Issue 3: CINEMA
Cinema as activism
Cinema as archive
Cinema as behavior
Cinema as collage
Cinema as construction
Cinema as duration
Cinema as economy
Cinema as entertainment
Cinema as experience
Cinema as identity
Cinema as index
Cinema as language
Cinema as memory
Cinema as moving image
Cinema as music video
Cinema as narrative
Cinema as plastic
If not exactly dead, cinema is certainly not what it once was. Images move differently now – primarily through digital media – and as Hollywood producers and distributors are all too aware, the habitus of cinema increasingly resembles an artifact from a past age. Or rather, it suggests a way of relating to ideas in time and space that is still inscribed in the medium of film, but no longer an essential part of its reception. While the industry itself will undoubtedly continue into the foreseeable future, to look at cinema today is to confront a reflection of how the dimensions of social engagement have changed over the past century.
Over the next month, the August 2010 issue of ART iT further develops this train of thought by addressing the theme CINEMA. In the cover interview, Deputy Editor Andrew Maerkle finds that although Berlin-based Singaporean artist Ming Wong is best known for his appropriation of international films in making his videos and installations, the resulting works engage equally with the performance of language, constituting a conceptual rhyme effect between originals and adaptations. As befits an artist interested in multiple reflections and visual couplings, this interview is complemented by two essays that analyze Wong’s work from different perspectives: Singapore-based curator Adele Tan outlines the various contexts informing his artistic development; and Beijing- and Guangzhou-based writer and curator Hu Fang explores different themes that recur across his works.
In the short interview, Bangkok-based curator Gridthiya Gaweewong corresponds with filmmaker and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul about how he balances two similar but different practices and how culture in Thailand is affected by the country’s current political instability. Special contributions include artist Shinro Ohtake‘s wide-ranging indexical survey of Tokyo in the age of cinema – a personal recounting of the tumultuous post-war period when cinema was a powerful vehicle for both foreign influences and new, homegrown modes of expression in Japan – as well as photographer and editor Kyoichi Tsuzuki‘s ode to the fleeting epoch of the three-minute laserdisc karaoke short film, which was replaced with the onset of server-based, streaming karaoke by generic video-scapes that are randomly matched to any song.
Forthcoming: Sean Snyder ON RECORD; Olga Bryukhovetska on redefining dispositif in film theory; Trond Lundemo on moving-image installations and the problem of quotation; Aveek Sen on the intersections of poetry and identity in the exhibition “Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh”; and the latest columns from regular contributors Dan Cameron, Doryun Chong, Vasif Kortun, Noi Sawaragi and Minoru Shimizu.
– The Editors