Filling in Gaps with Film: The Use of Film Material in the Museum

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Filling in Gaps with Film: The Use of Film Material in the Museum

Installation view of Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (Photo: Jason Mandella, MoMA. 2010)

Saskia Stekelenburg 10649263

Master Thesis Film Studies University of Amsterdam

Word count: 17360

Simplonbaan 391 3524 GH Utrecht saskiastekelenburg@gmail.com

+31617141365

Supervisor: F.J.J.W. (Floris) Paalman Second reader: A.M. (Abe) Geil

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Abstract

In a museum there are different objects that are involved in the museum's interest. In a museum with a collection of national heritage there will be art objects like paintings, in war museums you may find many weapons and costumes, and in a film museum films and film props will be exhibited. But films are not only part of the collection of film museums. They have increasingly become part of other kinds of museums, where they seem to be often used as demonstrative. This may not do justice to film as a historical document, to film as an informative document and/or to film as a museum artefact. In this thesis will be examined what position film has in the museum today and what potential film has as a museum exhibit.

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Acknowledgements

There are a couple of people I want to thank for their contribution to my research. In the first place I want to thank my supervisor for helping me decide on the subject of my thesis and for giving me advise along the way. He has shown helpful interest in my work that led me to write this thesis with motivation. I also want to thank Abe Geil for his inspiring and helpful course on research methods, which led me to one of my first theoretical starting points, and Catherine Lord, who gave an interesting course on research practices. Further, I want to thank the staff of the museum Tot Zover for their assistance. It is also important to thank my father and my mother for the time and effort they put in reading my thesis and giving their piece of advice shortly before I would hand the thesis to my supervisor and second reader. Then, last but not least, I want to thank the weather for not being too sunny and inviting.

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Introduction

In the Netherlands there are a couple of moving image archives, of which the archive of the Eye

Filmmuseum in Amsterdam is the best known. Other museums, even if their main interest is not film, often

also have a moving image archive with film material that is related to their collection. How such film material is put to use in the museum depends on how valuable it is considered for the museum exhibition.

There is uncertainty about the value of the films in such archives. Jan-Christopher Horak, director of a film and television archive in Los Angeles, thinks that “the constitution of an archive, and by extension a moving image archive, is determined in various measures by conflicting discourses in and through time” (VI). What an archive contains and how precise the content is examined depends upon what seems to be valuable in a certain context and time. Horak thinks an archive “stands in the society that places it in “a constant state of economic, environmental, technological, and existential flux that directly influences its position within the society at large and its effectiveness as an institution” (VII). The use of a moving image archive in a museum, and how a museum is constituted, also depends on societal factors, and an archive as part of a museum also depends on the economic, environmental, technological and existential flux of a museum. A certain value is given to film material as part of a museum, based upon the museum context and ideology. In many museums it seems that currently films are often used as demonstrative, and not considered valuable for their specific qualities. In this thesis will be examined which role film plays in a museum and if this role could be made more significant.

The ideology of museums and the museum space have changed in the many centuries of their existence. In the last 40 years there was a significant change in ideology when at the start of the 1970s there was a shift from old museology to new museology, in which new kinds of museums emerged and changes were made in the museum design. Another reason for change emerged two decades later, the 'experience economy'. In this economy museums have to compete with other forms of leisure to attract visitors.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the value of film as part of the museum today. The thesis is made to offer museum designers a document regarding matter as a result of research in the field of film studies. On the basis of this thesis the value of a film in the museum and film archive material can be reconsidered.

Theoretical Framework

For this thesis literary research in different fields of study is required. To acquire insight in today's museum context it is important to explore studies on museology and museum design. Museum scholar Julia D. Harrison wrote a piece on the museology of the 1990s, in which she, as an introduction, describes the shift to new museology. This museology has ever since remained in place and can be related to museums today. To examine this, studies about museum design offer a useful insight. For this, a study by museum scholars

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Suzanne MacLeod, Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale will be involved. Important terms in this study are narrative and dialogue, for in the new museology museum visitors were to be able to create their own narrative of their encounters on the basis of dialogue.

In the 1990s the ideology of museums was influenced by the experience economy, in which museums had to compete with other forms of leisure to attract visitors and so keep their heads above the water. B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore coined the term 'experience economy' at the end of the 1990s. Ten years later they took the relation between this concept and museums in consideration and suggested that museums offer an authentic experience, with the use of artefacts, edifices and encounters.

For a better understanding of the museum experience, in the second chapter this experience is examined on the basis of philosopher John Dewey's theories on experience and education. Authors among whom Ted Ansbacher and Eva van Moer consider Dewey's theories to be a useful example of how museums would be able to create an experience. Considering the process of 'inquiry learning' in the museum design seems to be one of the most effective ways to offer a visitor a memorable experience.

Museum design and museology influence everything placed in the museum. Film scholar Erika Balsom has written about the differences between the movie theatre context and the museum context. The spectatorship of film in a movie theatre context and in a museum context differ from one another. It is important to reflect on these differences to understand the possibilities of film in the museum.

In the fourth chapter the experience of film will be examined. Film scholar Vivian Sobchack has written a lot about film phenomenology; an approach in which the primordial experience of film is put forward. In this experience of film the body plays a significant part. The bodily experience of film quality will be further be put forward with the term hapticity. This term signifies the involvement of sight and touch that depends upon the quality of audiovisual material.

In chapter five the haptic and phenomenological qualities of film footage are put forward. Film scholar Janna Jones explains that when a viewer watches historical film footage a process of bifocality occurs, in which the viewer relates between the past on the screen and his own presence. This aspect of watching film footage is intertwined with the sense of memory. Film-maker and -scholar David MacDougall sees film as a memory form that offers an effective phenomenological experience. Relating film to memory can help examine film as a tool for dialogue and personal narratives.

The theoretical framework of this thesis will help to give insight in the museum of today, the experience in the museum, the film in the museum, the experience of film, and the experience of film footage. Step by step theories will be used to create a basis on which new argumentation can be built.

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Method

To demonstrate the role of a museum in society and to examine the above described theories in this thesis the Dutch funerary museum Tot Zover is taken into account. This museum focuses on Dutch funerary heritage and the modern varying funerals in the Netherlands. The museum is located on De Nieuwe Ooster, a cemetery in the east of Amsterdam. Tot Zover is a small museum that has four exhibition rooms of which one is a temporal exhibition room. The museum contains quite some audiovisual material.

