The mobilized virtual gaze in Russian Ark.

The mobilized virtual gaze in Russian Ark. According to Walter Benjamin, the flâneur, wandering through urban space in a daze of distraction - a mood yet to be propagated by motion pictures- was the quintessential paradigm of modernity. Cinema, arising in the age of mechanical reproducibility, would diffuse this new mode of perception among the modern urban dwellers. Thus, the development of cinema and the formation of the space of modernity became processes closely intertwined. A detailed study of this historical interrelation leads us to extrapolate this connection into a hypothesis with regard to Post-Modernism. In other words, it is unavoidable to wonder if such an entangled relationship persisted between the Post-Modern paradigm and the cinematic gaze of that period. This question has been tackled by several authors, among them Anne Friedberg, whose approach is the object of analysis in this paper. 1 In this regard, Friedberg describes the transition between Modernism and Post- Modernism as a gradual and indistinct epistemological tear along the fabric of modernity, a change caused by the growing cultural centrality of a 1 Therefore, for our purpose, we will accept her understanding of Post-Modernism, acknowledging that it does not necessarily refer to its conventional use in human sciences, literature or architecture, but with its use within the theory of visual arts. The debate on postmodernism has by now produced a vast literature. Roughly, we might distinguish three positions: one elaborated with reference to the human sciences and literature [ ]; one concerning the visual arts [..]; and one related to the discourse of and on architecture. Giuliana Bruno, Ramble City: Postmodernism and "Blade Runner". October, Vol. 41. (Summer, 1987), pp. 61-74 1

feature that is integral to both cinema and television: a mobilized virtual gaze. 2 According to Friedberg s theory, it should be feasible to identify this mobilized virtual gaze (and to diagnose the symptoms associated with this definition of Post-Modernity) within a visual text of this period. Conversely, it should be possible to point out the marginality of those symptoms in equivalent visual texts belonging to the modern epoch. Consequently, this paper will consist not only in a dissection of a fragment of Russian Ark, but in a comparison with other analogous modern precedents (Voyage in Italy, La Jetée), in order to demonstrate how Friedberg s mobilized virtual gaze is fully manifested in the post-modern production, whereas only germinal in the modern condition. To begin, it is necessary to dissect the idea of a mobilized virtual gaze: a compound concept essentially formed by the association of two phenomenological experiences of cinema. Firstly, it refers to the mobilized gaze as the perceptional mood of the cinematic eye, epitomized by the flâneurs and closely related to the experience of modernity. Secondly, it introduces Friedberg s understanding of cinema as a virtual threshold that transfers the isolation produced by the plate glass window onto a virtual register 3, implying that through cinema we experience a space and time embedded in the plane of representation, perceiving a mediated reality that actually is a delimited virtuality. Combining these two ideas, Friedberg 2 Friedberg, Anne. Cinema and the Postmodern Condition, in Williams, Linda, 1946-. 1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60 3 Friedberg, Anne. 2006. The virtual window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. P. 138 2

defines the mobilized virtual gaze as a gaze that travels, in an imaginary flânerie, through an imaginary elsewhere and an imaginary else-when 4 This idea of an imaginary drift is, as a matter of fact, essential to the conception of Russian Ark. In this film the gaze of the spectator - embodied in the narrator s character - strolls the salons of the Hermitage along different periods of Russian History. The spectator becomes, inadvertently, a virtual flâneur who travels space and time through the rooms of the Winter Palace. That is to say, via the virtual threshold of the screen, the spectator s mobilized virtual gaze detours 5 in a virtual museum, in a virtual time sequence. In order to study and systematize this parallelism we can analyze, for example, the scene in the neoclassical sculpture salon. In this particular moment of the derive, the unseen protagonist (/camera/spectator) follows the European into the salon of XIX Century sculpture. The subjective protagonist, embodying the gaze of the camera (/spectators), tracks the objective protagonist, the European, who directs the mobilized gaze. As in the rest of the film, there are no visible cuts delimiting this scene, otherwise clearly demarcated by the spatial structure of the museum. The first aspect to point out is that, while in the beginning the European monopolizes the frame, he promptly shares the composition with the sculptures, only leaving the centrality of the frame to allow the mobilized gaze of the audience to wander over the pieces of art. 4 Friedberg, Anne. Cinema and the Postmodern Condition, in Williams, Linda, 1946-. 1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60. Although these imaginary temporal and spatial dimensions refer to the virtual window, it is not difficult to point out the connection with post-modern theory: if Foucault s heterotopia is the space of post-modernity, the mobilized virtual gaze is the mode of strolling through it. 5 Here we refer to the Situationists, to whom we will return later. 3

