Master thesis | University of Amsterdam | Heritage Studies: Museum Studies
Author: Annabel Essink | 10345027 Supervisor: Dos Elshout
Second reader: Mirjam Hoijtink Date: 16 March 2019
Preface
Seven years ago, a fictional story I wrote was published for the first time, in the magazine of the national broadcast company I worked for. I remember the vulnerable yet powerful feeling of exposing an internal world. One of my colleagues at the time tried to convince me to go into filmmaking. “It generates the same feeling”, he said. “But then much stronger, because your internal world is not only captured by written words, but re-enacted entirely through the use of real objects, people and locations.” Sceptical at first, I immediately realised what he meant when I set foot on my own set. Physicality adds something unrivaled to the experience of a narrative. Our brain seems programmed to think, or at least believe, that what we can see and touch is truthful.
I like to think back to this realization as an early prediction of the future. After I completed an undergraduate in art history, I continued my studies with a master programme in museum studies, fascinated by the spacialization of collections. Alongside, I established the creative film production company Perrault Pictures, together with the colleague who planted the seed in the first place (and who is my fiancé today).
Last year, the two worlds found a common ground during the internship I took at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. I made acquaintance of the challenges and perspectives that come with the physicalization of intangible exhibition subjects, of which film is perhaps the most prominent, and developed the skeleton of this research - something I would not have been able to do without the open, welcoming attitude of Jaap Guldemond and Marjolijn Bronkhuyzen, who even let me spend my working hours on investigating this topic! Another big thanks goes to Freek Zonderland, who so patiently reviewed every new letter on the page, and Dos Elshout, who enriched me with his supportive advice. My final and major gratitude is for the Perrault cloud and crew, who kept me sane with creative nourishment and endless laughter.
Table of Contents
Preface………...2 Introduction………...4-12
Chapter 1: Please don’t touch. Fitting film in the fine art museum………...13-23 Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam
1.1 Proof of originality………...14 1.2 Fitting in the given framework……….18 1.3 Imagined touch……….21
Chapter 2: Interactions between the spiritual place and the movie theater………24-33 The National Museum of Cinema, Turin
2.1 Embedded rituals………..26 2.2 Worship of the object………28 2.3 The illusionist site……….20
Chapter 3: Surrealism versus hyperrealism: the camera as a weapon………34-41 La Cinémathèque, Paris
3.1 The art historical context..………..36 3.2 The societal context………39
Conclusions………...……….42-45 Bibliography………...46-53 Appendix……….54-65
Introduction
More than once, film museums seem to be elusive places, a hard to grasp no-man’s land of moving images. Visitors find themselves lost between immense screens and estranging artefacts, with no apparent chronologies or expected behaviours. Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam is the perfect example. Ever since the new museum building was created in 2012, the most commonly asked question at
the help desk has been Where can I find the museum? Even though the bright white eye shaped architecture (figure 1) breathes contemporaneity, the precise identity of the museum remains unclear at first sight.When people are asked for the reason of their visit, their expectations do often not meet the actual practice of Eye. Two main assumptions recur: first, that the museum is about the
creation of cinema, and second, that the museum offers a chronological walk through the history of moving images.1 Just like most contemporary film museums, Eye is neither. Instead, it offers a podium for prominent filmmakers just like fine art museums offer a space for influential artists. Why is film considered different from art? Which expectations and limitations does the ‘museum’ and all it stands for generate? To what extent can they be overcome?
Authentic in body and soul
Over the course of the late 20th century, museum policies changed fundamentally. The reason can largely be assigned to the consequences of neoliberalism, a term that captures free market theories in which “purchasing is the basis of conforming to self-image.”2 Neoliberal consumers value ‘authentic experiences’ above availability, cost, and quality, and thereby
1 I. Scheijde (Head of Communications, Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam), in discussion with the author on
recently disclosed audience investigations. February 2018.
2 B. Joseph Pine & J. H. Gilmore. Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (Boston: Harvard Business School 2 B. Joseph Pine & J. H. Gilmore. Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (Boston: Harvard Business School
Press, 2007), 5.
Figure 1 Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam, image by René den Engelsman, 7 February 2012
identify with their personal purchases. In other words: the idea of experiencing something real and unique is the most prominent impulse for contemporary consumers. Due to a global cut in cultural funding, museums are increasingly forced to behave as commercial enterprises.3 The additional number one concern in their policy is managing the visitor’s perception of authenticity. According to Joseph Pine & James Gilmore, three subjects can generate authenticity: artifacts, edifices and encounters.4 Paradoxically, contemporary film museums often seem to focus on the first, exhibiting artifacts, whilst film itself is bodiless and merely valuable because of its concept.5 Hence, the question arises: why do contemporary film museums feel the need to use tangible objects to facilitate authentic experiences?
The rise of the experience economy changed the role of objects in museums. Value was no longer solely generated through the body of an artifact, when presented in the first place, but rather through the soul. The differentiation between the two is well described by the Polish philosopher Krzysztof Pomian, who distinguishes between things and semiophores. Things perform functions and semiophores embed meaning.6 However, the two are not definite terms but rather intertwined areas. A specific example of an exhibited object that demonstrates such interactions is the F0.7 camera lens ‘Carl Zeiss Planar’, designed for the NASA Apollo lunar program of 1966. The lens was taken to the Moon and captured it more accurate than ever before, due to its innovative light sensitive features.7 The body of the lens stages a function: the technical abilities of the era. At the same time, the soul of the lens could represent extraterrestrial encounters or, as part of yet another narrative, cinematic admiration. In the early 70s, film director Stanley Kubrick received permission to use Carl Zeiss Planar for shooting the candle lit scenes of his movie ‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975).8 Hence, an object is merely always capable of simultaneously being a thing and a semiophore, depending on the given narrative and the visitor’s individual frame of reference. For the creation of authentic
3 N. Kotler & P. Kotler. “Can Museums be All Things to All People?: Missions, Goals, and Marketings Role,”
Museum Management and Curatorship 18 (2010), 271-287.
4 B. Joseph Pine & J. H. Gilmore. “Museums & Authenticity,” Museum News 86 (2007), 76-80 & 92-93. 5 E. Balsom. Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 39-43. 6 C. E. Paul. Poetry in the Museum of Modernism (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002). 141-195. 7 J. Kämmerer. “When is it advisable to improve the quality of camera lenses?,” Excerpt from a lecture given
during the Optics & Photography Symposium in Les Baux (1979).
8 E. DiGiulio. “Two Special Lenses for Berry Lyndon,” American Cinematographer.
experiences, however, semiophores appear crucial, because functional objects can be replaced whilst emotional objects can hardly be.
