Vergegenwärtigung der Vergangenheit für die Zukunft

Die nächtliche Medialität von Kino

Abstract

The article explores the theoretical implications involved in positing cinema as a nocturnal chronotopos. Cinematic images emerge out of the darkness of a movie theatre only once again to veer towards darkness, once the play of light and shadow on the screen has again ceased. The charm of cinematic representations resides in the fact that they make up an effervescent imaginary space. At the same time, cinema offers an enmeshment of the past and the future by virtue of the effects of presence it spectrally affords. Cinematic images arise from a past world and project a future spectatorship. It is precisely by producing a presence that re-presents this alignment of past and future, that cinema proves to be a nocturnal space-time between forgetting and remembering, once one has awoken from its manifestations.