Tot Zover is a museum with an interesting theme that at first may seem problematic in relation to the

concept of experience economy, because a funeral experience, so to speak, may be a bit too much. Nevertheless, this museum has characteristics that relate it to the new museology period, for example its environment. This will be researched first. Then, the museum will be researched on the amount of experience it offers, this will be done on the basis of the theory of Dewey, that was put in relation to museums by a number of scholars. After this there will an examination on the audiovisual exhibits in the museum, and then the audiovisual exhibits will be put in relation to the phenomenological experience of film. The audiovisual material in Tot Zover contributes to the research on the use of film in the museum.

In the last part of the thesis the possibilities for the use of film material will be examined. To figure out what film material can contribute to a museum exhibition it is important to consider the museum theme and its memorial environment. Throughout the thesis the theme of Tot Zover will be taken into account to a greater or lesser extent as demonstrative and to offer advice.

Structure

Chapter 1: The Role of Museums Today

In this chapter the following question will be answered: What position do museums have in society today? In this chapter new museology, the museum design and the experience economy will be discussed. These seem to be the most significant influences on museums today.

Chapter 2: Experience in the Museum

In this chapter the following question will be answered: How can museums offer an experience and what is the value of this experience?

In this chapter the museum experience is put in relation to Dewey's theory on education. On the basis of this theory insight will be gained on how museums are to provide an experience successfully. This will give a view on what experience in a museum comprises.

Chapter 3: Film in the Museum

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In this chapter the influence of the museum environment on film will be put forward. The position of film as part of a museum will be described, which shows what specifics should be considered when film is put in a museum.

Chapter 4: The Experience of Film

In this chapter the following question will be answered: How is film experienced?

The experience of film is put in relation to a phenomenological approach. This relation will then be linked to the museum experience, which offers insight in the possible contribution of film experience in the museum. Chapter 5: Film and Memory

In this chapter the following question will be answered: How is film put in relation to memory?

Film could be seen as a memory. The memorial aspect of film is interesting to consider while researching experience and film, and film in the museum.

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1: The Role of Museums Today

The context in which a film is shown influences how a film will be received. In this thesis the environment at stake is the museum space. Before going through the specifics and possibilities of film in the museum space it is important to know more about what a museum stands for today. Before getting to know more about how films are and can be part of a museum design, the way museums are designed and what they aim for should be considered. In this chapter the role of museums in society today will be taken into account.

The organisation in which everything that has to do with museums is discussed by and for museum professionals is the International Council of Museums (ICOM). It is an international organisation that is concerned about the conservation, continuation and communication of natural and cultural heritage and how this is delivered to society. On the website the statutes of the ICOM define a museum as follows:

A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment. (ICOM Statutes 2007)

This is the definition it has had since 2007 when it was formulated at the 21st_{General Conference in Vienna.}

This definition says above all that museums are meant to teach and entertain. How these functions are designed will be examined in this chapter.

1.1 New Museology

The thoughts and ideas about museums are most commonly referred to as 'museology'. Museums have existed and changed for a long time, but the most recent notable shift occurred in the 1970s when the ideology changed from 'old museology' to 'new museology'. Museum scholar Julia D. Harrison explains that the focus in old museology was on “the activities of trained professionals in collecting, documenting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting objects” (Harrison 47). These professionals are curators whose contribution decreased when new museology emerged. From then on museum design became driven by local communities, that for a long time had not been considered interesting audiences.

Before this museums were meant for the higher learning and the elite. This was a time in which curators were the gatekeepers that screened who could enter and who could not. At the start of the 1970s the focus on the elite became a problem. Museums were considered to be too isolated from the modern world and a waste of public money. Therefore the objects and works in museums had to be made accessible to the

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daily life of the masses. Harrison explains that there was an increasing focus on social subjects and the concerns of the visitors (47). In this period many 'ecomuseums' were established.

The ecomuseum movement originated in France, where the term was coined in 1971 by Georges Henri Rivière and Hugues de Varine. An ecomuseum is a museum that conserves, displays and explains the cultural heritage of a certain community to help develop and represent this community. It is rather proactive than reactive, and concerned with social, political and economic conditions of past, present and future (Harrison 47). Environmentalism, that came up in the 1960s, was also an inspiration for these museums to emerge. This meant that there was an increasing interest in elements as geological features and their plants and animal populations, but also the people that live there and their traditions. Paradoxically, while representing a community as a whole it was also important to focus on the differences between the people within a community. This was mainly due to policies on social inclusion, emancipation movements and the growing multiculturalism in Europe (Meijer-van Mensch 114). The museums thus started building their exhibitions around the many differences of a community, to please as many people as possible. The social range of the material displayed expanded. Putting these differences together on the basis of a community though, would all the more empower a community.

Museum scholar Max Ross claims that this consumer oriented style takes place in all kinds of museums, also national museums that have the space to combine old and new museology, but it were especially the local museums that became or were modelled to ecomuseums (Ross 86).

Tot Zover cannot be defined as an ecomuseum, but has characteristics of an ecomuseum. The

museum may in the first place rather be seen as a museum that serves national interests rather than local, but it is also concerned with the multiculturalism of the cemetery, for each culture's funeral rites are represented. In the museum there is a room that displays seven coffins in a row, containing items that are used when a person is buried in a certain culture. Each coffin represents a culture. In each of these coffins is a small screen showing a short documentary on the respective traditions that surround the funeral in a culture. The

interest in this is partly due to the fact that De Nieuwe Ooster allows for anyone to be buried or cremated there in their own way, according to their own culture. The museum meets the interests of the visitors in the

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cemetery and thus of the community that chose the cemetery as a final resting place for their loved one(s). The museum is concerned with the life and culture of the visitors of its environment and thus has characteristics of an ecomuseum.

Even though the characteristics of Tot Zover are in line with those of ecomuseums, the museum did not open its door sooner than in 2007. It was the first funerary museum in the Netherlands. According to the director of the similar German Museum für Sepulkralkultur (Museum of Sepulchral Culture), Reiner Sörries, museums about funerals and death are relatively new because the attitude towards the theme changed and became more accepted in the twenty-first century (deathreference.com). Many of these museums were opened in the run-up to the twenty-first century in the 1990s, two decades after the museological shift towards new museology.

Even though Tot Zover is in a way rather involved with daily death than with daily life, it has positioned itself in a relevant environment, and death is also part of daily life. The museum attracts among others people that visit the cemetery. It adapts to the environment that offers the visitors of the cemetery a better opportunity to visit the museum than if it would have been situated elsewhere.