Pomian emphasizes how semiophores are entangled with the confirmation of power structures because they are “manifestations of different centers of social importance where the invisible is transformed into the visible to various and hierarchized degrees.”9 In other words: semiophores embody power through the symbolization of existing societal structures. By doing so, they endorse and establish hierarchies at the same time, similar to how literary stereotypes work. Therefore, the use of semiophores cannot be separated from the museum’s identity as institutional order.
The prestige of possession
From the first use of the word, museums have been connected to the staging of power through ownership. Cultural sociologist Tony Bennett argues how the contemporary context, starting from the midst 20th century, is only seemingly democratic in that sense. The rise of public museums can be understood as a product of new ways in which power and knowledge came to be practiced. Bennet’s argument leans on the social philosophical work of Michel Foucault, who described the rise of a new carceral system over the course of the 20th century, when urban society was no longer controlled through visible scandals but rather through invisible boundaries.10 According to Bennett, the contemporary museum can be seen as an institution that arose from surveillance.11 However, Bennett adds, in the case of museums, surveillance did not simply replace spectacle but rather started to coexist with it. “The exhibitionary complex provided a context for the permanent display of power, knowledge, … and the ability to control objects and bodies, living or dead.”12 In other words: exhibiting physical possession and supremacy remained crucial for the practicing of power in the contemporary museum. The arrival of film as artistic medium, with its dependence on concept instead of physicality, seemed doomed to be incompatible with fundamental museological tendencies.
How film became art nevertheless
9 Paul, 184.
10 M. Foucault. Surveiller et punir (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 200-230.
11 T. Bennett. “The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations 4 (1988), 73-102. 12 Bennett, 79
The arrival of film in the exhibition hall was indeed a contested one. In the early 1930s, the New York based art collector Julien Levy came up with the idea to exhibit film. He argued that film belonged in the exhibition space; equal to other accepted art forms such as paintings and sculptures.13 However, the theoretical thinking of his time complicated the matter. In the museum landscape, the work of German philosopher Walter Benjamin was highly respected. Benjamin separated the artistic practice from industrial reproduction, stating how “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”14 According to Benjamin’s definitions, film as such cannot be considered art. It is unbound to space and time. The medium rather creates its own context. Moreover, film can solely exists because of industrial reproduction. The societal role of museums adopted Benjamin’s ideals and museums increasingly came to be seen as important facilitators for real life encounters between visitors and authentic objects. It appeared that consumers indeed valued the identity, soul and imperfection they feel they find in craft objects more, because the products surrounding them largely lost the need for manual labour, due to homogenized marketplaces.15 Considering film as art, the wish of Julien Levy, meant that either the way originality was perceived had to be broadened, or the medium film had to adopt characteristics of object-based originality. The latter is what he initiated. Julien Levy created an artificial suggestion of scarcity by editioning physical film prints. In other words, he created a limited amount of film prints in order to raise the notion of exclusiveness and thereby increase the public’s demand. One could say that the issue of exhibiting film thereby was created because of the pretend film was something it is not. The impossible question is whether exhibiting film would be different today, if scarcity was not imitated in the first place and film was approached as being unique because of its bodiless features instead of despite. Even though postmodernist approaches opened the museum’s doors for more conceptual art forms over the course of the 20th century, in the case of film, physical originality maintained to be fabricated. Nowadays the limited film edition is still the model of distribution for moving-image art, in a slightly different
13 E. Balsom. “Original Copies: How Film and Video Became Art Objects”, Cinema Journal 53 (2013), 97-118. 14 W. Benjamin, H. Arendt ed.,The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. (London: Fontana,
1968), 214-18.
15 M. B. Beverland, & F. J. Farrelly. “The Quest for Authenticity in Consumption: Consumers’ Purposive
manner due to digital developments.16 The idea of scarcity is no longer created through physical prints, but limited user rights instead. For example, new work of a video artist is only allowed to be shown at three museums simultaneously. Even though today’s technology would
facilitate endless exposure, the notion of film’s scarcity is preserved via sets of rules between artist, distributor and museum.
The example of the Netherlands
The case of the Dutch film museum in Amsterdam demonstrates the above-described history. During the 1920s a Dutch assemble of cinephiles felt the urge to introduce global art house cinema in the Netherlands. They started a collection of movies that were being screened in smaller theaters across the country, under the name of ‘Dutch Filmliga’.17 Over the years, the collection grew significantly and as the Second World War happened, the Dutch government felt the increasing urge to safeguard cultural initiatives. Therefore, in 1946, the Dutch Film Archive was found. The collection came to be housed in the movie theatre of Kriterion in Amsterdam, a location that was used as war resistance center for students until shortly before. From 1952, pieces of the collection
were loaned to the Stedelijk Museum, were they were predominantly presented as part of narratives on other art forms.18 In other words, from the collection’s first arrival in the art museum, a clear distinction was made between film as autonomously artistic in the cinema theater, and film as additional subject in the art museum. This changed to a certain extent in 1975, when the collection was given
16 K. F. Gracy. “The Evolution and Integration of Moving Image Preservation Work into Cultural Heritage
Institutions,”. Information & Culture 48 (2013), 368-389.
17 J. Noordegraaf, et al. Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Universtity Press, 2013).
11-20.
18 B. Lameris. Film Museum Practice and Film Historiography: The Case of the Netherlands Filmmuseum
(1946-2000). (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 151-163.
Figure 2 The Filmmuseum in the Vondelpark Pavillion, image by René den Engelsman
its own location at the Vondelpark Pavillion (figure 2). In house exhibitions became part of the new ‘Film museum’, alongside of the movie screenings and loans to art museums. From an early stage, director Hoos Boltkamp expressed doubts about the identity of the museum. The home of film as symbol of modernity and worldliness could perhaps not be found in a neoclassical pavilion, primarily visited by the people of Amsterdam during weekends. Right before the turning of centuries, Boltkamp came with the proposal to create a new cosmopolitan museum in Rotterdam, the Dutch city that was generally conceived as most progressive. Her idea was an all-encompassing presentation of visual culture that included photography, cinema, television, video and all in between.19 This idea is notable because it shows how film as artistic medium was still far from defined, and rather intertwined with other expressions. The people of Amsterdam were deeply offended by the proposal. The film collection contributed to the prestigious identity of Amsterdam as historical city of open mindedness. Boltkamp had to step back. In 2012, her idea was split into two and realised after all. Amsterdam was given the cosmopolitan view of Eye Filmmuseum, and in Hilversum, the museum ‘Beeld & Geluid’ or ‘Vision and Sound’ was realised, on the culture of public media. As touched upon in the first paragraph, the precise practice and distinction of Eye Filmmuseum remains uncertain ever still.
