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An expansion in fact—that which is experienced concretely in the works—provokes another one that can be called conceptual—what is cinema, what does it become? On the one hand, there are theoretic perspectives that perceive in this process a kind of future cinema,3 which is constituted beyond film, in contemporary experiences that in a certain way are the inheritors of propositions from the 1960s and ‘70s.4 From the experimentation with filmic material to the hypermediatic narratives, from montages on multiple screens to the immersive virtual environments, at its utmost, the expansion of cinema beyond itself would result in the affirmation that everything is cinema, as long as it is constituted by moving images. As summarized by Youngblood, this involves separating cinema from its media, “just as we separate music from particular instruments.”5 Thus, the idea of an expanded cinema is formulated and developed to encompass the countless forms of creation and exhibition of moving images increasingly present in contemporary art. It is counterposed to the domain of a single, hegemonic apparatus: the film projected in a darkened room throughout a session. The risk is, however, that of quickly disconsidering the singularities that this apparatus has acquired over its history, along with the various aesthetic potentials and policies that it can engender. More than a media or even a language, cinema can be seen as an apparatus in a broad sense, therefore, as a discursive practice, that involves spaces, institutions, technologies, discourses, and subjectivities. Historically constituted, this practice has produced powerful forms of writing, thought, and resistance. Even in its narrow configuration, it remains because it has constantly reinvented itself.
3
Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel, eds., Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film (London: MIT Press, 2003). 4 Peter Weibel, “Expanded Cinema, Video and Virtual Environments,” in Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film, ed. J. Shaw and P. Weibel (London: MIT Press, 2003). 5 Gene Youngblood, “Cinema and the Code,” in Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film, ed. J. Shaw and P. Weibel (London: MIT Press, 2003).