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Cristina Tosatto
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Re-spatialization of Filmic Representation: Connected Spaces
Text.Serial.Journal
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Thematic issue / Section thématique
2008-10-01
2022-11-26
2008-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Cristina Tosatto
2008/10/01
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
2036-461X
11
en
Re-spatialization of Filmic Representation: Connected Spaces
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19106/16889
8
RE-SPATIALIZATION OF FILMIC REPRESENTATION: CONNECTED SPACES
Cristina Tosatto, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano




   This paper deals with the hypothesis that some forms of representation of contemporary cine-
ma are working on the concept of re-spatialization, reshaping the space of the image in light of
the spectator’s new visual attitudes. The basic elements I consider as conditions which influence
the emergence of a re-spatialization are: the presence of new visual devices in the urban space and
the relationship between the spectator’s gaze and the spatial proliferation of these devices.
   The space to which I will refer to is the social space, as defined by Henry Lefebvre in La
Production de l’espace. Here, the social space is a social production, composed by objects which
are things and relationships as well. He uses this basic concept to figure out how the social prac-
tices are able to influence space itself and its forms of representation1.
   At the same time I will explore space as a territory of visual experience: on the one hand a sub-
ject moving, wandering, stopping, crossing the urban space meeting frames of vision during his
experience of the city; on the other hand the spectator of a cinema which is conscious of its tech-
nological device’s nature and ready to play with its own image. It deals with a cinema able to
move outside from its specific spaces, ready to colonize other places, and at the same time, aware
of being itself a place that can be colonized by other devices. The spaces change, the experiences
change.
   In the essay Zooming Out: The End of Offscreen Space, Scott Bukatman says that «physical and
spectacular spaces commingle»2, meaning how today the medial culture can absorb and expand
the film experience when it takes place in spaces originally not created for cinema. Bukatman is
talking about processes of production of narrative worlds which escape from the space of cine-
ma, through the technology, in order to place themselves in new spaces: «The film and its narra-
tive project a world. But while cinema remains the initial round for this world projection, there is
now a global multimedia culture in place to absorb and extend that experience»3.
   The idea of a medial space is also emerging from the last research conducted by Francesco
Casetti about the re-location4 of cinema. We could say that the process of displacement scatters
pieces of cinema all over the everyday space, by turning this place into something different, and
changing its own functions. In this way cinema is overflowing of its specific space, by moving
towards the urban space, scattering as pieces of fiction, exhibition and narration. Spaces, invaded
by a multiplicity of screens, different points of attention, change their functions and modify the
relationships between the elements inside them. Since de Certeau states that space is a system of
uttering words5, the possibilities of transforming its inner relationships are unlimited. Spaces and
architectures change and they are crossed by new kinds of connections, they become something
like «moving landscapes»6. Therefore they are invaded by movement: the screen creates space,
because of the moving pictures and at the same time the images act like reciprocal accelerations

CINÉMA & CIE, no. 11, Fall 2008                                                                  41
CRISTINA TOSATTO

among bodies. So the landscape produced is composed of spaces within spaces, frames within
frames.
   At the same time the escape of cinema implies an escape of the rules of its symbolic system as
well. Consequently the rules become now effective, not within a single screen space, as usual, but
inside a new space, a multiplicity of screens, that is a net of screens. This space consists of many
attention points spreading everywhere and relationships, like junctures, continually moving and
transforming. The landscape becomes a sort of hybrid split screen, an architecture of displays, los-
ing its own spatial dimensions, absorbed into a time of instantaneous diffusion7.
   The concept of re-spatialization is applicable to the transformation of urban experience, as well
as to the transformation of film experience, as they both produce a different construction of the
spectator’s gaze, through a different organization of space. It is necessary to create a relationship
between the multiplication and fragmentation of screens in the space and the space of a multiple
and fragmented screen. In other words it is necessary to connect the space of representation with
the space of what is represented.
   The basic idea is that the re-spatialization is a consequence of the need to re-organize the screen
space according to the inter-action of devices into a new visual landscape or rather into the space
of the subject. I speak about a system of reciprocity between spaces, because as cinema escapes
from its own space, in order to invade other places, at the same time, it increasingly shows the
opposite process. That is, many devices attempt to colonize the screen space as well. Therefore
the struggle between devices is fought in front of our eyes, inside the image. The idea is to con-
sider the device as a producer of space which, inside the movie screen, activates processes of per-
meation and overlaps with other devices, producing a whole space without edges.
   As a result the device multiplies and re-produces itself, the image re-creates its own space and
the gaze regulates the passages from one to the other, by giving a coherence.
   I will analyze a re-spatialization working through the multiplication of devices, a process that
articulates a networked, solid and organized architecture of the image. It is about the mutual com-
binations of the device, the image and the gaze. Here, once again, it is the gaze, like in an urban
experience, that weaves the web, by holding together the representation. In the case of the image
I will try to show that the space is composed and re-organized with the aim of controlling the
pushes of the other technological devices.
   I am going to analyze just three forms of re-spatialization, which will allow to focus on the
processes, rather than the effects. These are images in which the devices re-produce themselves,
alter the space-time dimensions, and multiply the possibility of sight. In order to identify the
processes of transformation, it is necessary to observe and analyze what is changing in the rela-
tionship between image and gaze, or rather between the space of image and spectator’s gaze. I
would define some different behaviours of the gaze, that can be seen as consequences of the recip-
rocal movement between urban space and screen space.
   The three forms of re-spatialization that will be analyzed, are three attitudes of the gaze:
  1) the mise-en-abyme of devices within devices;
  2) the dissemination of devices inside the screen space;
  3) the construction of devices’ trajectories.
  The first scene is taken from Diary of the Dead, by George Romero, 2007.
  In Diary of the Dead, Romero creates a film, which is entirely shot with two camcorders, by
two of the characters. They are shooting a horror movie, but suddenly they have to fight against
real zombies and decide to document what is happening. At that moment, we are watching a
movie edited by the protagonist, Debra, titled The Death of the Death.