Issues of authority and expectation
One of the reasons why proposing a consistent (film) museum’s identity appears complicated, is because the contemporary visitor’s quest for authenticity can either translate into a change or challenge. In the specific case of a film museum, two recurring issues seem problematic for the defining and valuing of the institute’s practice.
First, it has to be acknowledged that visitors might question the authority of a film museum more easily than they would question the prestige of a museum for fine arts. The reason is the birth of a virtual museum where consumers are curators. In 1951, André Malraux described what he named ‘La Musée imaginaire’, “an accessible universal platform ... not a volatile product of the imagination but a great world collection of images reproduced thanks to modern technology.”20 Malraux referred to the rise of photography in a post-war Europe, where authoritarian institutions were questioned and the interests of the working
19 I. Scheijde (Head of Communications, Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam), in discussion with the author. February
2018.
classes were more and more embraced. One could say that the arrival of the Internet, accessible to all, gave relevance to Malraux’s hypothesis once more. Digital technology has made the public independent of the exhibition hall.21 Because an increasing value is being given to art’s conceptuality, visitors are more aware of the fact that exhibitions were curated. After all: how to be sure that the artist’s concept, or intention, is veritably presented in a narrative created by a powerful institution – the art museum? The twenty-first century fed such criticisms, partially due to the rise of the Internet; a powerful public place for questioning. One could say that the non-rivalrous and non-excludable character of the Internet creates the most democratic place in history, although an argument for the opposite could also withstand – finding a way through the abundance of information is only possible for the high educated or well informed. Nevertheless, every contemporary Internet user proceeds as an individual curator of (moving) images. Value is created by open access for all, by sharing, reproduction and plenitude, instead of isolation and protection, a practice that is still at the heart of most museums. Bringing an environment of personal control to the exhibition place could easily leave the visitor with a sceptical, subversive attitude. When the collection and purpose of the museum is built up out of digitalis, which is the case of film museums, preserving authority can become a problem.
Secondly, presenting film in an exhibitionary context creates issues of chronology and narrative construction. Visitors are bound to film as a cinematic experience. In the film theatre, they are being directed through a visual story from beginning to end. The exhibition hall requires a different approach in which curational choices can be made. Managing and meeting the visitor’s cinematic expectation often appears to be a difficult topic for film museums. At the heart of the exhibitionary practice, regardless of a museum’s field of expertise, is a concept that “engages two fundamental spheres of our reality that have been recognized since time immemorial as the domain of things and the domain of words: res et verba.”22 In other words: an exhibition is a story built out of objects that have been given a relationship through language. In contemporary exhibition making, words and things are often
21 Malraux (1947) describes how “Until the XIX century, all works of art were the image of something that
existed – or did not exist – before, prior to being works of art.” (p. 12) With the arrival of photography, ideas of originality and artistic mastery grew, since pictures could now be (re)produced endlessly. From that moment, visitors came to art museums so they could see a Rembrandt and a Titian with their own eyes. The arrival of the Internet has partially rejected the latter argument: art works can be seen in a more detailed manner via the Internet, and moreover, in the context and on the moment of the viewer’s personal preference.
separated. Words are seen as to the task of a curator, who gives an interpretation to stories and writes the narrative of the exhibition. Things embody the work of a designer who creates the form of the exhibition. Even though overlap occurs during most practices, in case of exhibiting film, separation is merely impossible. Film is bodiless: both form and interpretation are carried out by the medium itself. As a result, film is not easily spoken for. Viewers consistently look for narrative in film, even though there might be none. According to media theorist Sean Cubitt (2004), film itself cannot be narrating: a controlled ensemble of space, time and causality, generated through the editing process, is needed to build story.23 However, the viewer has become largely used to cinematic experiences over the last decades. Expecting a sudden distance from previous experiences and subsequent expectations would result in an undermining of the interaction between artwork and spectator.24 Hence, film exhibitors have to take cinematic reference into account whilst broadening the ways in which film can be considered as art.
In this study, the ways in which three influential film museums deal with the above-described issues will be investigated. The institutes house the three largest film archives in Europe and, most importantly, focus on film as art. Media and television museums are not taken into account because their approach towards the moving image is merely thematic instead of artistic. Even though film as art found its origin in the United States, this study will focus on leading European institutes because field investigation appears crucial for building substantial argumentation. Thereby, the American tendencies largely formed an example for Europe.
The first chapter evolves around Eye Filmmuseum - my working environment and the starting point of this investigation. Eye positions itself in a traditional museological discourse with an emphasis on educational purposes. It is the institute’s desire to exhibit and appreciate film in a similar manner as fine arts. Consequently, the issue of managing expectation is prominent since film is directly compared to other visual arts, despite the fundamental differences. The second chapter treats The National Museum of Cinema in Turin, where the popular connotation of cinema and its enlargement of the individual is translated into an exhibitionary practice. The museum focuses on the display of semiophores and film’s capability to provoke empathy or even spirituality. The third chapter speaks about la
23 Cubitt, S. The Cinema Effect. (Cambridge: Mit Press, 2004). 1-13.
24 P. Verstraten. Handboek Filmnarratologie. (Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Vantilt, 2008). 201-230.
Cinématèque in Paris, where exhibitions on film are perceived as merely contextual: an addition to the movie theater, the dominant site of display. The exhibitions demonstrate both the art historical and societal context of cinema. In all cases, I investigated the ways in which the exhibited objects are identified and categorized, and how these curational choices are reflected in the visitor’s expectation and experience - in other words, the extent to which the museum ‘succeeded’ in the creation of authenticity notions. Prominent sources are the conversations I had with the curators, and the audience investigations done by the institutes. I continuously compared the museum’s proposed identity with the actual practice.
The story of film as exhibition subject is a continuous one. I do not foresee nor do I aspire to find final answers. Instead, I wish to demonstrate the many possible approaches in dealing with these complexities.
Chapter 1: Please don’t touch. Fitting film in the fine art museum. Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam
The fact that visitors feel confused when they enter the white eye building in Amsterdam – where can I find the museum? – is neither strange nor unexpected. Like the complicated history of the organization, touched upon in the introduction, the contemporary identity of Eye Filmmuseum is quite intricate. It can best be seen as a three-folded one: three different faces that contribute to one raison d’être.
