Publication
Title
Countering the disadvantage : stasis as an emancipatory minimalist legacy in Chantal Akerman's cinema
Author
Abstract
This article examines stasis in Chantal Akerman's cinema by means of a genealogical study into its minimalist origins in order to make visible its political operationality in her work and, by extension, its inherent political potential. Stasis is an aesthetic effect generated through the use of repetition, seriality, and duration in temporal media that proliferated in Minimalism across artforms and was taken up by Akerman during her sejour in New York in the early 1970s. The characteristic endless temporality created by stasis in temporal media takes shape in Minimalism due in part to the movement's literalist, phenomenological orientation, which at one point caused Minimalist art to be regarded as nonideological - this while the static quality in Akerman's work appears to be constitutive of its political character. A study of her early films Hotel Monterey (1972) and Je tu il elle (1974), clearly influenced by the Minimalist scene she was immersed in, illustrates how stasis emerges analogously in Minimalist music, dance, and Akerman's cinema. Minimalism's paradigmatically phenomenological orientation and its intricate entwinement with stasis are examined in relation to Akerman's work to reveal their inherent potential for political operationality in art.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Film-philosophy
Publication
2023
ISSN
1466-4615
DOI
10.3366/FILM.2023.0243
Volume/pages
27 :3 (2023) , p. 488-506
ISI
001087028800007
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 04.12.2023
Last edited 07.12.2023
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