1.2 The Museum as a Narrative Environment

To attract many different kinds of people, museums today do not only pay attention to historical information and objects. To deliver an understanding of funerals and death the museum Tot Zover does not only place objects in glass cases with a description alongside it. One of the most important ways to attract a variety of people is to offer a space of encounter and dialogue. Museums have to open up to “cultural empowerment and multi-vocal interpretations” (Ames 161). According to museum scholar Léontine Meijer-van Mensch “the ideal expression of the new paradigm is a museum that genuinely opens up its narrative for user-generated content and co-creation” (114). Museums are to capture more than one truth or one set of facts so that visitors can tell their own stories. The dialogue paradigm was first institutionalized in ecomuseums and local museums at the beginning of the 1970s. In the first decade of the twenty-first century it has been adopted by other museums (Van Mensch 2005).

Narrative in museums has for a long time been associated with top-down macro stories, dominant versions of a story that were linear and that silenced the experiences and values of others (MacLeod, Hourston Hanks and Hale xx). The possibility for multiple narratives is important because it can cause the visitor to personally engage and thus connect to his daily life. According to Suzanne MacLeod, Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale narrative captures something about what it is to be human. The people's perception of themselves and the world is structured around stories. Narratives can fill gaps between past and present, between cultural and physical, and between the different media in museums. Besides, because narratives are constructed by human beings they also create gaps, for there are contradictions in the various interpretations. The meaning people will attribute to what they encounter differs from person to person. The

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different possibilities for narratives can engage the visitor in an inspiring and revealing dialogue. The problematical gaps can have a positive outcome.

Whereas storytelling in literature is determined and confined by the linear arrangement of text on a page; in cinema to visual images on a screen; and in traditional theatre to the static audience with its singular perspective, the museum represents a fully embodied experience of objects and media in three-dimensional space, unfolding in a potentially free-flowing temporal sequence. (MacLeod, Hourston Hanks & Hale xxi)

The visitor participates in the space of the museum, in which objects and media offer them impressions that cause them to create a personal narrative. At the same time the narrative characteristic of literature, film and theatre is an example for the experience that is offered. Such narratives are created to entertain and offer an experience. But these narratives are scripted and those the museums aim for are not.

Silke Arnold-de Simine agrees that exhibitions and museums could be seen today as narratives that challenge conventional codes of perception. “By granting a voice to what has been left out of the dominant discourses of history and of everyday experiences, they try to integrate diversified and sometimes even incompatible narratives” (Arnold-de Simine 14). A museum is not to form a synthesis any more.

Arnold-de Simine explains that this new way of shaping museums caused 'memory museums' to emerge. These museums were about history, but not just about academic and institutional history, they also had a paradigm of memory that allowed for a wide range of stories about the past (Arnold-de Simine 15). Visitors could use their own memories to create personal meanings of what they saw.

A memory is what keeps a deceased person vivid. Memories are also kept with the help of different items and places, depending on culture and time. Photographs and films are good examples of what is used to keep a memory and a cemetery is a place where the deceased will be remembered. The grave or urn is a final resting place, but also a tool of memorial, a tool to honour a person. The gravestone, the flowers and items on the grave are symbols of the memorial. The visitors of the cemetery who visit the museum are already in a state of memorizing. With this state of mind they enter Tot Zover.

Many of the items in the museum are, like the graves, also items for remembrance. Almost every object that is involved with death and funerals has to do with memorizing. Examples of these are mourning-clothes and jewellery, death masks, and objects that are used in rituals and traditions to honour the deceased.

Tot Zover may not be a memory museum, for it does not deliver a history, but then again it is; one of the

main subjects is memory and visitors can relate to their encounters on the basis of their own memories. When visitors can be in dialogue with their surroundings it makes them participants of an exhibition. They integrate their own memories into the exhibition and the exhibition becomes memorable itself. The need for the possibility to participate increased when museums suddenly had to compete with other institutions offering experiences, like theme parks and shopping malls. To keep their heads above the water

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financially and to continue the cooperation with their stakeholders museums had to compete with other forms of leisure in a period known as 'the experience economy'.

1.3 The Experience Economy

B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore coined the term 'experience economy' in 1998. They described it as an upcoming economy, in which consumers desire experiences which businesses provide. Since then, not only goods were commodities, experiences were too. Companies started wrapping their products in experiences in order to sell better. According to Pine and Gilmore “an experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as a stage, and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates a memorable event” (1998, 98). Pine and Gilmore argue that experience often works as a 'guided transformation' that invites costumers to play a role in a script that is incomplete without them. The experience is designed and the participants play a part in this design (Pine II and Gilmore 1999, 168).

It seems that museums then already had made a good start trying to engage their visitors by offering a platform, on which multiple interpretations could be made in a memorable way. In memory museums people are not only to take a memorable event with them, but also to use their own memory in the visit, making it more memorable because the museum is linked to their memory.

Museums do not only want visitors to participate, they want them to create. Therefore, unlike the experience that Pine and Gilmore describe, the experience in a museum should not be pre-designed. With the need to engage visitors personally and to invite them to give their own meaning to what they encounter, the experience can not be fully decided on beforehand. With visitors creating their own stories, museums are able to offer authentic experiences that differ from pre-scripted ones.

In a more recent article on museums in the experience economy Pine and Gilmore argue that people buy experiences on the basis of how true or untrue they are, “museums must therefore learn to understand, manage and excel at rendering authenticity” (2007, 76). They claim that “museums can render themselves, phenomenologically, as authentic” (Pine and Gilmore 2007, 78). Visitors like to feel that what they experience is real; their own narratives are more real than anything else in a museum. According to Pine and Gilmore there are three primary levels that museum curators should consider: artefacts, edifices and encounters (Pine II and Gilmore 2007, 76).

Unlike other businesses that have artificial props, museums have real artefacts. Those do not offer authenticity or truth themselves, but are important in the experience of the museum. Artefacts, according to Pine and Gilmore, are products of artifice, “if not at their creation or when in situ, then when artificially placed within the confines of a museum” (Pine II and Gilmore 2007, 78). They are taken from their original context and placed in the context of the museum. Such objects are important for an exhibition. In museum

Tot Zover the coat of an undertaker's man or a nameplate of an undertaker's business are examples of

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in turn changed by the context they are placed in, for they have been given a museal value.

