Film Phenomenologies: Temporality, Embodiment, Transformation, 2024
This essay seeks to reconsider the phenomenological notion of the embodied subject in view of rec... more This essay seeks to reconsider the phenomenological notion of the embodied subject in view of recent scale theory. Bill Viola’s five-channel audio and video installation Five Angels for the Millennium (2001) is examined for its pertinence to scalar configurations, particularly the ways in which the latter radically alter both human perception and perceptions of the human. Scale discourses refigure embodiment through a more-than-human ontology that positions the human within a cosmos-continuum.
Scale theory brings forth the multidimensionality of the human—the coexistence and mutual inclusivity of a plurality of dimensions or layers intersecting with a so-called human reality— from the atomic, cellular and microbial to the ecological, galactic and cosmic. A scalar perspective insists on the connectivity of levels or networks transecting the human, effectively making it a more-than-human. A scalar perspective dismantles the idea of objective, absolute realities and their values. It brings into play instead the subjectivity of perspective and inconstancy of perception as wholly dependent on a particular mode of observation rather than on the beings’ absolute size or value as individual identities. Relations among beings and the relativity of their existences to each other are not always immediately visible/perceivable, yet they are more ontologically significant than the idea of an individual being. Scalar perception crucially ruptures anthropocentric limitations by placing the human in relation to the non-human and by showing the indivisibility of both planes.
Viola’s Five Angels reworks the spectator’s perceptual experience through a mode of observation that breaks down the spatial and temporal ranges delimiting anthropomorphic subjectivity. The human body moves here within and through an abstract space that might be seen as both atomic liquidity and cosmic/galactic effervescence, never quite fitting into the familiar scope of the human. Crucial to this scalar disorientation and ensuing perceptual reconfiguration is Viola’s exaggeratedly slowed down image, which enables a contemplative experience blending the spectator’s interiority with a cosmic exteriority, thus bringing about an indistinguishability and simultaneity of domains/dimensions.
Five Angels thus prompts us to move beyond and question the validity of several major tenets of phenomenological philosophy. The major concept to be refigured is phenomenology’s limited and fairly superficial account of human embodied subjectivity as already there at the origin of perception. The infinitesimal transformations the body undergoes over time in Five Angels make clear that the body is not presupposed from the start, but it rather emerges through a process of concrescence to which, furthermore, more-than-human forces decisively contribute. This latter point works in a non-anthropocentric direction, thus amplifying and transforming phenomenology’s primarily humanist focus. Third, the scalar perspective in Five Angels asks that we reexamine the phenomenological emphasis on the body’s situatedness to account for the body’s position as a “situated dislocation.” Such disorientation resulting from shifts in modes of perception is crucial to debunking the human centrality. Finally, we need to disinvest from the primary emphasis on the physicality of the body and duly attend to the mental, experiential extensions of being, the idea that human consciousness is a means for the cosmos to perceive itself. In short, the body in Five Angels is not simply the visible form signaling a separate, self-contained identity on a single plane of existence, but a scattered configuration that reaches internally and externally beyond visible appearances, hence beyond the physical plane.
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Papers by Elena Del Rio
in Fassbinder the Brechtian distanciation effect prevents his concern with emotions from sliding into cliche´d sentimentality, instead fostering the emergence of a more confronting affective dimension in both the actors’ performances and the viewers’ experience of the film. Through a detailed examination of Hanna Schygulla’s gestural and kinetic language in two crucial scenes, I suggest that Fassbinder reconciles historical/social and affective/individual concerns by blending the Brechtian concept of the body as intelligible social sign and the Artaudian concept of the body as irrational force exceeding social and linguistic boundaries.
Scale theory brings forth the multidimensionality of the human—the coexistence and mutual inclusivity of a plurality of dimensions or layers intersecting with a so-called human reality— from the atomic, cellular and microbial to the ecological, galactic and cosmic. A scalar perspective insists on the connectivity of levels or networks transecting the human, effectively making it a more-than-human. A scalar perspective dismantles the idea of objective, absolute realities and their values. It brings into play instead the subjectivity of perspective and inconstancy of perception as wholly dependent on a particular mode of observation rather than on the beings’ absolute size or value as individual identities. Relations among beings and the relativity of their existences to each other are not always immediately visible/perceivable, yet they are more ontologically significant than the idea of an individual being. Scalar perception crucially ruptures anthropocentric limitations by placing the human in relation to the non-human and by showing the indivisibility of both planes.
Viola’s Five Angels reworks the spectator’s perceptual experience through a mode of observation that breaks down the spatial and temporal ranges delimiting anthropomorphic subjectivity. The human body moves here within and through an abstract space that might be seen as both atomic liquidity and cosmic/galactic effervescence, never quite fitting into the familiar scope of the human. Crucial to this scalar disorientation and ensuing perceptual reconfiguration is Viola’s exaggeratedly slowed down image, which enables a contemplative experience blending the spectator’s interiority with a cosmic exteriority, thus bringing about an indistinguishability and simultaneity of domains/dimensions.
Five Angels thus prompts us to move beyond and question the validity of several major tenets of phenomenological philosophy. The major concept to be refigured is phenomenology’s limited and fairly superficial account of human embodied subjectivity as already there at the origin of perception. The infinitesimal transformations the body undergoes over time in Five Angels make clear that the body is not presupposed from the start, but it rather emerges through a process of concrescence to which, furthermore, more-than-human forces decisively contribute. This latter point works in a non-anthropocentric direction, thus amplifying and transforming phenomenology’s primarily humanist focus. Third, the scalar perspective in Five Angels asks that we reexamine the phenomenological emphasis on the body’s situatedness to account for the body’s position as a “situated dislocation.” Such disorientation resulting from shifts in modes of perception is crucial to debunking the human centrality. Finally, we need to disinvest from the primary emphasis on the physicality of the body and duly attend to the mental, experiential extensions of being, the idea that human consciousness is a means for the cosmos to perceive itself. In short, the body in Five Angels is not simply the visible form signaling a separate, self-contained identity on a single plane of existence, but a scattered configuration that reaches internally and externally beyond visible appearances, hence beyond the physical plane.