‘Enter the Memory’: interactivity, authorship, and the empowered spectator in the digital audio-visual essays of Chris Marker

Abstract

This article theorizes the cinematic essay as a fluid, self-reflexive form which addresses the
spectator directly in order to engage them in an intellectual process of dialogical exchange. Because it encourages the active involvement of the viewer in the determination of essayistic meaning, the cinematic essay challenges traditional models of authorship. As opposed to relaying information to a passive viewer from a position of authority and omniscience, the cinematic essayist offers tentative thoughts and ruminations which the spectator is called upon to critically interrogate and treat as the foundation for their own essayistic reflections. This article focuses on two of Chris Marker’s late period works to examine the relationship between dialogical exchange, interactive spectatorship, and the capabilities of the digital database: Immemory (1997) and Ouvroir (2012). In these works, Marker carries over his career-long impulse towards dialogism to the realm of the digitized database, composing intricate, intermedial constellations of archival materials which the viewer may peruse in whatever order they please. This article offers two substantial contributions to existing scholarship: firstly, it demonstrates the impact of digital technology on the nature of spectatorial engagement in essayistic audio-visual texts; secondly, it explores the role that technological innovation played in facilitating communicative exchange between filmmaker and spectator across Marker’s body of work. Applying close textual analysis to two of Marker’s late projects illustrates that Marker embraced new media in a particularly enthusiastic and exploratory fashion in the latter part of his career because the technology offered his new ways to break down the barrier between artist and viewer, create intellectually active viewing situations, and treat the spectator as an empowered co-creator of artistic meaning.

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