Edifices, or buildings, have an engaging value. The environment offers an experience in itself. The architecture scholar Michael Benedikt explains that people have valuable experiences even by perceiving the neutral world, by perceiving

the sun glistening on the street after the rain fell, or by seeing the roundness of an apple. Then the world is meaningful, while not symbolic. These examples are not signs to other meanings, but are moving and independently meaningful. Benedikt writes that “we build our best and necessary sense of an independent yet meaningful reality. In our media-saturated times it falls

to architecture to have the direct aesthetic experience of the real at the centre of its concerns” (Benedikt 4). Considering these experiences architecture can add to an experience, guiding people by cohering objects and artefacts. The environment of a museum, the architecture, is naturally meaningful.

Tot Zover is situated in two buildings, of which the architecture relates to the environment. One of

the buildings was built in 1892 for the gravedigger to live in, the other was added later. In the oldest building there are subtle signs that relate to the surroundings of the building, for example the decorative flower designs that relate to the flowers on the graves of the yard. The other building is very transparent with a lot of glass and steel. A glass corridor links the two buildings together. The architects of the newest building, Harry Kerssen en Arie Graafland, wanted it to sink into the ground, probably to refer to the coffins sunk in the ground of the yard, for just like the coffins the building is then embedded in the earth. On the roof of this building is a lot of covering that underlines the connection with the earth (totzover.nl). This refers to what happens when a coffin has been put in a grave or when gravestones are neglected. In these cases nature slowly takes over.

The third level to be considered according to Pine and Gilmore are the encounters with the artefacts. It is what the dialogues and narratives people create in a museum are based on and emerge from “who we are, what we've experienced before, our mood at the time, whom we're with and a host of other factors” (Pine II and Gilmore 2007, 78). They are what visitors of museum Tot Zover can relate to with their memories and background. Nothing in the museum is more real than the meaning visitors give to what they see. Their own

The Dutch funerary museum Tot Zover in Amsterdam (http://www.museum-amsterdam-openingstijden.nl/, 2014)

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stories are made with their background and the artefacts in a certain environment.

1.4 Conclusion

The museum Tot Zover was created during the still current period of thoughts and ideas referred to as new museology that started at the beginning of the 1970s. In this period, in which it was important to attract other people to the museum than the elite, ecomuseums emerged. These are local museums, in which communities and their concerns and development are represented. Local visitors can engage to these museums on the basis of their daily life and surroundings. Tot Zover is not an ecomuseum for it does not represent a community, nevertheless it represents its surroundings and has characteristics of an ecomuseum.

With the start of new museology, multi-culturalism and other differences between people increased. Museums, among which ecomuseums, responded to this by offering a space for multi-vocal interpretation. Museums became a platform for micro-narratives. Visitors were to be able to make up their own stories on the basis of their background. In this course also 'memory museums' emerged. In these museums histories are not delivered on the basis of one dominant historical story, but on the basis of personal memories. With their personal memories visitors can engage with the museum's theme. Tot Zover is a museum that attracts people that carry memories. The museum attracts visitors of the cemetery. These people are at a place of memorial where they can enter a museum that offers them encounters, with which they can relate to the place of memory and their own memories. When visitors can participate on the basis of their own background it makes them experience their visit in an authentic way.

Even though museums from the start of the 1990s on had to start competing with other forms of leisure, they already created their own kind of experience. Pine and Gilmore explained in 2007 that through artefacts, edifices and encounters, museums are able to offer something real to their visitors. In this way museums are can offer an authentic experience. It is slightly confusing since the new museology discourse already introduced this possibility while it started twenty years before the experience economy emerged. If this is the way to compete with other forms of leisure, then many museums already did so before the experience economy emerged. Maybe the only way to compete other forms of leisure is to mimic them. But is that what a visitor is looking for when visiting a museum? Is that what a visitor wants when entering museum Tot Zover? Thankfully museums can offer an experience in another manner. Offering authentic experiences based upon personal backgrounds seems more suitable for museums than the experiences theme parks offer. To benefit from this possibility there are theories and ideas on how to incorporate this possibility in the museum design. These theories and ideas will be made more explicit in the following chapter.

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2: Experience in the Museum

The experience a visitor can have in a museum is created when he is able to engage with his encounters and give meaning to these encounters on the basis of his background and past experiences. How can exhibition designers create an engaging surrounding for the visitors? And what is the experience worth after the visitor left the museum? In this chapter the theories and ideas about experience and the museum design will be examined.

2.1 The Quality of an Experience

In 1938 the philosopher John Dewey wrote the book Experience and Education. According to Dewey all genuine education comes about through experience. How much education is acquired depends upon the quality of the experience. “The quality of any experience has two aspects. There is an immediate aspect of agreeableness, and there is its influence upon later experiences” (Dewey 1938, 27). Museum scholar Ted Ansbacher writes that these aspects of the quality of experience can be applied to museums as follows:

1.

“The visitor interacts with the exhibit and has an experience.”

2.

“The visitor assimilates the experience so that later experiences are affected.” (Ansbacher 38)

Ansbacher thinks hat these aspects help to assess a museum experience. The goal of an exhibition is usually about the outcomes, about “what it is intended visitors will know (cognitive) or feel (affective) or be able to do (performance) as a result of visiting the exhibition” ( Ansbacher 39). But to obtain these outcomes there should also be a focus on the experiences themselves. This is why it is important to give visitors the ability to interact by having the opportunity to engage with their background and create dialogue with their encounters.

2.2 Educative and Mis-Educative Experiences

Dewey makes a clear division between two kinds of experiences. The first kind are experiences that enhance later experiences, these are educative. An educative experience prepares a person for richer experiences in the future and broader possibilities. Those are the quality experiences as described above. Experiences that have no further influence on later experiences are 'mis-educative'. Museum scholars Eva van Moer, Tom de Mette and Willem Elias link these two forms of experiences to information-based exhibits in museums and experience-based exhibits in museums. Information-based exhibits deliver information that is pre-defined, for example informational texts and a linear exhibit with artefacts and objects in a display. In these cases information is delivered to the visitor, but the visitor will not react to it with personal engagement.