In 2017, Eye redefined its organizational purpose as “challenging the public to continuously (re)discover film and guiding the interpretation of it.”25 Three practices contribute to the umbrella purpose: 1) restoring and safeguarding historical, artistic relevant films and all Dutch productions, 2), presenting and appreciating film in a museological context, 3), screening cinema movies of artistic value, both as part of curated programmes and self-contained. The three different practices are separated quite literally. In 2016, Eye opened a collection centre at a 350-meter distance from the public museum building. It was the fulfilment of a long-term wish for just one location where the fragile film collection could be housed. The opening also meant the ending of an internal debate for a title. To summarize the activities of Eye in one word remained challenging – institute, museum, centre? Now a distinction could be made between the public face of a museum and the more inside face of a collection centre. The forwarding-looking manner of self-identifying is notable. It demonstrates how Eye, despite the modern outlook, aspires a museum function that is merely educational and linear instead of experimental. The institute thereby positions itself within a traditional museum discourse.
In 1904, art historian David Murray published one of the first pleadings for a proper public museum’s role in society. In ‘Museums Their History and their Use’, he argued how the museum is the best exponent of science because it teaches visitors to observe securely, the dominant practice of scientists.26 Therefore, the main task of the museum should be educating. Murray emphasizes that the quality of learning does not depend on the teacher, but rather on the exhibition curators. The presentation should be able to speak for itself: neither images nor texts are able to do so like well-presented objects are. According to Murray,
25 Rebranding plan by Eden Spiekerman, lastly edited on October 17 2018, Internal drive I, M&C, Folder 17,
Eye Filmmuseum archives.
museum objects must be able to represent growth and development in civilization and art.27 In that way, exhibitions can help generate a self-regulating society. Murray’s thinking facilitated a new line of thought in museology. Today his work is still frequently republished and referred to as “the most important of reference for the history of the museum.”28 Hence, the emphasis of Eye Filmmuseum on interpretational guidance opens up a museological discourse that not only advocates a quite rigorous didactic role, but also prescribes a rigid relationship with tangible objects. The object must be present at all time and, moreover, represent the intellectual superiority of the institute it belongs to. The question arises whether the exhibitionary practice of Eye Filmmuseum resonates the proposed identity.
§1.1 Proof of originality
Because the activities of Eye Filmmuseum are partially funded by the Dutch government, an extended document on vision and aims must be presented every three years. The “cultural memorandum” of 2017-2020 demonstrates Eye’s most recent ambitions. The museum emphasizes their “internationally influential exhibition policy … a pioneering role in the way film is being presented within museological contexts.”29 The exhibitions are said to be innovative because they seek the intersection between film and visual arts. According to curator Jaap Guldemond, the exhibition policy is comparable to his approach towards curating modern art. “When I visited film museums as a modern art curator, I noticed the emphasis on paraphernalia: personal objects that are, in my opinion, artistically irrelevant. These objects are only valuable when worshipping a celebrity, but they narrate very little about the actual work or filmmaker. Another approach that often occurred is the overview of film’s apparatus: demonstrating the history of film through technicalities. Both approaches did not appeal to me. Why would you exhibit arbitrary elements of film that underestimate the artistic end product? When Sandra den Hamer, general director of Eye, asked me to propose an exhibitionary practice, I immediately thought about some sort of expanded cinema. I wished to investigate the possible meanings of film outside the cinema theatre. My specific interest lies with film directors, so the challenge became to develop an exhibition formula that
27 D. Murray (1904). 234.
28 P. Findlen (ed.) Museums Their History and their Use. (Wolcott: Scholars Choice, 2015). 8.
29 Cultural memorandum 2017-2020 by Michiel de Rooij, Internal drive I, M&C, Policy Documents, Folder
captures the director’s oeuvre. In order to fully embrace film as art, I thought it necessary to introduce a clear hierarchy in exhibition components: the actual films form the starting point, and the objects can be used to contextualize.”30 Annually, Eye Filmmuseum organizes four temporary exhibitions, ideally striking a balance between directors that lean towards pop culture and directors that are seen as more experimental. The focus of the exhibition is the artistic contribution of an individual filmmaker, or the avant-garde developments (s)he helped establishing. When investigating the characteristics of the 25 exhibitions that took place at Eye, it has to be marked that the majority was established around an individual filmmaker – 17 of them, opposing 5 thematic presentations and 3 juxtaposes.31 The focus on individuals is notable because film, as one of few artistic expressions, is an outcome of artistic collaboration. By approaching film as an individual accomplishment, Eye adopts the museological tendency of fine art, where painters are praised for their personal genius and originality.32 The idea of individual mastery resonates with
how the exhibitions deal with tangible objects. Eye explicitly distinguishes between exhibitions created by an individual filmmaker and exhibitions about individuals. The latter tend to take form of a tribute. A fine example is the retro perspective on the Italian-American director Martin Scorsese, a traveling exhibition that was on show in Eye during the summer of 2017. A fair focus of the exhibit was the presentation of recurring character archetypes and motifs in
his films. New edits were created from loose film fragments and shown on big screens. The story lines were not taken into account. Instead, the aim was to demonstrate Scorsese’s ‘hand’ as a director. Objects were indeed of secondary importance, but prominent nevertheless. Their main purpose was to demonstrate how Scorsese’s youth contributed to his filmmaking carrier, primarily captured through his paraphernalia – the storyboard he drew at the age of four (figure 3), children’s photos as a metaphor for the Italian migrant life in New York, the restaurant bill of a first meeting with Leonardo DiCaprio. This approach shows a lot of overlap with the exhibition concept of the cinema museum in Turin, as will be touched upon in the second chapter, where personal objects are presented as relics. However, the
30J. Guldemond. Interview by author. Tape recording. Amsterdam, December 7, 2018.
31 Historical exhibition documents, Public drive, Folder ‘Exhibitions’, Eye Filmmuseum archives. 32 H.H. Arnason, a.o. History of Modern Art. (London: Pearson Education). 8-20.
Figure 3 Children's storyboard by Martin Scorsese, displayed as part of his exhibition in Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam, image by Hans Wilschut, 24 May 2017
functioning of the personal objects in the two museums is fundamentally different. Eye does not fictionalize the objects, but rather uses them as historical proof of originality. The objects are not glorified but presented soberly, behind glass in a black cube space. They seem to be part of an historical narrative that suggests the factual birth of Scorsese’s creativity. As a result, the opposite effect is created in comparison to the National Museum of Cinema in Turin. Martin Scorsese is demystified – he was also just a kid with a colour pencil – instead of mystified. Paradoxically, this approach is even a bigger worship to the individual because accomplishment is explained through personal circumstances instead of divine gifts.
