Reading the Colomina and thinking about mobility, which feels wanting in this essay about the convolution of inside and outside. The Len Jenshel photo, Sterret, has the TV comfortably placed, occupying the space of the car, “alienated, detached from traditional space” (surrounded by open space/desert). Rather than provoking only alienation, the situation here seems intent on having inside and outside at once—there’s a film it reminds me of, Lech Majewski’s The Gospel According to Harry, in which a home is coastline, domestic space turned completely to sand; a woman vacuums it, sets up lamps, makes it her home. I’ll have to go back and see if they have a TV; I don’t remember if they constructed a frame with which to view their view of vastness. Of “The Slow House,” Colomina writes, “In the living room, the ‘actual’ view is superimposed on its electronic representation, but at a slightly different angle (a shift in the horizon), it is like traveling without moving.” This is of course the indoors-transit that TV viewers have long looked to TV for: traveling without moving? If these screens are used for light instead of information, representation, image, what happens when they are actually moving? Something here about light and activism. I think of the Swiss documentary filmmaker Carole Roussopoulos, who was the first to use the Sony Portapak in order to travel around and chronicle moments of activism. And she would “distribute” her videos by tying a video monitor or TV to the trunk of her car (“wheelbarrow distribution”) and setting up using electricity from neighboring shops.
But the preference in these filmic examples is to be Outside while having inside and outside at once, as opposed to watching from inside or interiorizing conflict, narrative, landscape, as Colomina continually describes — the whole point being about safety, comfort, security (vs moving, risk-taking, the unknown)
ReplyDelete