"Cinema, as a space where we gather collectively, is always marked by overlapping realities, oscillating between that of the illusionary images showing on the screen, of the physical space we find ourselves seated in and our own thoughts and references; between experiencing together and assimilating alone. This uncertain stumbling between different realities will inevitably intensify the moment we take away cinema’s pictorial foundation: with the visual removed, other senses take precedence. We may listen more carefully to the sounds in the film, to the rustling behind us or to our own breathing. We might become more sensitive to the smells besides us, the proximity to others or the comfort of our own seats.
Friday, January 15. 2016
Blind Cinema - beyond the sense of sight
Before I head into the dark world of Berlin's many Berlinale cinemas for the classic film festival experience in a few week's time, I am very much looking forward to having my perception of cinema shaken, challenged and reconfigured. The Goethe-Institut and Toronto's Progress Festival of daring international performance work have invited UK-based German artist Britt Hatzius' extraordinary cinematic audio-nonvisual experiment Blind Cinema for two intimate performances at The Theatre Centre. I will let Britt Hatzius describe her investigation into the senses that shape our cinematic experience:
"Cinema, as a space where we gather collectively, is always marked by overlapping realities, oscillating between that of the illusionary images showing on the screen, of the physical space we find ourselves seated in and our own thoughts and references; between experiencing together and assimilating alone. This uncertain stumbling between different realities will inevitably intensify the moment we take away cinema’s pictorial foundation: with the visual removed, other senses take precedence. We may listen more carefully to the sounds in the film, to the rustling behind us or to our own breathing. We might become more sensitive to the smells besides us, the proximity to others or the comfort of our own seats.
"Cinema, as a space where we gather collectively, is always marked by overlapping realities, oscillating between that of the illusionary images showing on the screen, of the physical space we find ourselves seated in and our own thoughts and references; between experiencing together and assimilating alone. This uncertain stumbling between different realities will inevitably intensify the moment we take away cinema’s pictorial foundation: with the visual removed, other senses take precedence. We may listen more carefully to the sounds in the film, to the rustling behind us or to our own breathing. We might become more sensitive to the smells besides us, the proximity to others or the comfort of our own seats.
In Blind Cinema, a film screening/performance based on the practice of audio description for the blind, the audience is made aware of the subtleties that lie beyond the sense of sight. In a shift from the eye to the mind’s eye, we are thrown into our own unstable internal worlds of guessing, associating and imagining.
The setup is very simple: an audience sits blindfolded in a cinema with children aged between 9 and 11 sitting in the row behind them, who, in whispered voices and through speaking funnels, describe to us (live) what only they see projected on the screen. The children are watching the film for the first time. Their descriptions are approximate, at times stumbling, just as our understanding of what is happening on the screen remains approximate and fragmentary. Every child with his or her own voice, own rhythm, own way of looking, helps us build momentary threads to follow: 'There is a house, a grey floor and a white screen, and it starts with… a window. And nothing is going on… It’s still. Nothing is happening yet. It’s still going on…' And the whispers continue, full of gaps and pauses, hesitations and stammering, full of heavy breathing, rustling and giggling, intimate sounds that reach your ear while the rest of the room is filled with a muffled murmur.
There is a struggle here with language, between language and the visible (as well as the invisible), that is maybe closest to those in the midst of discovering language’s potential and its limits - those who are learning to read and write, learning to assign meaning to things in order to share. But it is also a struggle that is at the heart of any attempt to articulate, even if at times we find ourselves 'at a loss’ for words when faced with experiences (visual or otherwise) that seem to escape or transcend the articulable.
There is also a struggle with meaning itself, or a meaningful engagement with the image, the moving image. In today’s over-saturated culture of image consumption and production, maybe we need to occasionally close our eyes in order to re-awaken our sensibilities towards other senses, an awareness of realities that lie beyond the visual. It is as if in Blind Cinema the projected images on the screen, although essential, start to lose their significance. The focus is instead on each child’s individual response, with all its particularity and emotional response. The film falls into pieces, imagined in endless different variations by every single audience member, alone.