The second type of exhibition is the one created by individual filmmakers. These presentations often appear as independent artwork, or gesamtkunstwerk.33 Curator Guldemond explains that it is his current ambition to exclusively develop such collaborative exhibitions. “The difficulty is that filmmakers do not create to exhibit, in contradiction to fine artists. The attitude is fundamentally different. Filmmakers often have no museological experiences and rather create for cinema. They tend to be sceptical, suspicious even, when the idea of an exhibition is proposed. My ambition is to change the tendency and convince both filmmakers
and visitors that the museological context adds value to film as artistic medium, because it demonstrates the context and motive for creating.”34 Two fine examples are the exhibitions by William Kentridge (2015) and Ryoji Ikeda (2018) Both make use of wall covering screens and estranging sounds (figure 4), pulling the visitor into an alternative reality via complete enclosure (figure 5) – into heaven, in the case of William Kentridge and into a data ruled universe in the case of Ryoji Ikeda. These ‘films’ would hardly function outside the exhibition space. They are spacializations of film that depend on architecture, movement and dis-chronology. Thereby, the exhibitions are authentic experiences par excellence: the idea is
33 The ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ is a somewhat indefinite term that describes ‘a total art work’. The term became
influential in art history when the music composer Wagner published two essays on the topic in 1849. He proposed the ideal of an assembly of several art forms in one space. His model was originally written for theater but developed as an example for exhibition making. From: M. A. Vidalis, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk – 'total work of art'’ in Architectural Review (London, 2010).
34 J. Guldemond. 2018.
Figure 5 Exhibition Ryoji Ikeda in Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, image by Hans Wilschut, 14 September 2018
Figure 4 Exhibition William Kentridge - If We Ever Go To Heaven in Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, image by Hans Wilschut, 24 April 2015
raised that only on that specific moment, in that specific space, the experience can be found.35 Authenticity is rendered through that unique experience and the future memory of it, instead of object encounters. In both exhibitions, tangible objects are indeed used limitedly or absent. Ikeda depends on digital presentation solely and Kentridge sparingly uses objects; on show were the pre-study materials for animation, charcoal sketches and sculptures. The exhibitions are examples of a solution to the traditional problem of film in the exhibition space. Issues of originality and faked scarcity are resolved because the presentations demonstrate how the artist’s virtue in film can be found in illusionalism instead of embodiment.
The above-described examples demonstrate that the exhibitionary practice of Eye Filmmuseum is quite diverse. It does not pursue a mere educational function but rather embraces experiment. What causes the difference between the initiated purpose and the actual practice?
§1.2 Fitting in the given framework
Within the context of the Dutch museum landscape, Eye is a stranger in the midst. It identifies as modern art museum whilst there is no ‘traditional’ modern art exhibited. This raises a problem that is well-described by the French professor in cinematography Barbara le Maître, who states that “once in the museum, film de facto finds itself compared to one of the emblematic objects of the place, the painting.”36 She explains how film exhibited as art generates a specific issue of visualisation. Most forms of contemporary art have been developed outside the influences of ‘the painting’ because they depend on concept instead of imaging. The same cannot be said for cinema. Both paintings and films are either representations of this world or visualisations of another. The term tableau vivant captures the connection most literally: early cinema was seen as the moving variant of a picture.37
The complexity of exhibiting film is often explained through the differences with the painting – matters of uniqueness and originality – but difficulty arises in the first place because of similarities. Both art forms originate from the same fundament, “a principle of
35 T. Smith. ‘Biennales: Four Fundamenta, Many Variations’ in Biennial Foundation (London, 2016). 36 Noordegraaf, J., ed. Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art. Challenges and Perspectives. (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2013). 310.
arrangements of a fable or a complex figure within the strict frame of a composition.”38 In other words: a fabricated framework that represents either an action or a character. This mutual starting point has the simple consequence that spectators tend to perceive the media in a similar way, by measuring the aesthetics of the representation, as well as the truthfulness. Whilst a painting usually has a relatively stable manner of being exhibited – on the wall, illuminated with spot lights – the exhibiting of film differs tremendously. Film director and theorist Cherchi Usai describes how “the nature of the light source, the apparatus, the physical structure of the image carrier, and the architectural space in which the event occurs are variables which have the power to determine the quality of visual perception and its patterns.”39 In other words: film in the exhibition hall calls for the traditional attitude of looking at a painting, but at the same time it demands flexibility because there is no ‘set of rules’ for presentation. Eye’s explicit comparison to the modern art museum enlarges this effect.
The reason why spectating film in the museum has no specific ‘rules’ can be explained through the theory of other spaces or heterotopias, a term developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the early 1980s to analyse sites in society that offer alternative realities.40 Foucault refers to the 20th century as a period when a lot of new heterotopias found their origin. As described in the previous chapter, the communal ritual that was embedded in spiritual spaces became partially substituted by the public museum. The same can be said for pastime sites such as the theatre and cinema. They rapidly developed their own site-specific characteristics and ritual. Eye’s ambition to propose a clear and consistent film museum’s decorum is difficult, firstly because the type of space is historically new and secondly because it is an assembly of existing heterotopias. 41 According to Marjolijn Bronkhuyzen, Head of Marketing, the exceptionality of Eye Filmmuseum is a virtue instead of a confusion. “Eye occupies a unique position in the Netherlands, or even in the world. There are few others that work in a similar manner. The main thing that makes us unique is that our activities originate
38 J. Chevrier. ‘Les aventures de la forme tableau dans l’histoire de la photographie.’ in Photo Kunst, Arbeiten
aus 150 Jahren – du XXè au XIXè, Aller et retour, exhibition catalogue (Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1990). 75.
39 P. C. Usai. The Death of Cinema: History, Cultural Memory and the Digital Age. (London: Bloomsbury) 103. 40 M. Foucault. ‘Of Other Places: Utopias and Heterotopias’ in Architecture, Movement, Continuité (Paris: La
Groupe Moniteur, 1984).
41 B. Lameris. The Film Museum Practice and Film Historiography. The Case of the Netherlands Filmmuseum
from our own film collection. Unless wished so, there is no need for loans. We had that sense of independence from the start. Eye curates its own cinema screenings, exhibitions, and archive. It is what makes us authentic. We developed like no other cultural site and therefore we can follow our own rules.”42 As touched upon in the introduction, the historical road to the museum’s current face was indeed atypical. The ‘Filmmuseum’ first started to expose their collection in the spaces of Amsterdam’s modern art museum the Stedelijk from the 1950s, where film was being screened and exhibited as part of modern art history. “In their annual reports, directors Sandberg and De Vaal invariably mention that the development of cinema ran in parallel to that of modern art. As a result, Filmmuseum audiences were constantly reminded of the fact that the films they saw were part of a modern art tradition.”43According to the literary historian Stephen Greenblatt, a similar gaze or ‘effect of wonder’ can indeed be facilitated for both the audience of cinema and the audience of art. When the developments in both art forms are presented as resonating and interactive, the same feeling of wonderment arises when spectating the artistry of an object and the screening of a film.44 However, cinema still needed art to be artistically relevant. Hence, from an early stage, the wish to establish an independent space was there. The sentiment prevails that only recently, with the 2008 plans for the creation of the current building, the circumstances arose to establish an autonomous identity and practice from the collection. “The new building not only changed the way visitors see us, it also changed the way we see ourselves. The architecture is overwhelming, an icon, a facet. We had to live up to the new body we were given. In that sense, the building facilitated a growth in our content. Some of our exhibitions have been an unexpected success, something I believe could not have happened at the Vondelpark Pavillion. William Kentridge and Ryoji Ikeda are fine examples. I think these exhibitions were so well visited because they are somewhat non-museological. Texts are used sparingly, it is about the immersive audio-visual experience. That is a conscious choice: ideally, our exhibitions are not the conclusion to the discovery of film but rather the introduction.”45
