Event

The Traumatograph and Other Phantasmagoria

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Since image technology came into being, visibility has meant night or death, which amounts to the same. The spectral logic, that of the returned dead, runs through all cinematographic images. We turn an impossible gaze to the screen, in the darkness seeing stark images, phantasms, traumas, incisions, cuts that can run through body and eye. In this respect, the cinematographic experience was foretold, dreamed of, long before the strictly technical invention of the camera and the projector, as in the spectacles that used scientific knowledge, cinematic illusionism and sound effects, creating phantasmagorical and spectral representations, ectoplasms that frightened the audience.

Vargtimmen - After a Scene by Ingmar Bergman, Georg Tiller, Austria, 2010, video, 6 min.; Night Sweat, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Austria, 2008, 35 mm, 9 min.; Quando l’occhio trema, Paolo Gioli, Italy, 1989, 16 mm, silent, 18 min.; Traumatografo, Paolo Gioli, Italy, 1973, 16 mm, 25 min.; Spectrology, Kerry Laitala, United States, 2009, 16 mm, 11 min.; Phantogram, Kerry Laitala, United States, 2009, 16 mm, 9 min.; Entstehung von Wirbeln bei in Wasser bewegte Körpern, O. Tietjens and L. Prandtl, Germany, 1925, 35 mm, 10 min.