The mobilized virtual gaze in Russian Ark.

15 Pages·2013·0.48 MB·English

The mobilized virtual gaze in Russian Ark.
According to Walter Benjamin, the flâneur, wandering through urban space in
a daze of distraction - a mood yet to be propagated by motion pictures- was
the quintessential paradigm of modernity. Cinema, arising in the age of
mechanical reproducibility, would diffuse this new mode of perception among
the modern urban dwellers. Thus, the development of cinema and the formation
of the space of modernity became processes closely intertwined. A detailed
study of this historical interrelation leads us to extrapolate this
connection into a hypothesis with regard to Post-Modernism. In other words,
it is unavoidable to wonder if such an entangled relationship persisted
between the Post-Modern paradigm and the cinematic gaze of that period.
This question has been tackled by several authors, among them Anne
Friedberg, whose approach is the object of analysis in this paper.1 In this
regard, Friedberg describes the transition between Modernism and Post-
Modernism as “a gradual and indistinct epistemological tear along the fabric
of modernity, a change caused by the growing cultural centrality of a

1Therefore, for our purpose, we will accept her understanding of Post-Modernism, acknowledging
that it does not necessarily refer to its conventional use in human sciences, literature or
architecture, but with its use within the theory of visual arts. “The debate on postmodernism
has by now produced a vast literature. Roughly, we might distinguish three positions: one
elaborated with reference to the human sciences and literature […]; one concerning the visual
arts [..]; and one related to the discourse of and on architecture.” Giuliana Bruno, “Ramble
City: Postmodernism and "Blade Runner". October, Vol. 41. (Summer, 1987), pp. 61-74
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feature that is integral to both cinema and television: a mobilized virtual
gaze.” 2
According to Friedberg’s theory, it should be feasible to identify this
mobilized virtual gaze (and to diagnose the symptoms associated with this
definition of Post-Modernity) within a visual text of this period.
Conversely, it should be possible to point out the marginality of those
symptoms in equivalent visual texts belonging to the modern epoch.
Consequently, this paper will consist not only in a dissection of a fragment
of Russian Ark, but in a comparison with other analogous modern precedents
(Voyage in Italy, La Jetée), in order to demonstrate how Friedberg’s
mobilized virtual gaze is fully manifested in the post-modern production,
whereas only germinal in the modern condition.
To begin, it is necessary to dissect the idea of a mobilized virtual gaze: a
compound concept essentially formed by the association of two
phenomenological experiences of cinema. Firstly, it refers to the mobilized
gaze as the perceptional mood of the cinematic eye, epitomized by the
flâneurs and closely related to the experience of modernity. Secondly, it
introduces Friedberg’s understanding of cinema as a virtual threshold that
transfers “the isolation produced by the plate glass window onto a virtual
register”3, implying that through cinema we experience a space and time
embedded in the plane of representation, perceiving a mediated reality that
actually is a “delimited virtuality”. Combining these two ideas, Friedberg

2 Friedberg, Anne. “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition”, in Williams, Linda, 1946-.
1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60
3 Friedberg, Anne. 2006. The virtual window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press. P. 138
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defines the mobilized virtual gaze as “a gaze that travels, in an imaginary
flânerie, through an imaginary elsewhere and an imaginary else-when” 4
This idea of an imaginary drift is, as a matter of fact, essential to the
conception of Russian Ark. In this film the gaze of the spectator - embodied
in the narrator’s character - strolls the salons of the Hermitage along
different periods of Russian History. The spectator becomes, inadvertently,
a virtual flâneur who travels space and time through the rooms of the Winter
Palace. That is to say, via the virtual threshold of the screen, the
spectator’s mobilized virtual gaze detours5 in a virtual museum, in a
virtual time sequence.
In order to study and systematize this parallelism we can analyze, for
example, the scene in the neoclassical sculpture salon. In this particular
moment of the derive, the unseen protagonist (/camera/spectator) follows
“the European” into the salon of XIX Century sculpture. The “subjective”
protagonist, embodying the gaze of the camera (/spectators), tracks the
“objective” protagonist, the European, who directs the mobilized gaze. As in
the rest of the film, there are no visible cuts delimiting this scene,
otherwise clearly demarcated by the spatial structure of the museum. The
first aspect to point out is that, while in the beginning the European
monopolizes the frame, he promptly shares the composition with the
sculptures, only leaving the centrality of the frame to allow the mobilized
gaze of the audience to wander over the pieces of art.

