Firoza Elavia – Cinematic Folds : the furling and unfurling of images

Traditionally, the cinematic has been understood as the visual movement occurring from the rapid succession of one film frame to another. The notion of the cinematic in this book begins instead with an understanding that it is to be conceived as a mode of perception and experience of the world. Cinematic movement, it is argued, is what occurs in our perception of things, in the flow between the tangibility of the world, images (material/immaterial) and the mind. These infinite oscillations between world, image and mind, between what is mental and material and, what lies inside and outside film constitute the force fields of Cinematic Folds: the furling and unfurling of images. The zones between media experimentation, writing, reading and thinking come to resonate and flow with each other, enduring over the pages of this volume.

In the first section of this anthology, “Movement of Matter: Passion, Velocities and Rhythms,” the selected essays are inscribed by intensive movements that fold between sensations of horror, anxieties of abjection and, performance and sexuality among others. Each of the essays presents a possibility on the flow between matter-image (world) and image-matter (image). Drawing upon the construction of the world becoming-image and image becoming-world, the writers invite attention to the movements and relations between world, brain and image folding in and out of each other.

In the second section, “Invisible Spectrum of the Perceptible,” the writers are preoccupied with the impalpable life of images. These essays examine movements occurring in the interval between two images or movements or in that which occurs between world and mind. The writers signal the stops, gaps and transitions ensuing between things, drawing attention to immanent movement and to virtual time. Exploring the in between, these essays range from a discussion on colour theory, virtual cinécriture and atmospheric scores. (Firoza Elavia)