Shared framing The pronounced use of the zoom and the changes of field of view (the lensangle) accentuate an odd dreamlike sensation, as the camera follows the European meandering between the statues. After approaching Antonio Canova s Three Graces, he disappears from the image, while the camera tours across the masterpiece. This revolution around the statue conveys to the spectator a particular spatial reading of Beauty, Charm and Joy the graces of the classical myth. Interestingly enough, Canova s other version of the statue owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland has a rotating pedestal designed to convey the same effect registered by the camera. The singularity of this moment is further signaled by the dramatic lighting used to render the sculpture as opposed to the predominant emphasis on the natural illumination of the museum. 4

The Three Graces. The cinematographic recording of sculpture puts this scene into dialogue with Rossellini s visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Voyage in Italy. In both films, across the threshold of the screen, the gaze of the spectator wanders around a gallery of statues. Thus, through the artifice of cinema the embedded spatial diegesis of the sculptures becomes apparent, assuming protagonism in the scene. Blind woman. 5

Nevertheless, the contrast between those two scenes is noteworthy. The haptic condition of the experience in Russian Ark takes the topic of art in film to a dimension absent in Voyage in Italy. The introduction of the character of the blind woman (who is reading a statue) immediately after this fragment, emphasizes the intentionality of this sensorial quality. The use of a single point of view moving through the gallery, as well as other minor issues 6, confers a tactile expressiveness to the The Three Graces (and to the space of the Hermitage). Hence, the mobilization of the gaze introduces a further degree of complexity in the distortions of perception produced through the virtual window, making the eyes of the spectator seem to function like organs of touch. The diegesis overcomes and deflects the visual spectatorship, involving a tactile, corporal way of relating with the space in the virtual window. The mobilization of the gaze and its effects (this haptic activation of space) reflect the change of paradigm from modernism to postmodernism. Ironically, where Rossellini could play with elements such as the montage, the length of the takes, etc., in order to manipulate the narration of the sculptures, Sokurov faces the same challenge with one only shot, but supported by digital recording. Whereas the technique of montage is quintessential to cinema of the modern period i.e. Voyage in Italy -, the single shot used in Russian Ark apparently excludes it. Nevertheless, if we leave aside the technical resource and tackle the idea behind montage from Eisenstein s point of view - as the narration of a sequence through space then we could claim that Russian Ark not only 6 The digital effects added in post-production (in particular the changes of the field of view and the zooms), the rhythm and slight oscillation produced by the Steadicam, the framing, lighting and the narration. 6

comprises but emphasizes it. The aforementioned fragment, for example, contains a specific version of the statues spatial diegesis, registering a particular sequence of the many possible. A person visiting the Hermitage would have multiple alternative paths to walk through and read the sculptures. He would have to analyze each group in order to decipher it, whereas in the virtual nature of the cinema screen Sokurov already has chosen a particular choreography in space. Thus, the elements underline the link between mise-en-cadre and mise-en-scène, gathering a certain sequence into a single meaningful concept; and these diverse impressions pass in front of an immobile spectator. 7 Moreover, in Russian Ark the transition between rooms substitutes part of the narrative role of montage, while the digital post-production replaces montage as a technical centerpiece. For example - only during the scene in the statues room - the aggressive modifications of the field of view of the camera (paying with a wide-angle lens ) and the extensive use of zoom create a noteworthy visual variation. 7 Bois, Yve-Alain, and Eisenstein, Sergei. 1989 Montage and Architecture Assemblage, No. 10 (Dec. 1989), pp. 121 7

Zooming at the threshold. Manipulation of field of view/ lens. The use of a Steadicam and the absence of cuts suggest that those effects, repeated during the scene, in combination with the travelling of the camera 8

around the statues, have being added in post-production. In this sense, the use of digital technology does not lead to a lack 8 (but to a different kind) of editing. Thus, the absence of a modern montage-based coding produces a distinct visual language. If Post-modern cinematic spectatorship changed, in unprecedented ways, concepts of the present and the real 9, then Postproduction an editing method relieved from the use of discrete fragments of time and space reflects this mutation, as a new mode of composing visual language. From another point of view, in Cinema and the Postmodern Condition, Friedberg dissects this unprecedented change of the concepts of the present and the real. She identifies the most profound symptoms of the postmodern condition as the disappearance of a sense of history, entrapment in a perpetual present, and the loss of temporal referents. In this sense, it is not hard to identify that disappearance of a sense of history in Russian Ark, with a narration shifting between disjointed historical times without apparent difficulty. For instance, only within the context of the sculptures salon we notice the transition from the current time, before entering the room, and 1913 10 after leaving it. Another example of this distortion of the temporal line - within the same fragment - is the European s claim that Canova almost married his mother at the time of sculpting The Three Graces. A fact obviously impossible, were it not for the virtual window, given the span of time between 2002 and 1814, when Canova 8 As Sokurov may have wanted to claim. 9 Friedberg, Anne. Cinema and the Postmodern Condition, in Williams, Linda, 1946-. 1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60 10 This is the date of the last grand ball of the Tzars, which took place in the same ballroom of the recording. This event is present both in this scene when the guests are entering the Winter Palace and, later in the movie, the final ballroom dance itself. 9