4 Friedberg, Anne. “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition”, in Williams, Linda, 1946-.
1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60. Although these imaginary temporal and spatial
dimensions refer to the virtual window, it is not difficult to point out the connection with
post-modern theory: if Foucault’s heterotopia is the space of post-modernity, the mobilized
virtual gaze is the mode of strolling through it.
5 Here we refer to the Situationists, to whom we will return later.
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Shared framing

The pronounced use of the zoom and the changes of field of view (the lens-
angle) accentuate an odd dreamlike sensation, as the camera follows the
European meandering between the statues. After approaching Antonio Canova’s
Three Graces, he disappears from the image, while the camera tours across
the masterpiece. This revolution around the statue conveys to the spectator
a particular spatial reading of Beauty, Charm and Joy –the graces of the
classical myth. Interestingly enough, Canova’s other version of the statue –
owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Galleries of
Scotland – has a rotating pedestal designed to convey the same effect
registered by the camera. The singularity of this moment is further signaled
by the dramatic lighting used to render the sculpture – as opposed to the
predominant emphasis on the natural illumination of the museum.
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The Three Graces.

The cinematographic recording of sculpture puts this scene into dialogue
with Rossellini’s visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Voyage in
Italy. In both films, across the threshold of the screen, the gaze of the
spectator wanders around a gallery of statues. Thus, through the artifice of
cinema the embedded spatial diegesis of the sculptures becomes apparent,
assuming protagonism in the scene.

Blind woman.

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Nevertheless, the contrast between those two scenes is noteworthy. The
haptic condition of the experience in Russian Ark takes the topic of “art in
film” to a dimension absent in Voyage in Italy. The introduction of the
character of the blind woman (who is “reading” a statue) immediately after
this fragment, emphasizes the intentionality of this sensorial quality.
The use of a single point of view moving through the gallery, as well as
other minor issues6, confers a “tactile” expressiveness to the The Three
Graces (and to the space of the Hermitage). Hence, the mobilization of the
gaze introduces a further degree of complexity in the distortions of
perception produced through the “virtual window”, making the eyes of the
spectator seem to function like organs of touch. The diegesis overcomes and
deflects the visual spectatorship, involving a tactile, corporal way of
relating with the space in the virtual window. The mobilization of the gaze
and its effects (this haptic activation of space) reflect the change of
paradigm from modernism to postmodernism.
Ironically, where Rossellini could play with elements such as the montage,
the length of the takes, etc., in order to manipulate the narration of the
sculptures, Sokurov faces the same challenge with one only shot, but
supported by digital recording. Whereas the technique of montage is
quintessential to cinema of the modern period – i.e. Voyage in Italy -, the
“single shot” used in Russian Ark apparently excludes it.
Nevertheless, if we leave aside the technical resource and tackle the idea
behind montage from Eisenstein’s point of view - as the narration of a
sequence through space – then we could claim that Russian Ark not only

6 The digital effects added in post-production (in particular the changes of the field of view
and the zooms), the rhythm and slight oscillation produced by the Steadicam, the framing,
lighting and the narration.
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comprises but emphasizes it. The aforementioned fragment, for example,
contains a specific version of the statues’ spatial diegesis, registering a
particular sequence of the many possible. A person visiting the Hermitage
would have multiple alternative paths to walk through and read the
sculptures. He would have to analyze each group in order to decipher it,
whereas in the virtual nature of the cinema screen Sokurov already has
chosen a particular choreography in space. Thus, the elements underline the
“link between mise-en-cadre and mise-en-scène”, gathering “a certain
sequence into a single meaningful concept; and these diverse impressions
pass in front of an immobile spectator.”7
Moreover, in Russian Ark the transition between rooms substitutes part of
the narrative role of montage, while the digital post-production replaces
montage as a technical centerpiece. For example - only during the scene in
the statues room - the aggressive modifications of the field of view of the
camera (paying with a wide-angle “lens”) and the extensive use of zoom
create a noteworthy visual variation.

