Ex-centric Cinema

In the beginning cinema was an encounter between humans images and machine technology revealing a stream of staccato gestures micrographic worlds and landscapes seen from above and below. In this sense cinema''s potency was its ability to bring other non-human modes of being into view to forge an encounter between multiple realities that nonetheless co-exist. Yet the story of cinema became (through its institutionalization) one in which the human swiftly assumed centrality through the literary crafting of story character and the expression of interiority. Ex-centric Cinema takes an archaeological approach to the study of cinema through the writings of philosopher Giorgio Agamben arguing that whilst we have a century-long tradition of cinema the possibility of what cinema may have become is not lost but co-exists in the present as an unexcavated potential. The term given to this history is ex-centric cinema describing a centre-less moving image culture where animals children ghosts and machines are privileged vectors where film is always an incomplete project and where audiences are a coming community of ephemeral connections and links. Discussing such filmmakers as Harun Farocki the Lumiere Brothers Guy Debord and Wong Kar-wai Janet Harbord draws connections with Agamben to propose a radically different way of thinking about cinema.