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Information-based exhibits do not open up to further growth (Van Moer, De Mette and Elias 44). According to Robert L. Russell an information-based exhibit will only be effective when the exhibit is of great interest to the visitor, or when it is part of an exhibition that is experiential. It is also effective when the visitor can analyse it as part of its environment (Russell 1). It could then be argued that any museum built with the paradigm of new museology can have information-based exhibits that are still effective. Ecomuseums are known to be embedded in their environment. Every exhibit in these museums are then part of a larger experience. Together with memory museums, ecomuseums are also known to be able to engage visitors through their background and memories that cause their interest in the exhibits to be triggered.

The objects displayed in glass cases in the museum Tot Zover are information-based exhibits. They are the artefacts that Pine and Gilmore wrote about. They are there to inform people about the theme, but offer a value to the entire exhibition and the surroundings increase their value. The cemetery, on which the museum is located, gives the exhibition an atmosphere that is influential as an aesthetic edifice. Visitors of the museum will more directly perceive the objects, for they observe them in a surrounding they can relate them to. The environment of the museum works involving and visitors will engage with the objects through their own memories and background.

2.3 An Even Larger Experience

When a museum is part of an institutional cooperation the experience is even broader. Today museums are increasingly cooperating with other institutions. In 2012 Tot Zover has cooperated with the Tropenmuseum that is also located in Amsterdam. People could buy an exclusive arrangement to visit both museums and join guided tours through two exhibitions: Afterlife in Tot Zover and De Dood Leeft (Death Lives) in the

Tropenmuseum. In Afterlife, art about the final destination was shown with artworks that put the question if

there is an existence after death. This exhibition aimed to provoke questions such as,' is there a God?', and 'are the body and the soul two separate entities?'

In De Dood Leeft visitors could experience how relatives of deceased people deal with death in different cultures. The different views on death, saying goodbye, mourning and commemorating were put forward on the basis of personal stories, films, objects and contemporary art. Linked to this exhibition a magazine with the same name was published in which there is a section with a selection of books and films about death. It is not surprising that there is an interest in such media, for in these media death is a common theme. The plots of the books and the films are related to the exhibition theme. They are about preparing for death, what comes after death, and dealing with the loss of a loved one. The film selection contains for example the Dutch film Simon (E. Terstall 2004), about a man, Camiel, who after twelve years meets a former friend who's suffering from cancer. From Camiel's perspective Simon's journey towards death is shown. Another film in the selection is What Dreams May Come (V. Ward 1998). It is a film about a family, of which the two children and the father, Chris, die. While they end up in heaven, the mother of the family

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commits suicide and ends up in hell. When Chris learns this he tries to save her soul. Also part of the selection is the directing début of Tom Ford, A Single Man (2009), about the homosexual professor George who has difficulties dealing with the loss of his partner. These three films respectively deal with the themes of suffering towards death, what comes after death and dealing with the loss of a loved one.

The fact that subjects regarding death are a common theme in fiction causes Tot Zover to us it, putting it rather crude, to their advantage when institutional cooperation is concerned. The museum recently started a cooperation with the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. From the 19th_{of December 2013 until the end}

of the summer of 2014 Tot Zover organizes a series of exhibitions called The Last Image. The Eye

Filmmuseum will show a film program that is related to the theme of this series of exhibitions. A 'last image'

can be a photograph or film footage of a person who died just after the photo was taken or the film was shot. As part of the exhibitions Tot Zover has filled a wall with the last images of people, taken just before they died. On one photograph there is a little boy with his big brother who would die short after in the 9/11 terrorist attack, and there is also a still from a surveillance camera that recorded a woman in the supermarket with her 'lover' hours before he would kill her to lay hands on her life insurance.

As mentioned before, the aesthetic experience, the atmosphere and the unconscious associations one has with the environment of Tot Zover in combination with its engaging platform will make visitors engage with the images on the wall. The people on these photographs, so is learned, were about to die. These images have a certain value as artefacts that are part of the museum. The Eye Filmmuseum is also a museum, but with a different theme and environment. The films of the film programme are shown in a movie theatre in the museum. This causes the people to experience images of death in a different manner than when they see such images in Tot Zover. Of course the people in the photographs on the wall are people that have truly died and most of the films in the film programme in the Eye Filmmuseum are fiction, so the people in these films just acted like they died. But even the few documentaries shown in the film programme, in which real people's last images are shown, will be experienced differently than the images shown in Tot Zover. This is partly due to the fact that the environment of a movie theatre causes the films to be associated with the unreal. While the museum Tot Zover and its environment causes images to be associated with the real. As Pine and Gilmore explained, museums are able to provide real. In some cases it could provide the visitor in Tot Zover with the consciousness of being alive among the death. Being able to form narratives says something about what it is to be human, and also about what it is to be living. This causes the visitor to create an understanding of death. As part of a museum exhibition a fiction film may also evoke such creation of meaning, but also by putting fiction film in relation to Tot Zover, as part of an institutional cooperation, the experience will be affected. Watching the film programme after visiting Tot Zover changes the experience of the film programma. The memorial experience that is acquired in Tot Zover is then taken by the visitor to the Eye

Filmmuseum. The experience of the Eye Filmmuseum in turn is taken to Tot Zover.

In this way these institutions are interrelated and create more effective experiences as part of a larger experience. Visiting the series of exhibitions in Tot Zover and the film programme in the Eye Filmmuseum offers the ability for a lasting experience and a lasting image.

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The opportunity to relate between institutions, but also between different exhibits, offers the visitor the opportunity to create an authentic experience wherein more than one institution and more than one exhibit is involved. In fact, it could be argued that even a city as a whole offers an environment that influences the experience of different institutions together. Amsterdam, where the museums mentioned are located, as a city has a certain aesthetic experience. This could then also be influential on the experiences in the institutions. The aesthetic experience of a place always offers in a greater or lesser extent an influence on the experience of visitors.

2.4 Inquiry Learning: Unusual Encounters

Dewey goes deeper into educative and mis-educative experiences and the influence of a person's background on an experience by naming two guiding principles that show if experiences are educative or not: continuity and interaction (1938, 44). The principle of continuity is concerned with the past. It means that an experience takes something from what has been before and changes the quality of experiences to come (Dewey 1938, 35). The principle of interaction is concerned with the present. It means that an experience is what it is because of a transaction that takes place between an individual and what his environment constitutes at the time (Dewey 1938, 43). The environment is not only the physical surrounding, but also the people one is talking with and the book one is reading at the time. Other than the influence of the environment, visitors are affected when they talk to other people, by the temperature and noise of a room and by how mobile or immobile they are. In Tot Zover the visitor may feel the natural urge to keep quiet. This is due to the environment. In many museums you should not speak up, for people are contemplating what they encounter and on a cemetery you should not speak up for people are 'resting' there. Other visitors will not influence as much as the quietness. Even while visitors do not visit on their own this causes them to have a personal experience, in which they are immobile and watch everything in their own pace.