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                                RE-SPATIALIZATION OF FILMIC REPRESENTATION: CONNECTED SPACES

   The characters are escaping from a zombie, they are in a shack, and there is a computer. On the
screen they can watch a video about an attack of a zombie during a party in a hospital for chil-
dren. The camera is getting closer to the monitor and twice the images are coincident.
   In this scene we are in front of a multiple gaze, due to the presence of a device within device,
an image within an image. In this case the main device is an anthropomorphic camcorder which
is focused on the pictures on the monitor (Fig. 1).




                          Fig. 1 – Diary of the Dead (George Romero, 2007).

  My first remark is that the whole film is pervaded by the presence of devices in unusual places:
for example, these images are taken in a shack where Amish people live, despite the fact that they
culturally reject technology. Then it is interesting to analyze the intersections of the camcorder,
the monitor and that of camcorder shooting the party (Fig. 2).




                          Fig. 2 – Diary of the Dead (George Romero, 2007).

   The approaching movement to the monitor stops suddenly, transferring the gaze to another wit-
ness: that camcorder whose lens is dirty because of the clown-zombie’s blood (Fig. 3). Now, the
devices are overlapped and when the blood hits the surface, it smashes the screen, it crosses the
surfaces. Therefore, the original source of that shot is no longer important, because when the
blood strikes the screen surface, what is touched is the off-screen, whereas the spectator usually
should be protected. Breaking the fiction barrier, Romero is not only unveiling the metalinguis-
tic game that he is playing, but he also succeeds in crossing the screens, making the space an

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CRISTINA TOSATTO




                          Fig. 3 – Diary of the Dead (George Romero, 2007).

homogeneous one. If the devices duplicate themselves by moving the gaze from one to another
and images construct their own space on the shadow of the next screen, the space gets forced and
closed. Therefore with the mise-en-abyme of devices within devices, the off-screen leaves defi-
nitely the represented world to offer itself as a place for the spectator. Thus the gaze comes from
the off-screen and there it works to join together the parts of a networked vision, focusing essen-
tially on the spaces of action, on what must be seen, stopped, recorded, making the camera move-
ments meaningful.
   It also happens in the second scene where the visual web is larger and more complicated, due
to the dissemination of devices into the screen space.
   Here, we have seen that the computer screen is split: Jason is editing the materials coming from
their camcorders, and from a surveillance camera (Fig. 4).




                          Fig. 4 – Diary of the Dead (George Romero, 2007).
   These are images that the spectator has just seen a few minutes before. The whole situation is
observed by one of those camcorders. Therefore the gaze is not only multiplied, but it is split and
iterated many times, in many frames. And when the figure of Debra is reflected onto the com-
puter screen, well now the technological transfiguration is complete: the human gaze has become
a technological one, hence the subject becomes a device as well (Fig. 5). Even if the multiplicity
of screens can increase the possibility of the off-screen to be present, the particular procedures to
produce the space of the image changes its functions, in order to place the spectator’s gaze. The

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                         Fig. 5 – Diary of the Dead (George Romero, 2007).

crucial consequence is that the viewer, from an in-between space (the off-screen) is the unique
able to exchange gazes that could not otherwise be exchanged, employing the device’s properties.
  The last scene is taken from Elephant, by Gus Van Sant, 2003. The scene I chose represents a
sort of crossroad of trajectories, into the whole film. It is about the meeting between John and
Elias in the corridors of the school. Actually we can see the same meeting three times during the
whole movie, but each time the scene is taken by a different point of view: John’s one, Elias’ and
Michelle’s (Figs. 6-7).