7 Bois, Yve-Alain, and Eisenstein, Sergei. 1989 “Montage and Architecture” Assemblage, No. 10
(Dec. 1989), pp. 121
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Zooming at the threshold.

Manipulation of field of view/ lens.

The use of a Steadicam and the absence of cuts suggest that those effects,
repeated during the scene, in combination with the travelling of the camera
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around the statues, have being added in post-production. In this sense, the
use of digital technology does not lead to a lack8 (but to a different kind)
of editing. Thus, the absence of a modern montage-based coding produces a
distinct visual language. If Post-modern cinematic spectatorship “changed,
in unprecedented ways, concepts of the present and the real”9, then Post-
production –an editing method relieved from the use of discrete fragments of
time and space – reflects this mutation, as a new mode of composing visual
language.
From another point of view, in Cinema and the Postmodern Condition,
Friedberg dissects this unprecedented change of the concepts of the present
and the real. She identifies the “most profound symptoms of the postmodern
condition” as the disappearance of a sense of history, entrapment in a
perpetual present, and the loss of temporal referents.
In this sense, it is not hard to identify that “disappearance of a sense of
history” in Russian Ark, with a narration shifting between disjointed
historical times without apparent difficulty. For instance, only within the
context of the sculptures salon we notice the transition from the current
time, before entering the room, and 191310 after leaving it. Another example
of this distortion of the temporal line - within the same fragment - is the
European’s claim that Canova almost married his mother at the time of
sculpting The Three Graces. A fact obviously impossible, were it not for the
virtual window, given the span of time between 2002 and 1814, when Canova

8 As Sokurov may have wanted to claim.
9 Friedberg, Anne. “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition”, in Williams, Linda, 1946-.
1995. Viewing positions : Ways of seeing film. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press. P. 60
10 This is the date of the last grand ball of the Tzars, which took place in the same ballroom
of the recording. This event is present both in this scene –when the guests are entering the
Winter Palace – and, later in the movie, the final ballroom dance itself.
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made the sculpture. This post-modern disappearance of a sense of history,
only implied in Voyage in Italy11, is explicitly expressed and incorporated
into the visual language of the film throughout the whole length of Russian
Ark.
In addition, the “entrapment in a perpetual present” is also embedded in the
figure of the European, a character that, for an unknown reason, travels
through time caught up in an enduring present in which the meaning of past
and future collapse.
The “loss of temporal referents” as a result of the two previous points, is
clearly part of the spectatorship experience of the film. The continuous
shift of the temporal timing of the narration, while the spatial placement
and the works of art –the Hermitage- seem to be perennial, introduces a
sensation of discordancy among time and its referent, the space of the
action.
Moreover, not only are all of Friedberg’s symptoms of post-modernity
encompassed in the film, but there are a number of other references that we
can evaluate that also support the direct presence of the Post-Modern
sensibility in Russian Ark. In his essays12 Frederic Jameson establishes an
analogy between schizophrenia (as a language disorder caused by a break in
the relations of signifiers) and post-modern subjectivity, which he
characterizes by “the collapse of temporality, the failure of the ability to
locate or fix events historically, and the mise-en-abîme of referents lost
in the labyrinthine chain of signifiers”. Jameson’s understanding of

11 Katherine comments that the men that existed two thousand years before were identical to the
men of today, and that one would understand them perfectly
12 “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism”.
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