Sitting together in this darkened cinema space, sentient and acutely attentive, each screening is experienced as a live moment, as a shared experience that embraces a willingness to fail as much as it encourages a basic human act of assistance: A collaboration between a blinded adult and a seeing child, between the whispered words and our (in)ability to make sense of what we think the other sees. A shared investment, a film not watched but created together, momentarily, that leaves us with a dream-like sense of having experienced something that I hope can sometimes be at once intimate, personal and collective."
Britt Hatzius (DE/UK) works in film, video, sound and performance, exploring ideas around language, interpretation and the potential for discrepancies, ruptures, and (mis)communication. Her work has been shown internationally at performance and media arts festivals, institutions and galleries. Recent collaborations include cinematic installation ‘Micro Events’ (2012) with Tom Kok, interactive performance ‘This Is Not My Voice Speaking’ (2013) with Ant Hampton and site-specific installation ‘As Never Before, As Never Again’ (2014) with Ant Hampton. ‘Blind Cinema’ (2015) is a co-production between Vooruit (Ghent), Beursschowburg (Brussels) and Bronks Theatre (Brussels) based on conversations with people with impaired sight, professional audio describers, neuroscientists and numerous tryouts with children in London and Brussels. Each screening/performance involves a new group of children and is presented in the language(s) of the hosting venue.
photo: courtesy of the artist
The setup is very simple: an audience sits blindfolded in a cinema with children aged between 9 and 11 sitting in the row behind them, who, in whispered voices and through speaking funnels, describe to us (live) what only they see projected on the screen. The children are watching the film for the first time. Their descriptions are approximate, at times stumbling, just as our understanding of what is happening on the screen remains approximate and fragmentary. Every child with his or her own voice, own rhythm, own way of looking, helps us build momentary threads to follow: 'There is a house, a grey floor and a white screen, and it starts with… a window. And nothing is going on… It’s still. Nothing is happening yet. It’s still going on…' And the whispers continue, full of gaps and pauses, hesitations and stammering, full of heavy breathing, rustling and giggling, intimate sounds that reach your ear while the rest of the room is filled with a muffled murmur.
There is a struggle here with language, between language and the visible (as well as the invisible), that is maybe closest to those in the midst of discovering language’s potential and its limits - those who are learning to read and write, learning to assign meaning to things in order to share. But it is also a struggle that is at the heart of any attempt to articulate, even if at times we find ourselves 'at a loss’ for words when faced with experiences (visual or otherwise) that seem to escape or transcend the articulable.
There is also a struggle with meaning itself, or a meaningful engagement with the image, the moving image. In today’s over-saturated culture of image consumption and production, maybe we need to occasionally close our eyes in order to re-awaken our sensibilities towards other senses, an awareness of realities that lie beyond the visual. It is as if in Blind Cinema the projected images on the screen, although essential, start to lose their significance. The focus is instead on each child’s individual response, with all its particularity and emotional response. The film falls into pieces, imagined in endless different variations by every single audience member, alone.
Sitting together in this darkened cinema space, sentient and acutely attentive, each screening is experienced as a live moment, as a shared experience that embraces a willingness to fail as much as it encourages a basic human act of assistance: A collaboration between a blinded adult and a seeing child, between the whispered words and our (in)ability to make sense of what we think the other sees. A shared investment, a film not watched but created together, momentarily, that leaves us with a dream-like sense of having experienced something that I hope can sometimes be at once intimate, personal and collective."
Britt Hatzius (DE/UK) works in film, video, sound and performance, exploring ideas around language, interpretation and the potential for discrepancies, ruptures, and (mis)communication. Her work has been shown internationally at performance and media arts festivals, institutions and galleries. Recent collaborations include cinematic installation ‘Micro Events’ (2012) with Tom Kok, interactive performance ‘This Is Not My Voice Speaking’ (2013) with Ant Hampton and site-specific installation ‘As Never Before, As Never Again’ (2014) with Ant Hampton. ‘Blind Cinema’ (2015) is a co-production between Vooruit (Ghent), Beursschowburg (Brussels) and Bronks Theatre (Brussels) based on conversations with people with impaired sight, professional audio describers, neuroscientists and numerous tryouts with children in London and Brussels. Each screening/performance involves a new group of children and is presented in the language(s) of the hosting venue.
photo: courtesy of the artist
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