On a dreary day the temperature in the museum is low. Two of the rooms in the museum have white walls. One of them is the room in which temporal exhibitions take place. The other one is the room with the coffins with cultural items surrounded by some other objects. These objects, like the objects in the coffins, have to do with funeral rites. In a significantly darker room objects are shown that have more to do with the buried or cremated people and the mourning process afterwards. The darkness of the room can give a sense of entering a crypt. Displayed are death masks, photographs of dead people, hair pieces made from hair of the deceased, and mourning-clothes. These objects could be disturbing and give a feeling of unease. A death mask is a mask made of wax or plaster that is modelled on a person's face after he or she has died. These masks were made as mementos of the deceased or to model for the creation of a portrait of the deceased. It may vary from person to person, but especially the death masks of little children that are displayed can be quite disturbing. This disturbance can be very effective. Dewey explains that the nature of an experience is to be

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problematic and emerges when the normal flow is interrupted by something out of place (1910, 11). When this happens, growth occurs. People then have to reflect on a problem to make it clear to themselves. They then can replace the unease by satisfaction.

Inquiry learning can for example also take place when a visitor of Tot Zover encounters the miniature funeral coach models that are displayed in the room with the coffins. These objects can raise several questions. The existence of miniature car models is known, but who expects the existence of miniature funeral coaches? And why are they made, and who would want to have these in his collection? When exhibits raise questions they cause an effective dialogue according to which the visitor creates his own meaning. This makes the encounter more memorable.

The process of inquiry learning goes in a spiral. The satisfaction is the new basis for further experiences and problems. Van Moer, De Mette and Elias agree and suggest that “in order to enable visitors to have future experiences, museums should make exhibitions and develop educational means that lead to inquiry” (48). “Theory without a problem, like an answer without a question, is no cause for inquiry and no cause for interest” (Hennes 112). Museum scholar Tom Hennes thinks that if museum design is approached with the idea of inquiry, the exhibit developer does not have to make the content accessible to each visitor's own experiences. “It is to fashion engaging problems out of the visitors' own experience, through which visitors are motivated to draw upon the material resources of the exhibit in a desire for resolution” (Hennes 112). The problems that are assembled should be sufficiently meaningful to capture the visitor's attention, but do not have to be modelled to the visitor's background and past experiences.

2.5 Conclusion

As Ted Ansbacher explains, the quality of a museum experience depends on the interaction people have with the exhibits and how this interaction affects further experiences. Van Moer, De Mette and Elias have linked such educative experiences to experience-based exhibits. There are also mis-educative experiences. These do not engage the visitor and could be linked to information-based exhibits. When such an information-based exhibit is part of an experiential exhibition it can still be educative because visitors can engage to these as part of a broader experience. The environment of a museum can create the museum to be experiential as a whole. Tot Zover has an environment and an aesthetic that causes the visitor to easily engage with what he encounters. An experience can be made even broader when institutions cooperate and refer to each other. By co-operations with institutions such as the Tropenmuseum and the Eye Filmmuseum, Tot Zover attracts

A bouquet made of hair, a funerary urn and a death mask from the collection of Tot Zover (www.totzover.nl, 2014)

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visitors that take an experience from another context to it's collection and the other way around. When one takes his experience of The Last Image from the film programme in the movie theatre of the Eye

Filmmuseum to the museum Tot Zover, in this context of real experiences the idea of 'the last image' could be

more disturbing. This is extra effective for encounters that disturb and raise questions are very memorable according to Dewey. In this process of inquiry learning people have to make themselves understand what they see and give a meaning to it. When one has made the encounter familiar for himself this familiarity and understanding becomes the basis for new problematic encounters.

The satisfaction that is created in this process is related to the idea of edifices being meaningful themselves. Being familiar with a place offers a certain feeling about it. Having visited one place, a person takes this feeling, this consciousness, with him to an other context. There are many environments that people are familiar with, like movie theatres, museums and cemeteries. They are familiar for they have already been experienced. This causes an aesthetic experience that is present and that differs per place, but can work as an experiential surrounding.

When institutions work together visitors are inspired to visit both. While museums work together with what are so often called their competitors, they take advantage of the experience economy. Of course the Eye Filmmuseum is also a museum, but their movie theatre creates a different environment for The Last

Image than Tot Zover does. The experience from a museum is different from most experiences in other

institutions. The environment influences how the theme is considered and how films are considered. In the next chapter the influence a museum has on film will be further examined.

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3: Film in the Museum

The movie theatre has for a long time been the dominant exhibition context of film, but for quite some decades now it is a less common site for moving images. Film has migrated to many different exhibition contexts including the museum. What happens to film when it is put in the museum context? In this chapter the influence the museum context has on the spectatorship and specifics of the medium is treated.

3.1 The Movie Theatre Context and the Museum Context

Film scholar Erika Balsom writes about the differences between the movie theatre context and the museum context. As Balsom states, incorporating film in a museum changes the museum most significantly for it makes the collection more varied. In turn the spectatorship of film is changed when it is put in the museum (Balsom 25). Watching film in the architecture of a movie theatre elicits a certain mode of spectatorship that does not persist in the museum.

There are significant differences between the movie theatre and the museum that influence the spectatorship of film. In the cooperation between Tot Zover and the Eye Filmmuseum the theme of the The

Last Image has been placed in both these environments. In the previous chapter has already been explained

that films, like other objects, in the context of Tot Zover are part of an experience that enables visitors to participate and give meaning to their encounters based on their own background. But the museum context also differs in more practical manners from the movie theatre. Balsom names a couple of aspects in which a museum context differs from a theatre context.

In the theatre the spectator is immobile, while in the museum the spectator is mobile. In the movie theatre the exhibition rooms are darkened, while in the museum they are most often lighted. The size of the screen in a theatre is bigger than the screens that are used the museum most often are. Furthermore, in the theatre the temporality of the film cannot be controlled, while in the museum there may be an option to rewind, pause or fast-forward a film (Balsom 27).