42 M. Bronkhuyzen. Interview by author. Tape recording. Amsterdam, December 6, 2018. 43 B. Lameris (2017) 133.
44 S. Greenblatt. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1991) 19-23.
§1.3 Imagined touch
The fact that Bronkhuyzen refers to audio-visual experiences as “non-museological” can be understood from the traditional relationship between museums and (the absence of) tangibility. The artistic medium of film fulfills an interesting position in this discours.
‘Please Touch’ was the title of Marcel Duchamp’s art work in the international Surrealist exhibition of Paris in 1947. The work showed a plaster carving of a female breast. It functioned as direct criticism to the museological tendency of patronizing and processing art.46 Duchamp resisted concepts that had been developed in the early 20th century by the canonical art historians Wolfflin and Panofsky, who are often referred to as founding fathers of modern art history. In their studies, they declare touch as inferior to vision, as something childlike opposed to something mature, sentimental versus rational.47 Their concepts connected with the emphasis on empericality in research. Hence, the modern public museum developed as a place for navigated gazing. Thereby, it simultaneously became a place for touching: prohibition turns into wonderment.
The Czech film director and theorist Jan Svankmajer, exhibitor in Eye during the winter of 2019, argues that film is the most physical of art forms because of the absence of touch. The thinking of tangibility, or the imagined idea of what something would feel like, creates an ultimate bodily experience.48 Svankmajer states that precisely the ban of touch, as happened in most art museums, generated the birth of a ‘mental touch’ that is stronger than body senses. Imagined touch is open for perception, personal memory and circumstances whilst physical touch feels similar to most people – they sense the same structure, temperature and volume of an object, for example.49 Film is distinctive for generating mental touch without the dependence on object presentation. Hence, some film exhibitions could evoke feelings of a “non-museological” environment, such as the above-described Ryoji Ikeda exhibition.
46 Philadelphia Museum of Art, ‘Collections: “Please Touch”’ (lastly edited in 2018): 1 par. [online overview of
the museum’s collections], lastly consulted on December 18, 2018. Via
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/91455.html
47 F. Candlin. Art Museums and Touch. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). 58-90. 48 J. Svankmajer. Touching and Imagining. (London: I.B. Tauris & Co, 2014). 1-2.
By touching something in a museological context, the thing would be demystified to a certain extent. It loses the value and respect that it obtained ‘behind glass’. Simultaneously, touch has the power to overcome the distances of time and space. Researchers who encounter a personal document of their research topic often feel emotional or overwhelmed, as if a wrinkle in time opened before their eyes. With his exhibition in Eye, Svankmajer attempts to demonstrate film’s multi-faced
relationship with art. When entering the exhibition, The Alchemical Wedding, visitors face several Wunderkammers in which his objects are housed, both props or inspirations from his stop motion films and autonomous art works. Visitors are presented black cloths (figure 6) in which they can sense different textures and temperatures, recognizable from the artefacts on show. In that way, physical sense precedes mental sense, creating an interesting association with memory and expectation. Alongside the Wunderkammers, his masturbation- and torture apparatus are on show, with the aim to cause or even impose feelings that are unusual for the exhibition space but familiar for film. Hence, without literally exhibiting film, Svankmajer exhibits the effect of film, the interaction with the spectator.
Svankmajer’s ideas on the absence of touch show a lot of overlap with the “cinema effect” in contemporary art. The term refers to a phenomenon that occurred at the change of centuries, around 2000, when a lot of influential museums incorporated “cinema” in their exhibition practices.50 Cinema is mentioned in quotation marks because the precise meaning differs. The effect refers to both a literal use of cinema in the museum, exhibiting film, and a metaphoric use, adopting cinematic characteristics. The latter happens for example through exhibition trailers that securely follow the format of film trailers, creating a “cinematic expectation”.51 Another example is cinematic sensation in the exhibition space, via sound
50 S. Cubitt. The Cinema Effect. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004)
51 Conolly, M. ‘Trailer Time: Cinematic Expectations and Contemporary Art’ in Exhibiting the Moving Image:
History Revisited (Zurich: Jrp Ringier, 2015) 130-153.
Figure 6 Exhibition Jan Svankmajer - The Alchemical Wedding in Eye Filmmuseum, black touch cloth, image by Hans Wilschut, 14 December 2018
design, lighting or visual effects, creating the mental touch Svankmajer refers to. With the cinema effect, the issue of territory opens up again. To which institute does film belong, the cinema or the museum? Is film merely a tool to facilitate art or is it art? It has yet to be discovered what the re-examining of domains leads to. According to Bronkhuyzen, the increasing reference to cinema in museological contexts can only facilitate a growth in prestige for Eye Filmmuseum. “Provided that we keep following film developments closely, the future offers a lot of perspectives. Both the artistic and commercial value that is given to film keeps on growing. In today’s museum world they became inseparable anyway. And film embeds it all.”52
To conclude the above, it can be said that the all-round aspiration of Eye Filmmuseum is to propose film as art. This endeavour translates into specific practices as well as some additional complications. The exhibitionary approach hierarchies film over object. Objects are only incorporated when they clearly contextualize the subject. Thereby, the exhibitions predominantly focus on individual filmmakers, adapting the art historical tendency of praising personal genius. Consequently, the ‘traditional’ attitude of gazing at fine art is called upon, but simultaneously, the exhibitions demand a large sense of flexibility since the proposed ideals are not consistently applied. The exhibitions about filmmakers often appear as a tribute, displaying a lot of personal paraphernalia nevertheless. The exhibitions by filmmakers, however, appear more experimental. They are artworks in themselves, spacializations of film that enlarge specific elements of cinema, such as bodily reactions to imagery or sound. These exhibitions generate a large notion of authenticity, because they depend on temporality instead of object encounters solely. They demonstrate how the artist’s virtue in film can rather be found in illusionalism than in embodiment, an approach that perhaps suits the contemporary character of film somewhat better. However, due to Eye Filmmuseum’s aspiration to fit in the discourse of the fine art museum, it can perhaps be predicted that the institute will continue to feel the urge to ‘display their possession’ via the exhibiting of tangible collection pieces.
