Expanded Cinema - Text 1
Expanded Cinema, by Dario Marchiori
The term “expanded cinema” appeared in the United States in the mid-1960s in the writings of Jonas Mekas and Stan VanDerBeck before being consecrated in the eponymous book by Gene Youngblood. It describes an ensemble of practices which, in various ways, go beyond the traditional definition of cinema: through the proliferation of projected images, multisensory and multimedia appeals to the viewer, or the invention or use of new technology. In French, the translation of “expanded cinema” by the expression “cinéma élargi” expresses only the quantitative idea of expansion found in the English: the “immersive” experience which the term also references, far from being passive, brings about an expanded consciousness on the part of the viewer. This desire to abolish the boundary between art and life, one typically found in an avant-garde, would fade over time, while “expanded” practices became more widespread. The expression has stabilized, now defining multi-screen or performative projection and in general any technical set-up which incorporates moving images in a broader ensemble of technology. From a theoretical perspective, expanded cinema can define the idea of a contemporary art permeated by the cinema paradigm – or, conversely, the impossibility of separating cinema from a field of art which has gone beyond the medium’s specificity.
As a way of reinventing the cinematic apparatus and the viewer’s experience, the idea of “expanding” cinema has been put forward on a regular basis throughout its history. Its roots lie in the Romantic idea of the Gesantkunstwerk made famous by Wagner, and it has both attractional and artistic ends. The former are well represented by attempts at a spectacular enlargement of the apparatus, for example at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900 with the Lumière brothers’ giant screen (21 × 18 m), or Raoul Grimoin-Sanson’s failed ten-projector Cinéorama experiment. Beginning in the 1910s, the avant-gardes explored the possibility of a joint expansion of art and film, for example in performative settings (the examples are legion; one such was the Soirée du coeur à barbe on 6 July 1923). In a more strictly cinematic context, the most famous example was Abel Gance’s Polyvision, in which three images were projected side by side, as in his film Napoléon (1927).
