The Time of Cinema: A Case Study of Temporality in Contemporary Art

• Author / Creator

  Cullen, Frances

• Recent decades have seen a pervasive ‘cinematization’ of the art gallery whose most acute symptom is a near-ubiquity of time-based media. This thesis is concerned with a body of recent media artwork that makes its relationship with cinematic forms and traditions explicit. Specifically, it explores the way that these works re-assess notions of cinematic time via three primary case studies (of Christine Davis’ Did I Love a Dream?, 2009; Jim Campbell’s Hitchcock’s Psycho, 2000; and Alex Prager’s Despair, 2010) and by referencing a diverse body of film theory from apparatus theory to Deleuzian philosophy. What are the implications of these investigations for an art practice invested in temporal aesthetics? To answer this question, these chapters address respectively three distinct but related ‘times of cinema’: that experienced as a condition of viewing, that produced by its image, and that of its acquired historicity in the face of cultural and technological obsolescence.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Gilles Deleuze
  • Media Installation
  • Film Theory

• Graduation date

  Fall 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3B902

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.