The mobility and the possibility to see more than just one screen gives the museum visitor more freedom than the movie theatre visitor. Having the opportunity to walk away and being able to see other artefacts surrounding the screens, because the light in the room is on and the screen will not fill the range of one's vision, does not provide the spectatorship that exists in a movie theatre context. The architecture of, and the screen in a movie theatre contributes to the original mode of film spectatorship. In this mode of spectatorship shot-reverse shot structures and eye-line matches are important aspects. These aspects are involving the spectator in the narrative. This involvement is pre-scripted and causes a collective experience. This experience differs from the museum experience that is authentic and differs from person to person. Visitors are given the ability to create their own narrative about what they encounter. When films are placed

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in a museum, visitors are rather immersed in their own experience and the relation they have to what they encounter, than that they are immersed in the film. Therefore museum visitors will not feel like watching a screen for too long. Just as any other artefact in Tot Zover a fiction film could provide a truth and visitors can give a meaning to them, but it is mostly the practical matters that cause fiction films not to be suitable for the museum space.

According to film scholar Dominique Païni museums rather display screens that are not meant for moviegoers. Culture scholar Irmgard Emmelhainz agrees with this and states that nowadays it seems that “it is the duration of the spectators' physical itinerary that determines the duration of the narrative of the film and thus, the meaning of many films shown in museums depends on the viewer's self-directed wandering about the gallery or museum” (5). The mobility of the museum visitor influences the time a visitor takes for a screen. As Emmelhainz mentions, this has an effect on the meaning that will be given to films. Visitors will form their understanding according to this kind of spectatorship. Fiction films or other films that take more than a couple of minutes thus can be effective, but screening them entirely will in most cases not contribute to the museum experience. The cooperation of Tot Zover with the Eye Filmmuseum offers the possibility to connect fiction films, watched in their entirety, to the museum. With this cooperation Tot Zover has enabled a connection to fiction film, while not incorporating it in their exhibition.

In the movie theatre of the Eye Filmmuseum the context contributes to the spectatorship of a fiction film. In their institutional cooperation the experience of watching the films in the movie theatre and the authentic experience in Tot Zover is intertwined. The two contexts provide a different value to film, but when the experiences of the movie theatre and the museum emerge in an overall experience every aspect that is part of this experience becomes more memorable.

3.2 Films in the Museum Context

There are different screens with audiovisual material in Tot Zover. Currently in the temporary exhibition room one of the series of exhibitions of The Last Image has been set up. It is an exhibition made by the Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué called The Pixelated Revolution. In this room there is one projection screen on the wall that is no bigger than a 50 inch screen. On this screen YouTube videos are shown, in which Syrian demonstrators have filmed their own deaths in the turbulent Syria of today. One of the fundamental ideas of the exhibition is that smartphones have become an extension of the retina. Each of the videos in this exhibition show the image of a shooter followed by the images a (phone) camera makes when it falls to the ground. In this case the last image is not an image of the person who dies, but the last image the person who dies saw.

The videos are short and suitable for the mobile spectator in the museum. They are engaging as part of the exhibition, but they also relate to the daily life of the modern consumer. The mobile phone has in many places on the world including the Netherlands become an extension of the retina. Beside that YouTube

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is a platform where any person can upload their videos on to be watched by anybody. It is a famous and widely used platform. YouTube is full of home videos of animals, children and others recorded with a mobile phone. This aspect of the modern daily life, that is a significant aspect of The Pixelated Revolution, makes the exhibition extra engaging.

Just as easily as one records his funny dog doing tricks, a person in Syria records his own death. The unease that occurs when seeing these disturbing videos invites the process of inquiry learning. Viewers then have to come to terms with these images. They have to reflect on them and assimilate what they see, which makes the images more memorable. What the viewers learn enhances their experiences in the future. These experiences may for example be involved with the Syrian revolution or with smartphones.

Part of the exhibition, and hung in the same exhibition room, are seven posters with stills of the shooters in the videos. In the film The Pixelated Revolution (R. Mroué 2012), Rabih Mroué describes his motivation for the exhibition. Mroué explains that he wanted to draw the attention to these shooters. These shooters are recorded by phones, by extensions of the retina that can do what the retina itself can not; record the last person someone sees, make an image of who is guilty of a murder. Even though the images of the shooters are of too low a quality to recognize the faces, Mroué wanted to pay attention to this phenomenon (The Pixelated Revolution, R. Mroué 2012).

In addition to the projected screen and the posters, at one side of a room flipbooks are displayed that give the visitor an opportunity to be active in operating the YouTube videos. It puts the visitor in charge and gives

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him the chance to manipulate the videos. When the booklets are flipped the images together show the videos. The visitor has the ability to add the audio of the flipbook film by pushing a button nearby each of the flipbooks. Curator and co-founder of the museum Babs Bakels explains that when a person operates one of the flipbooks he is playing with the last seconds of a person's life.

Below each flip-book is an inking pad with blue ink. When a visitor operates the flipbook, ink remains on his hands. Bakels explains that this causes the user to have a lasting reminder of what he has seen, as if there is blood on his hands (Kunstuur, Avro 2014). The possibility to pause and repeat puts the user in the position of deciding to play the video to the end, to the final shot, or to stop the video. The visitor of the museum interferes

physically and is in charge of what happens. Why go on filming when a gun is aimed at you? Being physically involved in these videos raises this question. Mroué asked himself this question too and suggests that the Syrian demonstrators kept filming because, as an extension of the retina, it feels rather as watching a film than as recording one. They feel as if they are watching a film and do not feel the danger.

Are the people who recorded these videos dead? Mroué explains that he does not know this for sure. According to Mroué the ones who recorded the videos may even have uploaded them on YouTube themselves. Nevertheless, his exhibition is very demonstrative for the position that the mobile phone camera has today. It records much of what the eyes see and thus records many things that otherwise would only be memories and would fade when someone dies.

The questions Mroué asks are interesting and explanatory of the exhibition. The questions that will be raised by the visitors in the exhibition are effective themselves, giving visitors a platform for dialogue. Knowing Mroué's motivation for the exhibition does not give away too much. Mroué himself does not even know for sure the answers to the questions he asks. The exhibition is meant to raise questions that visitors will give meaning to themselves.