made the sculpture. This post-modern disappearance of a sense of history, only implied in Voyage in Italy 11, is explicitly expressed and incorporated into the visual language of the film throughout the whole length of Russian Ark. In addition, the entrapment in a perpetual present is also embedded in the figure of the European, a character that, for an unknown reason, travels through time caught up in an enduring present in which the meaning of past and future collapse. The loss of temporal referents as a result of the two previous points, is clearly part of the spectatorship experience of the film. The continuous shift of the temporal timing of the narration, while the spatial placement and the works of art the Hermitage- seem to be perennial, introduces a sensation of discordancy among time and its referent, the space of the action. Moreover, not only are all of Friedberg s symptoms of post-modernity encompassed in the film, but there are a number of other references that we can evaluate that also support the direct presence of the Post-Modern sensibility in Russian Ark. In his essays 12 Frederic Jameson establishes an analogy between schizophrenia (as a language disorder caused by a break in the relations of signifiers) and post-modern subjectivity, which he characterizes by the collapse of temporality, the failure of the ability to locate or fix events historically, and the mise-en-abîme of referents lost in the labyrinthine chain of signifiers. Jameson s understanding of 11 Katherine comments that the men that existed two thousand years before were identical to the men of today, and that one would understand them perfectly 12 Postmodernism and Consumer Society, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. 10

temporality, past, present, future and memory as elements of a linguistic category, can be extrapolated to the filmic use (linguistic use) of those elements in Russian Ark. In this sense, Sokurov produces an etymological disorder by distorting the natural relation among the historical time of the scenes of the film, without the introduction of the conventional elements of cinematographic language to signify it (e.g. in flashbacks). As mentioned previously, within the fragment of the sculptures room there are two examples of such an operation 13. The result is a schizophrenic temporality linked to post-modern subjectivity as per Jameson s analogy. Once Friedberg s traces of Post-Modernity have been isolated within the narrative of Russian Ark, the following logical question concerns its cinematographic language: Are those traces also embedded in the visual appearance of the film? And, if they are, how can they be identified in it? The answer to this issue is, again, easier to pursue by a comparative methodology - for example counter-posing Russian Ark s one-shot recording with Neorealism s long take. In Russian Ark, the use of a High Definition digital recording on a Steadicam (personifying the point of view of an unseen observer) allows an extreme exacerbation of the long take even if not unedited. Rather than portraying the realism of Rossellini, through this operation a dreamlike atmosphere is captured. Andre Bazin depicted Rossellini s Voyage in Italy as a mental landscape at once as objective as a straight photograph and as subjective as pure personal consciousness. 14 In contrast with that, Russian Ark conveys a purely subjective, almost surreal, experience of space. The spectator perceives himself immersed in a state of suspended consciousness, trapped in the gaze of the camera, in a 13 The time period of the scenes before and after the room (2002/1917) and the impossible relation between Canova and the European s mother. 14 Bazin, André. What is cinema?. Berkeley,: University of California Press. P. 98 11

subjective space and time. Deprived of the alternation of points of view, a conventional reading of the scene becomes impossible, producing a disruption in the perception of the time and space embedded in the plane of representation. Hence, the stretch of the long durée to its technical limits paradoxically leads to an expression aloof from the fulfillment of the long take aesthetic. Thus, the tenacious use of the narrator s point of view (only suppressed when recording the ball) transforms and intensifies the distortions of the present and the real through the virtual window. Nevertheless, the contrast between the scenes with statues in Russian Ark and Voyage in Italy is not only in the exacerbation of the long durée, as we can establish, for example, by opposition with La Jetée 15. In that French movie, the length of the takes is reduced to still photographs 16 - as opposed to Russian Ark s long take -, and yet, paradoxically, La Jetee s surrealistic atmosphere is closer to the perception in Russian Ark than to Voyage in Italy. In La Jetée the mobilized gaze of the spectator wanders over the mummified images, deprived of the coding incorporated in the conventional filmic narrative. In Russian Ark, the mobilized gaze of the spectator wanders over the haptic space presented through the virtual window. Thus, two completely opposed techniques collapsing the montage into one only take, or activating the narration exclusively through montage cuts - produce a similar effect of semantic estrangement. 15 Marker, Chris,1921- direction., Davas Hanich, and Hé Chatelain. 1964. La jetee. France: Argos Films. 16 The same shot counter-shot between statue and character that Rossellini uses in the Archaeological Museum, is employed by Chris Marker in La Jetee - where he counter poses a bust with deformed eyes and the protagonist, who is being subjected to experiments. 12