52 M. Bronkhuyzen. 2018.
Chapter 2: Interactions between the spiritual place and the movie theater. The National Museum of Cinema, Turin
The National Museum of Cinema in Turin, Italy is seen as one of the most important in the world for its rich heritage. The organization finds its origin in the 1940s, as film historian Maria Adriana Prolo planned for a space that would be entirely dedicated to the documentation of Turin’s film industry. Her precise ambitions were described in the Associazione Culturale Museo del cinema she established in 1952, as: “collecting, preserving and exhibiting the materials that are of large importance for the history of artistic, cultural and technical cinematography.”53 Today, the collection consists of 1.800.000 immensely diverse pieces. Only 1/25 of them, 71.000 objects, are actual movies on film or other formats. The other pieces are, in varying quantities, photographs, advertising materials, periodicals, books, archival documents and dossiers, art objects or prints, film equipment, movie memorabilia and records.54 In other words: the (hi)story of cinema is primary captured by associative objects instead of film itself. What causes such a seemingly imbalance in collections?
Before analyzing the exhibition practice and the use of objects, it has to be noted that the museum is housed in a building with a significant history. The architecture was not realised with the aim to house Turin’s historical film collections. Instead, Mole Antonelliana (figure 7) is an Italian monumental building named after the architect Alessandro Antonelli, who designed the tower in the late 19th century as a synagogue for the Jewish people of northern Italy. It was meant as tribute to the Jewish Communities of Piedmont, who were just given political and civil rights in the Napoleonic occupation. As a result, Jews were able to take up other professions alongside of their traditional employment as scriveners.55 They assimilated miraculously well for a long suppressed group and found ways of artistic expression in cinema. Chromatography was just being established in Turin: a laboratory method to divide mixed chemicals, making it possible to create colour film. Consequently, an
53 P. Bertello. ‘PROLO, Maria Adriana’, Treccani. (2004): 4 par. [online cinema encyclopedia], lastly consulted
on September 24, 2018. Via http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/maria-adriana-prolo_%28Enciclopedia-del-Cinema%29/.
54 Museo Nazionale Del Cinema, ‘Collections’ (2016): 3 par. [online environment of the museum], lastly
consulted on September 24, 2018. Via http://www.museocinema.it/en/collections
55 Jewish Virtual Library: A Project of Aice (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise). ‘Virtual Jewish World:
Turin, Italy’ (2018) 15 par. [digital historical library] Lastly consulted on October 20, 2018. Via
innovative and challenging new working environment arose in Turin, one that could be occupied by members of the Jewish community. Over the course of the 20th century, anti-Semitism afflicted Europe and the attitude changed. In Italy, one of the first places where exclusion took place was the entertainment sector. Many theaters and cinemas fired their Jewish members, and annulled contracts with Jewish artists.56 One could easily interpreted the current face of the site as a tribute to this history.
However, according to curator Donata Pesenti, the cinema museum does not maintain a direct relationship with the Jewish heritage of the city. “The main challenge while establishing the museum was to
facilitate a respectful dialogue between the original architecture and the interior. Mole Antonelliana was built as synagogue but never used accordingly.” During the construction period, from 1863 to 1889, Turin’s government bought the project because, according to the Jewish community, Antonelli’s ambitions adopted forms of such outrageous sensation, that a religious purpose was no longer met.57 It was the architect’s persistent desire to build higher and more ingenious – he wished to create a contemporary Jewish Florence. In other words: the Mole was given Catholic splendour, and therefore no longer suited the more sober Jewish preference. The current purpose of the site metaphorically suits the history - film as a wish for modernity and futuristic heights. Curator Pesenti emphasizes how she attempted to let the history be present without it to become the subject. “The topic of our exhibitions is the artistic development in historical cinema, not the history of the site or individual narratives. However, to avoid a denial of history, we attempted to preserve as much as authentic architectural elements as possible.”58 It is the first time that such an interaction with the site is realized: over the course of the 20th century, the Mole continuously shifted identities, among which was the face of the Risorgimento museum for half a century, in which the site was rather used
56 M. Sarfatti. The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: From Equality to Persecution. (London: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 2006). 156.
57 H. A. Meek. The Synagogue. (London: Phaidon, 1995), 201-202.
58 D. Pesenti. Interview by author. Tape recording. Turin, December 15, 2018.
Figure 7 Mole Antonelliana, Turin, image by Kevin Hutchinson, 23 January 2006
as decor than as narrative component. Only in 2000, the tower’s current face was established. This chapter will extent upon the ways in which the museum merged the characteristics of the site with the contemporary purpose.
§2.1 Embedded rituals
The museum dedicated four exhibition spaces, or in fact floors, to the exhibiting of cinema from its early days to recent developments. When reading the museum’s descriptions on the spaces, the reference to ceremonial purposes is notable:
“At the core of the Museum is the Temple Hall . . . surrounded by small chapels . . . dedicated to the cult of cinema . . . film unfolds as it goes up into the dome.”59
It may be clear that such phrasings form a very explicit dialogue between building and museum. However, the connotations also obtain meaning on a more theoretical basis. Art museums have often been compared to old ceremonial monuments such as palaces and temples. They were Enlightenment’s trick to break with the power of the Church and replace it with secular power. However, the Marxist-feminist scholar Carol Duncan questions whether this comparison is merely metaphoric, as often stated, or ritualistic instead.60 She points out how the intention for creating a spiritual site does not fundamentally differ from the motive to open a museum. “We build sites that publicly represent beliefs about the order of the world, its past and present, and the individual’s place within it.”61 The human urge to create such sites has always been and therefore knows many faces. One mutual characteristic is beyond dispute: they all prescribe certain decorum in which the visitor practices a prescribed ritual of desired behaviour, by following the narrative embedded in the setting (for example the art museum: muted voices, solemn movements, attentive gazing). Thus, the dichotomy of religion versus secularity might not be that dichotomous, for the meaning and function of the religious ritual – practicing institutional power by prescribing desired behaviour – counts for both spiritual sites and museums. Duncan’s argument is often objected by the persistent belief that museums cannot carry such characteristics because they do not show a suggestive truth, but an objective truth. In the current age of the experience economy, as extensively touched
59 Museo Nazionale Del Cinema, ‘Museum itinerary’ (2016): 5 par. [online environment of the museum], lastly
consulted on October 7, 2018. Via http://www.museocinema.it/en/national-cinema-museum