The 22 minute film The Pixelated Revolution is shown as part of the exhibition, in a room that has characteristics of a movie theatre architecture. The room is small and darkened and has a couple of seats. The room forces the viewer to be immobile. The duration of the film does not suit the museum context. The aesthetic experience of the museum causes it to be less effective than it would have been if it was shown in a movie theatre. It may have been more interesting as part of the film programme in the Eye Filmmuseum,

A flipbook exhibited as part of The Pixelated Revolution (Photo: Haupt & Binder, universes-in-universe.org, 2014)

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where people will get more involved in Mroué's explanation and then will be more triggered to visit Tot

Zover. Still, audiovisual material in Tot Zover is never just information-based as part of a larger experience.

An information-based exhibit becomes more effective in an experiential environment, and as mentioned before, every exhibit in Tot Zover is part of an aesthetic experience and part of the institutional cooperation that forms a larger experience.

3.3 The Museum Visitor as Flanêur

Dominic Païni sees the museum visitor, watching multiple screens in a museum, as an extension of the 19th

century flanêur. Païni compares the spectatorship of these visitors to the window-display effect of the Parisian arcades in the 19th_{century. This comparison highlights the consumerist aspect of films in a museum.}

According to Balsom the concept of the flanêur does suit the museum visitor because of “the comparison between gallery spectatorship and window shopping” (31). Balsom argues that films and video offer an experience for they are spectacular entertainment that appeals to broad audiences. She explains that as part of the cultural industry it needs to gain a mass audience through this by offering spectacle. In this way films are part of the spectacularization of the museum (Balsom 36). Alexander Horwarth, the head of the Austrian Film Museum, says that museums use moving images as part of their shopping mall (Sperlinger and White 153).

Considered in this way films in a museum are seen as a means to attract visitors for their spectacle, but the authentic experiences that museums can provide are not so much created by spectacle. Also, the comparison to the flâneur is problematic. The literal description of a flâneur is someone who engages in aimless, pleasurable wandering (Benjamin 2002). The museum today does not want their visitors to be aimless, it wants them to be creating narratives. Media scholar Diane Charleson explains that therefore she would rather see a flâneur as someone who, as he drifts, collects and catalogues. That gives the flâneur a more active characteristic; he has the intention to be part of a particular place, undirected but with intent. “My flâneur wants to “read” a place, become part of it and create his own story” Charleson explains (21). A museum visitor does not have so much in common with a flanêur. In the environment of the museum the use of film does not have to be modelled to the use of films in other institutions and a film does not have to be spectacular to be part of the experience in a museum.

3.4 Conclusion

The context in which a film is shown influences how the film is experienced. The architecture of a movie theatre contributes to a certain mode of spectatorship, in which the spectator gets involved in the narrative. In the museum the visitor is mobile and will not watch a screen for too long. In the museum space visitors are

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rather involved in their own experience than in a film. Some films are more suitable for museums than others. In museum Tot Zover there are multiple screens that are not all equally effective. As part of the temporal exhibition The Pixelated Revolution the 22 minute documentary is shown in a darkened room. Even though being put in a movie theatre like context, as part of a museum exhibition it may not get the attention it deserves.

The rest of the films that are part of The Pixelated Revolution are more engaging for they raise questions that cause for a process of inquiry learning. The visitors will become familiar with what they see and can use this familiarity as a basis for later experiences. The visitors can relate the YouTube videos in this exhibition to the activity of recording and sharing videos online in their daily life.

The flipbooks displayed in the same room are to be operated by a visitor. When a visitor does this he is put in the position of the Syrian demonstrator who has recorded the video. The experience the visitor gets is not only the involvement in the video, but also the creation of the meaning he will attribute to the video. This will provide the authentic experience museums aim for.

The museum visitor watching film and other audiovisual material in museums is not like a flanêur, but a narrative creating person. As mentioned before, the museum should not mimic other forms of leisure to offer an experience. People do not come to the museum if they want to experience a theme park. Any film can work engaging, but will not be watched for too long. Therefore putting fiction films and other films that are too long for the museum space in connection to the museum in an institutional cooperation is an interesting option, in which the films, not suitable for the museum space, still get the attention they deserve. Their length, but also their spectacle, are more suitable the movie theatre. There is no need to mimic the movie theatre experience, when that is not what people came for and when there are other characteristics of film that offer an experience. In the next chapter these other characteristics of film will be made more specific.

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4: The Experience of Film

In the previous chapter the way a film is seen as part of a museum has been described. In Tot Zover a lot of audiovisual material is used, but not all material is equally effective. To demonstrate this even further in this chapter film experience will be examined. Considering film experience from an a film studies approach gives the value of film in an exhibition an extra dimension.

4.1 Film Phenomenology

The commonly known physical reaction that surprised audiences at the first film exhibitions at the end of the 19th_{century, is what audiences have been seeking for and still seek for in films today. Back then the audience}

would be thrilled by a train on the screen driving towards them, causing them a sense of fear that made them move away from the screen. These sensory reactions play a significant part in how film is experienced. Film scholar Vivian Sobchack explains that film is not just seen by our eyes, but felt by “our whole bodily being” (63). Film scholar Elizabeth Stephens writes “bodies, and more particularly their sensory perceptions, shape the way we make meaning and reveal the extent to what we see remains closely interconnected with how we feel” (530). According to Sobchack the idea that vision is always cooperating and exchanging with “other sensorial means of access to the world, a body that makes meaning before it makes conscious, reflexive thought” should not be dismissed (59). What Sobchack claims here is as important in film studies as it is in architectural and museum studies. Benedikt explains that some encounters have certain aesthetic experiences that are meaningful in themselves. Just as a person has aesthetic experiences of his environment, in the same way he also has aesthetic experiences of film. These experiences are unconscious and created by the entire body.

The ideas of Sobchack are drawn upon the philosopher Maurice Merleau Ponty's ideas about existential phenomenology, in which the role of the body is taken into account in perception and the construction of meaning. Merleau Ponty saw consciousness as an embodied awareness of primordial experience. On ground of this theory Sobchack wants to develop a phenomenological understanding of cinema. Sobchack wants film scholars to reflect closer on the experiences, and the recognition of the extent to which screen, senses, and signification transform each other. This approach is referred to as feminist phenomenology.

Feminist phenomenology destabilizes the dominant thoughts about cinema's effects on people and culture. This approach questions the linguistic and psychoanalytic understandings of cinema that are based upon conventions and cognitive patterns. It is a slightly problematic approach, for every response depends on the way senses are trained. Martine Beugnet writes that “even our most immediate response to films is dependent on the way our senses are trained, as well as the viewing habits and the cinematic knowledge and

Filling in Gaps with Film: The Use of Film Material in the Museum