Jurnal IMAJI | 26 Jurnal IMAJI | 27
Edisi 6 No. 1 Juli 2013 Edisi 6 No. 1 Juli 2013
Abstract ‘Film in the Gallery’ is a concept that I propose to understand a phenomenon of exhibiting
cinema in a gallery or museum. The main tension of this practice is located in the laymen’s view that gallery’s elite status determines the status of ‘ilm in the gallery’ practice. In other
words, a ilm is regarded as an artwork because the gallery says so. This essay tries to look into the practice by asking the questions below: What is the signiicance of screening a ilm in a
gallery? To what extent the exhibition design demanded by the spatiality of the gallery adds to the artistic dimension of ‘Film in the Gallery’ practice? The answer will be demonstrated
through a close analysis of a particular artwork titled American Night 2009 by Julian Rosefeldt
that challenges the traditional notion of a ilm’s exhibition design.
Keywords Film in the Gallery, cinema of exhibition, spatiovisual art, intersubjective spectatorship
Travel-lingering Through American Night: Rethinking Space in ‘Film in the Gallery’
practice
Nayla Majestya
le.jamais.natyagmail.com
1. Introduction ‘Film in the gallery’ has become a predominant
phenomenon in the context of art consumption that refers to a set of practices of exhibiting
cinema in a gallery or museum. Regardless its
practicality, the term ‘ilm in the gallery’ raises a paradox. On one hand, ‘ilm in the gallery’
signiies a sense of media displacement that comes from a long-established notion of a
cinema or a movie house as the venue of the ilm exhibition proper. On the other hand, the
gallery also has its own spatial connotation as an institution of high arts that quite often
in polarity with the notion of ilm as mass production and mass entertainment. Hence,
resulted in a laymen view that the gallery’s elite status determines the status of ‘ilm in
the gallery’ practice. In other words, ilm is seen an artwork because the gallery says so.
In his study of virtual museum, media archeologist Erkki Huhtamo claims that the
origin of virtual museum could be found from the emerging practice of exhibition design
that is by incorporating exhibition design in the artistic practice as new medium within
the avant-garde art movement in the early 20
th
century “On The Origins of The Virtual Museum” 3. Huhtamo’s discovery provides a
useful context to situates the status of ‘ilm in the gallery’ as art by taking into account its
exhibition design. Thus, this essay will answer the following question: To what extent an
exhibition design is signiicant in the artistic practice of ‘ilm in the gallery’? The answer
will be demonstrated through a close analysis of a particular artwork that challenges the
traditional notion of its exhibition design. In this case, the artwork in discussion is
American Night 2009.
American Night is a ive-widescreen ilm
installation by Julian Rosefeldt, a German contemporary ilm artist widely known
especially in the UK and Europe with his multi-screens ilm installation. Shot in
16mm and showing a depth characteristic of celluloid-based image to show a cinematic
world of western genre, American Night
could be easily made as a single screen ilm exhibited in the cinema. American Night
as a ilm installation placed in a speciic context of gallery exhibition, thus, raises a
set of questions in regard to our notion of ilmic experiences. Does the gallery setting
ofer diferent experiences compared to those of cinema setting? If so, what do those
experiences tell us about ‘ilm in the gallery’ spectatorship?
Deducing from Huhtamo’s account and Giuliana Bruno’s notion of ilm spectator as
a voyager or traveler, a person who takes a journey through the geographical terrain of
moving image Bruno 56, this essay claims
that ilm spectatorship, regardless in a gallery or cinema setting, is a space created by
experiences established between the artwork and the spectator. The spectator creates
herhis own space of experience rather than inhabits a predetermined one dictated by
the exhibition space’s social status. Thus, the cinematic experience of a spectator is
intersubjective, rather than institutionalised. This essay will attempt to interpret
spectatorship as an integrated space through Huhtamo’s idea of integration. In this context,
reading a space is like performing mettre-en- scene, putting things together to construct a
scene in order to understand it as a space. By taking into account both the mise-en-scene
on the screen and the mise-en-scene out of screen, the spectator performs an integrated
reading. Hence this essay will focus on the idea of spatial experience of a traveler, starting
with a journey through the ilm’s diegetic space, then through the gallery’s space,
and lastly through the intersubjective space created from a synthesis of the two spatial
experiences.
2. The West as Cinematic Space
