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a stunning nature of various landscape that the lone cowboy riding through on another
screen form a contradictory spatial image of the West. In his study Virgin Land, Henry
Nash Smith traces how the West as symbol has functioned in America’s history and
consciousness through its spatial imagery. “Is the West a garden of natural dignity and
innocence ofering refuge from decadence of civilization? Or is it a treacherous desert
stubbornly resisting the gradual sweep of agrarian progress and community values?”
qtd. in “Authorship and Genre: Notes on the Western 58.
This ideological tension within the western tradition’s spatial coniguration is part of
the mythical West. On one hand, the West is a myth that is constructed through the
reconciliation of its contradictory nature since this contradiction allows “a wide
range of intervention, choice, spectacle and experiment” “Authorship and Genre: Notes
on the Western” 64. On the other hand, it is also a myth that constructs a certain idea
about America particularly in regard to the notion of homeland and the nature of
frontier as a myth of barrier, the threshold between the insider and the outsider, the
civilized and the uncivilized, the lawful and the outlaw. As Kitses has put it, “Its greatest
strength has been this very pervasiveness and repetition... It is only because the western has
been everywhere before us for so long that it ‘works’ ” “Authorship and Genre: Notes on
the Western” 65.
Deconstructing western genre as iconic work through self-relexivity thus creates a sense of
media displacement as a state of asynchronous or an out-of-place impression. The title
American Night is a reference to another ilm
La Nuit Americaine Trufaut, 1973, a ilm
about the process of ilm production and also a reference towards a lighting technique
commonly used in western ilm that enables a night scene shot in a broad daylight. This
reference towards ilm production process is illustrated by the presence of ilm crews,
camera track, and an overall portrayal of the ilm setting as a ilm set.
The sense of displacement not only works spatially, but also temporally. The reference
towards Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Jean- Luc Godard, or even 50 Cents is a temporal
distortion that interrupts the conventional
time setting of western ilm world in a far- away period of American past.
A sense of displacement also comes from the way we experience the exhibition space.
The fact that the spectator could move freely within the conined space of the gallery
enables a certain degree of distance navigation and negotiation. We could come closer to
the screen and focusing on one screen after another or we could sit in a distance and watch
it altogether. This experience of movement creates uncertainty since there is no single
way to experience the artwork. The spectator thus experiences a sense of displacement that
came from the fact that the distance between her and the artwork is liable to change.
Understanding American Night as cinema of exhibition thus illuminates the notion of space
while experiencing the artwork in two levels. In the irst level, we experience a textual space
where we make meanings within a conined space of ilmic text. In the second level, we
experience this textual space in its exhibition space where the moving bodily experience
creates uncertainty of placing the artwork within a distance from her body. In other
words, we could say that its exhibition design has positioned the spectator to experience a
sense of displacement.
4. Spatiovisual Art and Intersubjective Spectatorship
In this narrative of journey and discovery, we have concluded at least two senses of spatial
coniguration in experiencing American Night. Within the cinematic space, the
spectator is positioned to experience a sense of immobile mobility. Secondly, within the
exhibition space the spectator is positioned to feel uncertain, to sense some sort of
displacement. However, I would argue that these two spatial experiences share a common
trope that is a state of in-between-ness.
In her study of ilm spectatorship, Giuliana Bruno introduces the term ‘dwelling-voyage’
to challenge the view that travel always implies mobility. ‘Dwelling-voyage’ is an in-
between mode of travel that “implies a series of interactions. A voyage deeply involves and
questions one’s sense of home, of belonging, and of cultural identity... It is not a static
notion, but a site of transito. More than simply a point of departure and return, it is a site of
continual transformation” Bruno 103.
Understanding ‘dwelling-voyage’ as a spectatorship mode that acknowledges a static
interaction or immobile mobility is helpful to understand the gallery as a space of ilmic
experiences. In this case, the exhibition space is not a stationary ediice, but rather as Bruno
suggests, “a site of mobile inhabitations” Bruno 103. Thus, in this sense we could
understand the sense of displacement as a
trace of movement, of a travel. It is a leeting moment of moving from one place to another
without any precise points of departure or destination.
Moving in circle, a loop, or a conined space is an example of this kind of passage, which
is exactly the aesthetic of American Night. Likewise, my experience of moving around
the gallery space also creates a narrative of mobility, of coming to a place, lingering
through both the cinematic and exhibition spaces, and then leave and carry the experience
with me. Hence, it is not only a narrative of a lingering travel memory, but also a spatial
memory.
Thus, American Night requires a speciic
kind of spectatorship that might be diferent from the traditional mode of ilm viewing in
the cinema. Especially, since the ilm’s whole aesthetic comes from the integration of the
cinematic and the exhibition spaces. In other words, the ilm’s aesthetic is built upon the
idea of spatial experience. In this sense, we could say that American Night is not only a
cinematic art, but also a spatiovisual one.
So what is the implication of experiencing American Night as spatiovisual art? What
kind of particular spectatorial mode does it require?
Experiencing American Night as spatiovisual experiences calls for a discussion on ilms
and other spatial art, that is architecture. The architecture here particularly refers to what
Bruno explains as, “A dynamic conception of architecture, which overcomes the traditional
notion of building as a still, tectonic construct, allow us to think of space as practice. This
involves incorporating the inhabitant of the space or its intruder into architecture,
... charting the narrative these navigations
create.... Here, again, architecture joins ilm in a practice that engages seeing in relation to
movement” Bruno 57-58.
As I have elaborated earlier, American Night’s spatial arrangement is characterised by
movements. Not only the gallery allows the viewer to walk around the space, but also it
prompts audiences to explore the space by negotiating distance to screens, to another
viewer, and even to the projector. It is a diferent experience compared to the traditional notion
of watching ilm in the cinema where we are sitting and unable to negotiate our distance
to the cinematic apparatus. In watching American Night in the gallery space, not only
that the spectator moves through seeing and imagining, but also he or she physically
moves. Shehe is an embodied spectator who is aware of herhis body movement in herhis
relation to viewing.
In this sense, spectatorship is indeed an integral part in constructing American
Night as a spatiovisual art. Therefore, ilm
spectatorship should be understood as “a practice of space that is dwelt in, as in the
built environment... the spectator turns into a visitor. The ilm ‘viewer’ is a practitioner of
viewing space – a tourist” Bruno 62. The spectator as a tourist is a igure of promenade
that moves across terrains. The movement consists of a physical one within the gallery
space and a cognitive-emotional one across the cinematic and exhibition spaces.
Drawing from Bruno’s notion of travelling viewer, I argue that the particular
spectatorial mode American Night calls for is an intersubjective one. What I mean
by that is the encounter between the ilm’s and the spectator’s subjectivities. The ilm
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subjectivity derives not from the intention of the ilmmaker, but from its integrated
aesthetic of the cinematic and exhibition spaces. Thus, intersubjective spectatorship
is a practice resulted from the relationship
established by the ilm’s subjectivity and the spectator’s subjectivity in practicing an
integrated reading of herhis experience. The spectator that actively views, moves, engages,
relects, and rethinks herhis encounter with the artwork is what makes the spatiovisuality
of the artwork evident. Thus it is the practice of intersubjective spectatorship that makes
American Night arguably a spatiovisual art.
5. Conclusion At this point, it is worth to conclude on what the
