10.54103/2036-461X/20557
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2036-461X
20557
40
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Wanda Strauven, Touchscreen Archaeology. Tracing Histories of Hands-On Media Practices, Lüneburg: meson press, 2021, pp. 260 (Limina Award 2021)
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Reviews / Comptes rendus
2023-09-22
2023-07-10
2023-09-22
2023-09-22
167-169
Cinéma & Cie
Barbara Grespi
2023/09/22
10.54103/2036-461X/20557
167
University of Milan
2036-461X
40
en
169
Wanda Strauven, Touchscreen Archaeology. Tracing Histories of Hands-On Media Practices, Lüneburg: meson press, 2021, pp. 260 (Limina Award 2021)
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/20557/18789
23
                                                                                       Wanda Strauven
                                                                                       Touchscreen Archaeology.
                                                                                       Tracing Histories of Hands-On Media
                                                                                       Practices
                                                                                       Lüneburg: meson press, 2021, pp. 260
                                                                                       Limina Award 2021
                                                                                       DOI https://doi.org/10.54103/2036-461X/20557



                                                                                          The protagonist of the latest book by Wanda        into a hero or a visionary, the standard-bearer of
                                                                                       Strauven is an early cinema caricature: the           a relationship with moving images that belongs
                                                                                       clumsy countryman who, attending a film               to the earliest days of a medium and that will
                                                                                       screening for the first time, jumps onto the stage    persist into its future. This counter-history, which
                                                                                       and touches the screen. While Strauven is not         becomes a genealogy of our present condition as
                                                                                       the first to devote attention to this stereotypical   spectators touching screens in order to interact
                                                                                       character and to the films this figure inspired,      with images, is both fascinating and, most
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       most notably, Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture        importantly, capable of explaining a fundamental
                                                                                       Show (Edwin Porter, 1902), she is the first to        aspect of postcinematic culture. Strauven
                                                                                       identify in this trope one of those moments           presents her own archaeological method as
                                                                                       of rupture and discontinuity in the history of a      a form of hacking into history, a process that
                                                                                       medium that our tactile and interactive present       involves loosening its joints, a “method” that
                                                                                       can shed light upon.                                  lies between Wolfgang Ernst’s archivistic option,
                                                                                          According to the most notable historiography       Erkki Huhtamo’s cyclical histories and Thomas
                                                                                       (Tom Gunning, Thomas Elsaesser), early rube           Elsaesser’s meta-historiographic framework.
                                                                                       films served as instructions for the use of a         Starting from the realm of filmology, where
                                                                                       medium that had just established itself; faced        symptoms are revealed, Strauven’s reflection
                                                                                       with the ridiculing of a behaviour not to be          becomes in part theoretical (what is the difference
                                                                                       imitated, the spectator learned the etiquette         between tactile and haptic experiences?), in
                                                                                       of the movie theatre. His or her education was        part historical (the role of manual operativity in
                                                                                       part of that process of the institutionalization      precinematic devices) and finally mediological,
                                                                                       of cinema that aimed to distance the medium           focusing on a pedagogy of interfaces and their
                                                                                       from its association with the circus and fair, and    role in childhood (is manual interaction with
                                                                                       to establish it in the spaces of theatre, that is,    screens like a form of playful learning?).
                                                                                       of art. And, as in the realms of art, especially in      Due to this triple focus, Touchscreen
                                                                                       museums, even in the movie theatre one had to         Archaeology does not develop an archaeology of
                                                                                       learn not to touch the images: the screen was         the sense of touch in its encounter with cinema,
                                                                                       meant to produce a purely optical experience.         or the cinematic, or even of specific gestures
                                                                                          In Strauven’s work, the rube is transformed        and their reformulation in relation to evolving


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 40 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                 167
screens, but rather works in a highly original as     and Touchscreen Archaeology provides key
well as rigorous way on an archaeology of the         insights for analysing this.
praxis of touching images, or their supports; on an      Rather, this volume is focused on cinema,
archaeology of a contact-based intimacy between       which might seem poorly suited to hosting
the human and the iconic. One of the reasons          the image+. On the contrary, Strauven’s
why cinema – understood as a screen-theatre-          archaeological research demonstrates that what
spectator complex – is today experienced by the       the medium became in the 20th century was not
younger generations as an ancient medium, the         inscribed in its DNA and did not correspond to
best expression of the visual culture of a century    the codes of its “development”. Cinema history
now gone by, is its character as an apparatus         started under the sign of the tactile (from
that creates distance between the images and          flipbooks to phenakistoscope, from zoetrope to
the spectator, confirming the predominance            praxinoscope), took a long detour, and finally
of the eye over the other senses. Today, the          returned, with the digital, to the path it had
intimacy between our hand and images is total,        taken more than a century ago. Consequently,
as Strauven demonstrates by listing a series of       postcinema can, or perhaps must, turn into a
operations that our fingers perform on digital        sensorial bricolage experience, employing all the
screens to point, pinch, scroll, swipe or just        playful-philosophical potential already typical
move the images; to be a digital native means         of optical toys, to which Strauven dedicates
above all to think of images as virtual objects       important pages.
with which to operate, to browse them through            Finally, one of the most intriguing results of
manual techniques – such as the “cosmic zoom”         Strauven’s research is the “subversive” potential
of contemporary cinema, which allows radical          of the contemporary tactile mediascape, which
changes of scale without blurring.                    constitutes the re-emergence of an idea and
  In the final chapter, Strauven proposes calling     praxis of the screen linked to historically
the iconicity of today’s visual culture “image+”:     subordinate figures, first and foremost women.
the term is picked up from the language of image      Indeed, among the prefigurations of the
processing software and alludes to an iconic form     touchscreen are the fire screen and the folding
that works beyond its visual appeal, inducing         fan, which was used as a form of visual media
hands-on operations. Contemporary images are          by 19th-century gentlewomen but required some
thus the support and starting point of an operation   manual dexterity, being an illustrated object
that aims at an active construction of the visible,   to be leafed through, a handbag-sized tactile
but also of an experience that hinges on other        surface (Giuliana Bruno calls it “the ladies’ own
senses, first and foremost touch. This without        private cinema”). But there are also non-auratic
touch being the ultimate objective; the sensation     art forms, such as the cabinet of curiosities
the skin feels when touching the surface of a         (Wunderschrank) an (almost) portable closet-
screen (which is always identically smooth and        screen, that links wonder to touch and to the
neutral) does not imply production of meaning.        pleasure of handling the extravagant object;
Rather, as the author states, con-tact is the aim,    and, finally, there is the Futurist “Tactilism” with
understood as the result of multiple agency, only     Marinetti’s Tactile Tables, an early transformation
partly assumed by the human subject, partly           of the screen from surface to interface, which
by the affordances of the images, concretely          Strauven suggests should also be recovered for
capable of triggering actions. Strauven doesn’t       pedagogical purposes.
go so far as to consider immersive technologies,         The simpletons, the boorish, the foolish (like
but in the environments of the extended worlds        Welles’ Don Quixote), and even children, have
the plus quality of the images is clearly evident,    always sensed with their own bodies that the



168                                                                             Touchscreen Archaeology
surfaces on which images are inscribed are
available to be acted upon and offer themselves
to the hands before the eyes. Reading this
volume today, after years of pandemic and the
demonisation of touch as a synonym of contagion,
infection, transmission, helps to rehabilitate all
its creative power and to hand it over to the
new generations, fostering their spontaneous
rethinking of a medium that remains at the
foundation of contemporary visual culture.
                                Barbara Grespi
                           [University of Milan]




Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 40 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X    169
