Stitched Time Patchwork: An Introduction

I’ll sporadically write about a variety of media forms/topics and specific texts whenever I come across something interesting; but, let’s stick with film as a whole to get things started. Film is an uncanny medium—at once familiar and recognizable but alien and abstract. These forms that flicker before us feel relatable and substantial. These are humans (often) before us, though they are flattened and non-existent. they are recordings of past actions, words, and feelings. So too are these environments they inhabit; they are given the illusion of depth and inhabitability but they are flat projections of light on a blank screen. These records are experienced at different times and in different ways (different environments, company, and visual forms, etc.). Time becomes fluid.

All this was clear from the beginning of the form. Purveyors diverged nearly immediately from the outset. Things were never concrete and categorizable. The Lumieres embarked on “actualities,” setting out to document and capture images and scenes from around the world and making them move before audiences’ eyes. They strove to document that which already existed; such was the unique capacity of these moving pictures (shared with photography, plus time). Edison, on the other hand, set about staging scenes, bringing in stage actors and the like to “studios” and having them “perform” “scripted” actions—dancing, strong-man presentations, make out sessions, …sneezing. From the beginning, film abided and sustained dualities—artificiality/reality, multi-dimensional settings/flattened environs, public/intimate, etc. We’re still parsing and reconciling the significance of this divergence and the many other complications, contradictions, complexities, and capabilities that have arisen subsequently. We should be so lucky to be confronted with clear dichotomies in this day and age.

So what is (are?) Loose Sutures? A rambling media blog where I attempt to make my difficult, knotty thoughts coherent. The title comes from the term/concept put forth by Kaja Silverman, among others, referring to the manner in which film is “stitched” together to create a perception (illusion) of a livable, physical realm. This concept extends in a number of directions based on this broad definition of suture. It could refer to the physical process in which series of still photographs are flitted across a light source to create the impression of movement (though this is sadly less applicable these days). Suture could also refer to Stephen Heath’s conception of the manner in which we (as viewers) align our experience of this illusory physical space with a particular character’s experience—a series of images sutured together by the desire to see. A physical world is continually mapped through roving desire.

Suture is revealing of how we watch film, how films are constructed, our culled voyeuristic desire, and the manner in which these intersect and interact to create a complex grid of interlocution. Generally, Suture represents an individual spectator’s relation to a text. How and why does one find relation, empathy, and other ambiguous/subjective feelings as physical or psychological responses to inanimate rays of light producing recognizable but skewed images before ones eyes? And, can we pinpoint specific triggers? We feel impulse responses as if we ourselves are a part of the narrative. We are inserting ourselves in a constructed scenario and we are relating, fusing our consciousness, perception, and response, with an “other.” In this scenario our understanding of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is in flux and complications of identity emerge, producing radical implications in many directions (psychoanalysis, epistemology, gender studies, ideology) and relating back on the very nature of film (visual media) and, even further, to the nature of discourse, culture, and desire at the essence of human existence. All this sounds sobering, even melancholy, but, on the contrary; it’s quite transcendent.

But loose…? Well, I’m looking to pull things apart, break down the illusion, and tease out meaning in the means of concealment. Film and media become more fascinating once you poke holes and dissect the innerworkings—just another paradox of modern media and modern expression. There you have it. Stay tuned.