60 C. Duncan. Civilizing Rituals Inside Public Art Museums. (London: Routledge, 1995). 1-20. 61 C. Duncan (1995). 8.
upon in the introduction of this study, such a counter-argument no longer withstands, because contemporary museums have to act on the fact that the authentic experience functions as the new consumer good. Settings in which experiences are centralized can impossibly be labelled as objective, for perception is at the heart of experiencing. The National Museum of Cinema is far from unique for implementing ceremonial purposes in the exhibition practice: many contemporary museums do so in multiple manners. Sometimes they are housed in a building that was previously used for religious practices. The most explicit example of this in the city of Turin is the Museum of the Shroud, located in the burial cellar of the Most Holy Shroud Church and dedicated to the “scientific and historical questions related to the Holy Shroud”62. Under the guise of contemporaneity, intellect that is, the ceremonial purposes of the site are restored in honor. More often, museums mimic and combine the (neo-)classical building style of sacred sites into a new model, a practice referred to as ‘eclecticism’.63 An example in Turin is Museo Egizio, the museum for Egyptian archeology. To house the collection, a building named Collegio dei Nobili was established in 1679 and adapted over the 19th century for the creation of a public museum. The exterior came to be an assembly of pseudo-Egyptian and Classical temple ornaments, embraced and well kept until the day of today.64 By suggesting the entrance to a sacred site, visitors adopt the attitude of experiencing divine intervention and obtaining new perspectives. In the case of the National Museum of Cinema, the subject of exhibit suits such a liminal experience, or in other words, the notion of moving beyond psychic constraints of mundane existence, step out of time and attain new larger concepts. Liminality finds its origin in prayer and was thereafter applied to fictional narratives in a secular context.65 The British philosopher and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge developed the principle of the ‘Willing Suspension of Disbelief’ in 1817. The term describes how readers or spectators are capable of pretending a given fictional universe is true for a certain period of time. The spectator accepts the rules prescribed by the narrative and behaves accordingly, by adopting emotions of the protagonist.66 In that regard, religion requests a similar mental
62 ‘Museum of the Shroud’, (lastly edited in 2016): 1 par. [online environment of the museum], lastly consulted
on December 16, 2018. Via http://sindone.it/museo/en/museum-shroud/
63 A. Whittick. European Architecture in the Twentieth Century. (New York: Leonard Hill Books). 17-27. 64 ‘Museo Egizio’, ‘The Birth of the Building’ (lastly edited in 2018): 1 par. [online environment of the
museum], lastly consulted on December 16, 2018. Via https://www.museoegizio.it/en/discover/story/
65 V. Turner. ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’ in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects
of Ndembu Ritual (Cornell University Press, 1967) 93 – 111.
surrender from believers as fiction does. The difference is that, in the case of a sacred site, the desired attitude is not only embedded in the narrative, but also tangible through the setting and use of objects.67
§2.2 Worship of the object
With the display of artifacts, the National Museum of Cinema appeals to a phenomenon called ‘the magical contagion’: an uncontrollable type of sympathetic enchantment that occurs when new experiences unlock parts of the individual emotional storage.68 For example, visitors might experience a close connection to the fictional colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, as they encounter the costume created by Phyllis Dalton for the film Lawrence of Arabia (1962, David Dean). Even though it might be generally known that cinema film is merely a product of imagination, the effects of the object encounter are real nevertheless.
When walking through the spaces of the museum, the design seems to be dedicated to the experience of magical contagion. Two dominant presentations are labelled ‘Archaeology of Cinema’ and ‘Movie Memorabilia’. The first focuses on the
entertainment of audiences before the age of cinema. It consists of paintings, prints and literary expressions that came to be of major influence on cinematography in retrospective. The polyorama panoptiques (figure 8) by Pierre Henri Armand Lefort, for example, are displayed on romantically lit pedestals, originals from the second quarter of the 19th century as well as touchable replicas: small wooden or cardboard boxes with paper cut images inside, showing popular imagery of the time in most detail. Through such demonstrations of pre-cinematic artefacts, the museum does not write the history of cinema
based on contemporary insights but rather on the basis of film’s embryo. Cinema is defined by the seed it once was instead of the tree it grew into. Thereby, it is notable that the focus lies with the more popular, well-known stories and imagery, perhaps to ensure that most visitors will experience a form of magical contagion. The psychologist Andrew Elliot indeed argues
67 C. Duncan (1995). 1.
68 E. Subbotsky. Magic and the Mind: Mechanisms, Functions and Development of Magical Thinking and
Behaviour. (Oxford: University Press, 2010) 48-51.
Figure 8 Example of display polyorama panoptique at the National Museum of Cinema, Turin, courtesy of image: Bill Douglas collection, 23 June 2009
that objects cannot obtain new meaning when visitors are not previously taught to recognize them in another context, earlier in their lives. Newly constructed interpretations are best seen as additions to our emotional storage than replacements.69 An example is Alice in Wonderland, which is part of both the Archaeology of Cinema and Movie Memorabilia. In the first, the original writings of Lewis Carroll (1865) and the illustrations by John Tenniel are displayed. The latter presentation, Movie Memorabilia, incorporates personal and artistic artefacts that once belonged to a filmmaker or film set, such as textiles, notes or props. Visitors gather around the presentation of Tim Burton’s translation of Alice into a successful cinema production (2010). The manners of displaying provoke worship. Artifacts are often presented on pedestals, warmly lit and
with accompanying sounds and music, or they are positioned in an assembly behind glass, as relics almost (figure 9). Thereby, the fact that visitors are allowed to touch and operate some of the exhibited camera gear, facilitates the non-museological experience Jan Svankmajer refers to, as extended upon in the first chapter. Touch demystifies and creates a more intimate, private setting. Simultaneously, the presentations preserve the distance of admiration. Because empathy is united with enchantment, an eminent environment for magical contagion arises.
In the light of heterotopias, the National Museum of Cinema too assembles multiple ‘other spaces’. For example, the museum’s ‘temple hall’, where different aspects of Italian masterpieces are presented as metaphor for a genre or movement (such as the film Cabiria from 1914 by Giovanni Pastrone, that later came to represent the entire genre of ‘peplum’ films, in other words, Classical or Biblical epics). The space uses the original recesses of the building to create intimate corners, each one of them fully decorated in a different theme. These ‘chapels’ simultaneously narrate the feeling of a Catholic altar and a saloon type of art
69 A. J. Elliot (ed.). Handbook of Approach and Avoidance Motivation. (New York: Taylor and Francis Group,
2008). 4-11.
Figure 9 Example of the recurring manner of display manner at the National Museum of Cinema, Turin, presentation of Marilyn Monroe’s objects, image by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, 13 September 2018