                             Figs. 6-7 – Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003).

   So we will be placed in this precise moment for three times, but from three different perspec-
tives (Fig. 8).




                          Fig. 8 – Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003).

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CRISTINA TOSATTO

   The crossing of John, Elias and Michelle is the crossing of three gazes, as well as the crossing
of three devices. Here the re-spatialization works on the device’s mobility, following the subject,
trailed by him, dependent on his own movement. In this way the construction of space is the con-
struction of a journey, a trajectory crossing other trajectories. The subject is the device, the device
is the body. They are combined. The properties of the device become the properties of the human
body, as we can see when the image becomes a slow motion. Or rather when the body is a tech-
nological entity, it is by its movement that manipulates the time.
   The subject shifts in space and time: he tracks down the first and manipulates the second. He
moves the device into the space of the screen, by structuring it according to the crossing trajec-
tories, intercepting them, exchanging looks.
   Thus, the place of the spectator is set in the fractures between the trajectories, situated in a mul-
tiplicity of displaced points in the fiction. Therefore, every long take can be considered as trailed
by the character and the long take can be seen as a new device. All this is a web of devices all
around a subject, whose gaze is blended and confused with a technological one, in the urban space
as well as in the screen space. Therefore, it is by virtue of the transfiguration of the technological
gaze, that we can define the visual space as a media space.
   Inside a space consisting of multiform visions, the subject becomes the activator of movement.
He is the missing link of a chain of devices, because he is the one who gazes, the viewer. The sub-
ject wanders and promenades in the spatial net of screens, he activates the gaze and works as the
pivot that connects visual, disjointed spaces in motion.
   In conclusion, if today some of the contemporary cinema works on the re-spatialization of its
own image, it is because it perceives the transformation of the space where the subject moves. So
it adapts its forms of representation not only to the positions, movements, pauses in time and
space, of the subject, but it tries to interpret the interferences between the subject and the devices.
   On one hand, the tale exists thanks to the device, on the other hand, it is just inside cinema that
reality tries to survive through the device. Cinema gives answers to the new spatial experience
reconsidering the rules of its own experience of the space, making it no longer a film experience,
but a media experience.
   What cinema tries to represent is a continually changing space, static, limited, forced, articu-
lated, in order to recreate the conditions of the subject in his vision space. In this way cinema
opposes itself to the trend according to which pieces of fiction are disseminated in the real space,
producing traces of spaces, perceived as real, in the fiction world.
   The connection between fragments is established by a gaze that comes from the liminal spaces
between devices. That is the off-screen removed by the represented world, the differential
between fiction and reality. It is a heterotopic8 space where the spectator is placed, and it allows
him/her to join space of vision and space of fiction. Today the spectator is a part of the screens
web, he is inside it, he moves among the fractures of visual space, between the devices, in the off-
screen.



1    I am dealing with the triple procedure of the composition of the space argued by Henri Lefebvre: prac-
     tices; representations of space; spaces of representation. These are the basic elements according to which
     Lefebvre analyzes the construction of the social space. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (La
     Production de l’espace, Anthropos, Paris 1974), Blackwell, Oxford 1991.
2    Scott Bukatman, The End of Offscreen Space, in Jon Lewis (ed.), The New American Cinema, Duke
     University, Durham NC 1998, p. 267.
3    Ibidem, p. 266.

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4   The main point of reference is Francesco Casetti, “L’esperienza filmica e la ri-locazione del cinema”, in
    Fata Morgana, Esperienza, no. 4, January-April 2008, pp. 23-40.
5   Michel de Certeau makes a distinction between place and space: «A place is the order (of whatever kind)
    in accord with which elements are distributed in relationship of coexistence. A space exists when one
    takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities and time variables. […] Space is a practiced
    place». Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (L’Invention du quotidien, Union générale d’é-
    ditions, Paris 1980), University of California, Los Angeles 1984, p. 117.
6   Giuliana Bruno, Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts, MIT, Boston 2007.
7   Here the reference point is Virilio when he speaks about the contemporary space where the spatial dif-
    fusion of vision devices determines an instantaneous time diffusion: to dispersion in space corresponds
    concentration in time. Paul Virilio, L’Espace critique, Christian Burgois, Paris 1984.
8   «Des sortes de lieux qui sont hors de tous les lieux, bien que pourtant ils soient effectivement localisa-
    bles. Ces lieux, parce qu’ils sont absolument autres que tous les emplacements qu’ils reflètent et dont ils
    parlent, je les appellerai, par opposition aux utopies, les heterotopias». Michel Foucault, “Des espaces
    autres” (Conférence au Cercle d’Etudes Architecturales, 14 mars 1967), in Architecture, Mouvement,
    Continuité, no. 5, October 1984, pp. 46-49.




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