 Hence, as early as in 1924, Sartre could write: Cinema provides the formula for a Berg-

4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13

14

15
16

17

18

19

20
21

sonian art. It inaugurates mobility in aesthetics. Jean-Paul Sartre, crits de jeunesse,

ed. by Michel Contat, Michel Rybalka, Paris 1990, p. 389.
In fact, the cinematograph was first mentioned by Bergson in the 19021903 Collge de
France lectures devoted to the history of the idea of time, alongside other optical
appliances such as the magic lantern. In what follows I shall refer to Henri Bergson,
Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, London 1911.
I have elaborated on this point elsewhere. See Elie During, Vie et mort du cinmatographe: de Lvolution cratrice Dure et Simultanit, in: Camille Riquier (ed.),
Bergson, Paris 2012, p. 139162; Elie During, Note on the Bergsonian Cinematograph, in: Franois Albera, Maria Tortajada (ed.), Cine-dispositives. Essay in Epistemology across Media, Amsterdam 2013, forthcoming.
Bergson, Creative Evolution (as note 3), p. 330.
Ibid.
Bergson, Creative Evolution (as note 3), p. 324.
Bergson, Creative Evolution (as note 3), p. 321.
Bergson, Creative Evolution (as note 3), p. 322.
On this point I disagree with several otherwise excellent accounts of Bergsons place
and significance within the context of early cinematic practices and dispositives. See
Maria Tortajada, Photography/Cinema: Complementary Paradigms in the Early
Twentieth Century, in: Laurent Guido, Olivier Lugon (ed.), Between Still and Moving Images. Photography and Cinema in the 20th Century, Herts 2012, p. 3346; Jimena Canales, A Tenth of a Second: A History, Chicago 2009; Mary Ann Doane, The
Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive, Cambridge,
MA 2002.
Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity, trans. Leon Jacobson, Manchester 1999, p. 36.
Bergson, Creative Evolution (as note 3), p. 320.
See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B 225226.
Grard Genette, Mtalepse, De la figure la fiction, Paris 2004. The device whereby
the author manages to transgress the boundaries between narrative levels.
See Elie During, Is there an Exit from Virtual Reality?: Grid and Network from
Tron to The Matrix, in: Myriam Diocaretz, Stefan Herbrechter (ed.), The Matrix in
Theory, Amsterdam 2006, p. 131150. On slow-motion more generally, see Elie During, Zeitlupen: Von Vertov bis Matrix, in: Emmanuel Alloa (ed.), Erscheinung und
Ereignis. Zur Zeitlichkeit des Bildes, Mnchen 2013, forthcoming.
Bergson, Creative Evolution (as note 3), p. 321.
In science, this distinction is indicative of a duality of tendencies, a difference in orientation, rather than an incompatibility. On these questions, see Peter Kroes, Time:
Its Structure and Role in Physical Theories, Dordrecht 1985. This problem is at the
heart of Duration and Simultaneity (1922), the book in which Bergson addresses the
philosophical issues of relativity theory. It is no surprise that the cinematographical
analogy should find its natural place in that context (see chapter VI devoted to spacetime). Bergsons contentious claim is that the purpose of the space-time presentation
of relativity physics is to set up a vast cinematography of the universe. See Bergson,
Duration and Simultaneity (as note 11), p. 108.
Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, trans. Alberto Toscano, Stanford 2005, p. 81
(modified translation).
Christine Ross, The Past is the Present: Its the Future Too. The Temporal Turn in
Contemporary Art, London/New York 2012, p. 137.
Lewis video works are generally filmed in 35 mm before being transferred to DVD or
HD.
Christine Ross, The Past is the Present: Its the Future Too (as note 19), p. 137.
Ibid.
Elie During

Endnoten/Abbildungsnachweis
22 See Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler. A Psychological History of the Ger-

man Film, Princeton 2004, p. 182185.

23 See Marc Aug, Non-Places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Lon-

don 1995.
24 Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity (as note 11), p. 35.
25 Ibid. Italics are ours.
26 In that respect it is interesting to compare Lewis work with the dispersive spaces in-

27

28

29

30
31

stalled by Aernout Mik. 3 Laughing and 4 Crying (1998), for example, stages non-totalisable and probably unframable multiplicities of wandering, inorganic affects. See Elie
During, Schockwellen Zu 3 Laughing And 4 Crying, in: Leontine Coelewij, Sabine
Maria Schmidt (ed.), Aernout Mik Communitas, Essen 2011, p. 1116 [catalogue to
the exhibition Aernout Mik Communitas , Jeu de Paume, Paris et al. 20112013].
Yilmaz Dziewior, Conversation with Mark Lewis, in: idem (ed.), Mark Lewis, exhibition catalogue Kunstverein Hamburg, Hamburg 2005, p. 5866, p. 61.
Andrew Maerkle, Christian Marclay: The Clock, interview for ART iT, 12/24/2010, go to:
http://www.art-it.asia/u/admin_ed_feature_e/yvKBQHCwb9cmLxYnEO2l/?lang=en
[3/19/2013].
See Zadie Smith, Killing Orson Welles at Midnight. The Clock a film by Christian
Marclay, in: The New York Review of Books 58/7, 4/28/2011, go to: http://www.
nybooks.com /ar ticles /archives /2011/apr/28 /k illing-orson-welles-midnight/
[4/30/2013].
Ibid.
Maerkle, Christian Marclay: The Clock (as note 29).

Abbildungsnachweis
1 Film still, from: Mark Lewis, Airport, 2003, Super 35 mm transferred to DVD, 10'59",

single screen projection. Courtesy and copyright the artist.

2a, b Film still, from: Mark Lewis, Downtown: Tilt, Zoom and Pan, 2005, Super 35 mm

transferred to High Definition, 4'28", single screen projection. Courtesy and copyright the artist.
3a, b Film stills, from: VALIE EXPORT, Adjungierte Dislokationen, 1973, one 16 mm and
two 8 mm film projections, in: Joachim Jger, Gabriele Knapstein, Annette Hsch (ed.),
Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection. Films, Videos and Installations from 1965 to
2005, exhibition catalogue Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2006, Hamburg 2006, p. 65.
4 Film still, from: Christian Marclay, The Clock, 2010, in: The Clock Christian Marclay, with a text by Darian Leader, exhibition catalogue White Cube, London 2010,
London 2010, no pagination.

Cinematography and the Extended Now: From Bergson to Video Art

278 | 279