As a form, the loop contradicts
the linear structure we typically associate with time. The common-sense
formulation understands time as a progression forward from moment
to moment to moment, with a clear division of past, present and
future. Yet many theories contradict this apparent truism. Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari, for example, organize time into chronos
and aeon. Greg Hainge, a contributor to this issue, writes
that the latter continually and simultaneously divides the event
into the already-there and the not-yet here, while failing to settle
on either. This describes a loop folding back on itself, while not
returning to its place of origin. Elsewhere, Jacques Derrida uses
this failure of origins to structure a system of ethics grounded
in an attempt to elude the eternal return of the same. While Deleuze,
Guattari and Derrida insist on this failure in their use of the
loop as a temporal form, Sigmund Freud understands time in terms
of telos and its failure. In other words, absent a forward progression
through, for example, mourning, the individual is doomed to circle
back repeatedly to the lost object. Both formulations of the loop,
one that either returns or does not return to its origins, are at
work in this issues articles.
In addition to work done within psychoanalysis and philosophy, use
of the loop as a temporal form has surfaced repeatedly in various
artforms, such as music, video art and film. In brief, the loop
is an act of editing that involves the telling and retelling of
a narrative. Thus, as a form, the loop potentially sets in motion
patterns that reconfigure the boundaries of space, time and perception
within the work. As a form, the loop binds and separates, and refuses
a single shape. There are manifold possibilities for its modeling:
it could be a moebius strip, a figure eight, a succession of rings,
or a cats cradle. Intrinsic to the temporal quality of the
loop is a deep, dreamy pulse that imbues even the weakest work that
uses this structure with a persuasive power.
Philosophy and works of art are not the only sites where the loop
emerges. Umberto Eco describes Italian viewing habits of popular
film, where one enters a theatre at any point, then stays to see
the film again from the moment where the audience member entered
the narrative. 1 For
Eco, film, like life, continually retraces events that have already
occurred. The participant in a loop can let the (potentially) perpetual
story unfold, either viewing the unresolvedness as an end in itself,
or waiting for the cathartic moment to return again and again.
As the papers in this issue demonstrate, either as a closed cycle
or a form that folds back on itself without returning to the beginning,
the loop is a temporal form whose length may be chosen by the viewer,
produce catharsis, evoke a dreamlike state, mimic everyday life,
or all of the above. Spanning a broad range of tactics and subjects,
they all bring the loop as a temporal form front and center. Miriam
Bankovskys essay begins the issue. She draws out the argument
that Derrida can only ethically pay homage to Emmanuel Levinas
philosophy by failing to properly acknowledge it. This to
pay homage to Levinas description of the encounter between
the Self and the unknown Other, where the self reaches out to the
other in a gesture that welcomes the Others absolute
alterity. This intent can only be realized through the rhetorical
structure of the loop, or as Bankovsky puts it, the circle
that loses its way. In other words, to be truly ethical knowledge
of the encounter cannot circle back on and be fully restituted to
the Self.
Like Bankovsky, Greg Hainge argues that Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattaris concept of the time of aeon depends on a loop that
does not return to its origins. For Hainge, most works of art, such
as short, looped movies depend on beginnings and ends that are imperfectly
fused together. Rather, Hainge argues, a better example of a Deleuzian/Guattarian
loop can be found in Notos (Carsten Nicolai) Endless Loop
Edition (2), a sonic work made up of a sonic work made up of
two records, each ten inches in diameter, whose grooves are etched
concentrically and whose discs have two holes into which to insert
the turntable's spindle. The resulting aural effect presents difference
itself while producing a constant tone. For Hainge, the drone music
of Phil Nillblock takes Notos project further into Deleuzian
difference and repetition by fully enveloping the listener, removing
him or her from the temporal coordinates of everyday life and immersing
them in an aeonic relation to time.
A philosophically similar argument about a different object is framed
in Jaimey Hamiltons examination of the art video loop. She
asserts that the video loops predetermined time length forces
spectators to become aware of their own volition, by introducing
new spectatorial habits into the exhibition space. In recent examples
of this form, Paul Pfeiffer and Douglas Gordon rework commercial
films such as Risky Business and Psycho into video
loops. The resulting loops by Pfeiffer and Gordon, The Pure Products
go Crazy and 24 Hour Psycho respectively extract a fragment
of the film and repeat it endlessly, and take the original film
and extend it to twenty-four hours. Through this repetition and
extension of the commercial footage, Hamilton argues, these works
prompt the spectator to recognize his or her hypnotized state. Consequently,
the flow of capitalism is diverted away from the usual channels
of absolute repetition and into a Deleuzian form of difference and
repetition.
Alanna Thain describes a temporal loop of the transformation of
memory and paramnesia involving the stretching of time that is repeated
even as it is experienced in David Lynchs Lost Highway.
Thain emphasizes the use of a variety of technologies within Lynchs
diegesissuch as answering machines and surveillance videothat
create a temporality within the film continually looping back
on itself in a cycle of composition and decomposition. For
Thain, this folding of time transforms both the viewer of the film
and the character in the film into spectator and participant, and
vice versa.
For Eric Sonstroem, the temporal form of the loop is a vital part
of his consideration of the politics of public mourning. Beginning
with Freuds distinction between healthy mourning
and unhealthy melancholia in the individuals process
of grief, as he points out, the opposite is true in public life.
Through the use of symbols, such as monuments, as well as dates
that can be returned to on an annual basis, Sonstroem argues that
paradoxically, healthy public memory formation takes
on the repetitive structure of melancholic mourning. How otherwise-marginalized
groups originate their own structures of repetitive public mourning,
using monuments of their own devising, forms the core of Sonstroems
article.
The issue concludes with an essay by André Gaudreault and
Nicolas Dulac, who argue for a reconsideration of the notion of
cinema of attractions, or as they phrase it, cinématographie-attraction.
Their reformulation of the phrase, typically credited to Tom Gunning
in English-language publications, is intended to distinguish their
object of investigation from a form of filmic practice commonly
held to have emerged in 1895. Instead, Gaudreault and Dulac stress
the appearance of cinématographie-attraction through
the toys and optical devices prevalent in the late 19th century,
such as the phenakistoscope and the zoetrope. What defines these
toys, they argue, is a series of technical limitations that result
in circularity and repetition that blend together beginnings and
ends, resulting in the refusal of narrative. What thus emerges is
the pull of attraction, or a way of presenting a series of
views to an audience that fascinate strictly based on their illusory
power.