IDEA Arts + Society (2003–) [Romanian/English]

Idea 36-37, 2010

Idea 35, 2010

“IDEA art+society is a multiannual publication produced by IDEA, Cluj. It is published under its current form since 2003.

Allegiance to the exigency of genuine theory – a theory which is, first of all, its own practice – this is the program of IDEA arts+society magazine. This means: the practice of the concerned eye, which can be rigorous solely through the unconditional solidarity with the concrete. It is a practice of thinking which is alien to any aestheticism, hostile to any institutionalized transcendence, immune to the biased fiction of ideological neutrality, and remote from the pernicious language of our contemporary culture of ‘experts.’ In brief, it is the practice of critical and defiant reflection, dramatically lacking in the intellectual-civic debates of present-day Romania.

The graphical and logical operator ‘+’ functions as the material figura of all these dimensions, to which we can add artistic education and the public influence of art. The various ways of deciphering this sign suggest the manifold articulations between the artistic and the social realm. That is, the political.”

IDEA artă + societate / IDEA arts + society
Editors: Bogdan Ghiu, Ciprian Mureșan, Timotei Nădășan (editor-in-chief), Alexandru Polgár, Adrian T. Sîrbu, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, Raluca Voinea
ISSN 1583–8293

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Edward S. Small: Direct Theory: Experimental Film/Video as Major Genre (1994)

“Undulating water patterns; designs etched directly into exposed film; computer- generated, pulsating, multihued light tapestries—the visual images that often constitute experimental film and video provide the basis for Edward S. Small’s argument for a new theory defining this often overlooked and misunderstood genre. In a radical revision of film theory incorporating a semiotic system, Small contends that experimental film/video constitutes a mode of theory that bypasses written or spoken words to directly connect Ferdinand de Saussure’s “signifier” and “signified,” the image and the viewer. This new theory leads Small to develop a case for the establishment of experimental film/video as a major genre.

Small contends that the aesthetic of experimental film/video would best be understood as a coordinate major genre separate from genres such as fictive narrative and documentary. He employs eight experimental technical/structural characteristics to demonstrate this thesis: the autonomy of the artist or a-collaborative construction; economic independence; brevity; an affinity for animation and special effects that embraces video technology and computer graphics; use of the phenomenology of mental imagery, including dreams, reveries, and hallucinations; an avoidance of verbal language as either dialogue or narration; an exploration of nonnarrative structure; and a pronounced reflexivity—drawing the audience’s attention to the art of the film through images rather than through the mediation of words.

Along with a theoretical approach, Small provides an overview of the historical development of experimental film as a genre. He covers seven decades beginning in France and Germany in the 1920s with European avant-garde and underground films and ends with a discussion of experimental videos of the 1990s. He highlights certain films and provides a sampling of frames from them to demonstrate the heightened reflexivity when images rather than words are the transmitters: for example, Ralph Steiner’s 1929 H2O, a twelve-minute, wordless, realistic study of water patterns, and Bruce Conner’s 1958 A Movie, which unites his themes of war-weapons-death and sexuality not by narrative digesis but by intellectual montage juxtapositions. Small also examines experimental video productions such as Stephen Beck’s 1977 Video Weavings, which has a simple musical score and abstract images recalling American Indian rugs and tapestries.

Small adds classic and contemporary film theory discussions to this historical survey to further develop his direct-theory argument and his presentation of experimental film/video as a separate major genre. He stresses that the function of experimental film/video is “neither to entertain nor persuade but rather to examine the quite omnipresent yet little understood pictos [semiotic symbols] that mark and measure our postmodern milieu.”

Publisher SIU Press, 1994
ISBN 0809319209, 9780809319206
122 pages

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Anri Sala: Entre chien et loup / When the Night Calls it a Day (2004) [French/English]

Cette publication a été réalisée à l’occasion de l’exposition de Anri Sala Entre chien et loup au Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris du 25 mars au 16 mai 2004. Pour la première fois, ce livre témoigne de la diversité de l’oeuvre d’Anri Sala, qui s’est imposé très vite comme un des acteurs majeurs de l’art d’aujourd’hui. Anri Sala, né à Tirana, en 1974, explore le politique dans un travail où la composante esthétique reste essentielle.

Contributions by Suzanne Pagé, Laurence Bossé, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Julia Garimorth, Patricia Falguières, Jacques Rancière, Israel Rosenfield, Alexandre .. Daniel Costanzo, Molly Nesbit, Philippe Parreno

This publication accompanies the exhibition of Anri Sala “Entre chien et loup” held by Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris from March 25 until May 16, 2004.
Coordination Julia Garimorth
Publisher Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2004
ISBN 388375806X, 9783883758060
200 pages

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