Shar(e)d Cinema

Starting from a feeling of absorption caused by the recurring image of glass particles floating in the air, Evan Calder Williams explores what he calls “shard cinema”(1). An image production that is obsessed with the depiction of particles while at the same time hiding its composite nature.Composition as a mode is what preoccupies him: the gathering of layers, sequences, locations and temporalities through a variety of devices that have at once become sites of transmission, surveillance and interference. A cinema that has lost its indexical nature, but can never quite hide its seams: disturbances, glitches, broken screens. A “Travelling” through light, against the grain of (film) history: exposure is far more than a technical concept (Ruhm, Truttmann).

The films in this program deal with the re-iterations moving images are currently going through as well as their socio-political entanglements: interferences created through copyright protection that are used as an artistic tool (Nsiah) and the calculated explosion of the former Kodak labs echoing through social networks (Schmid).

Which “shared” spaces does this kind of cinema produce? While the screen serves as a tool that separates us from what we see (Kutin/Kindlinger), cinema holds the promise of bringing together a community of spectators compelled by similar concerns (Pöschl) – not only in an architectural sense, but also with the narrations that shape national identities and self-definitions (Simku/Maier/Reiterer).

(1) Evan Calder Williams: Shard Cinema. London: Repeater Books, 2017.