This paradox is closely related to the idea of the mobilization of the gaze, not only over the virtual plate of the screen, but also on the temporal dimension. Both Russian Ark and La Jetée have in common an approach to the dislocation of spectatorship through virtual time and space. Aside from representing the post-modern loss of temporal referents, this specific kind of displacement refers to the idea of a Derive. Such a relation is supported not only by the temporal and cultural propinquity of La Jetée and the Situationists (both related to the France of the 1960 s), but also by the drift analogies and the underlying critique of modern society. La Jetée s travels in time and the Situationists derives alluded to the space of emotional disorientation of modern life. Analogously, like Guy Debord s psycho-geographic map of Paris, Russian Ark becomes a temporal detournement across the history of Russia and the salons of the Hermitage. Nonetheless, whereas in La Jetée the historical references of those temporal displacements are constrained within the modern period for some reason the protagonist only travels within that span -, the historical schizophrenia 17 registered in Russian Ark directly alludes to a Post-Modern sensibility. This subtle difference of temporal variation between the films can be related, once again, to Friedberg s model of rupture between Modernism and Post-Modernism. Regarding this fracture between the modern and postmodern periods, Friedberg notes how the cinema developed as an apparatus that combined the mobile with the virtual. Hence, cinematic spectatorship changed, in unprecedented ways, concepts of the present and the real. 18 In this sense, and following 17 As understood by Frederic Jameson. 18 Friedberg, Anne. Cinema and the Postmodern Condition, in Williams, Linda, 1946-. 1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60 13

our previous argument, Russian Ark s persistent emphasis on the mobilization of the gaze (and not only the exceptional duration of the take) is essential to the remarkable perceptional difference between Rossellini and Sokurov. Whereas in Voyage in Italy the gaze of the spectator is embedded alternatively by the main character and the statues, in Russian Ark it is restrained to the unseen narrator and his movement through space, thus stressing the mobilization of the gaze as the essential aspect of its visual language. In conclusion, it is possible to identify both Anne Friedberg s symptoms of Post-Modernity and her idea of a mobilized virtual gaze in Russian Ark, and to establish how this presence is only in embryonic in equivalent fragments of modern films like Voyage to Italy. Not only the extreme long durée or the absence of montage, but particularly the juxtaposition of the mobile and the virtual are responsible for an increased distortion of perception of the present and the real, reflected in outcomes as evident as a haptic activation of space or a temporal schizophrenia. These phenomena endorse Friedberg s hypothetical indistinct epistemological tear between modernity and postmodernity, indicating that the mobilized virtual gaze is a central feature of the Post-Modern paradigm. Alberto Montesinos 14

References. Bazin, André. 1918-1958. The Ontology of the Photographic Image, The Virtues and Limitations of Montage, In Defense of Rossellini in ed. (1967). What is cinema? Berkeley: University of California Press. Bois, Yve-Alain, and Eisenstein, Sergei. 1989 Montage and Architecture Assemblage, No. 10 (Dec. 1989), pp. 110-131 Friedberg, Anne. 2006. The virtual window : From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Friedberg, Anne. Cinema and the Postmodern Condition, in Williams, Linda, 1946-. 1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Giuliana Bruno, Ramble City: Postmodernism and "Blade Runner". October, Vol. 41. (Summer, 1987), pp. 61-74 Harvey, David, 1935-. 1990. The condition of postmodernity : An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Ivanov, Sergeĭ, Andrey Deryabin, Jens Meurer, Karsten Stöter, Anatoly Nikiforov, Aleksandr Sokurov 1951-, Sergeĭ Dont s ov 1941-, et al. 2002. Russian Ark. Special ed. New York: Wellspring Media. Marker, Chris, 1921- direction, Davas Hanich, and Hé Chatelain. 1964. La jetee. France: Argos Films. Rossellini, Roberto, 1906-1977, direction, Bergman, Ingrid,1915-1982, cast., and Sanders, George,1906-1972, cast. 1953. Voyage to Italy. United States: Brandon Films. 15