Materializing Memories

Dispositifs, Generations, Amateurs

Susan Aasman, Andreas Fickers, Joseph Wachelder

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781501333248
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A multitude of devices and technological tools now exist to make, share, and store memories and moments with family, friends, and even strangers. Memory practices such as home movies, which originated as the privilege of a few, well-to-do families, have now emerged as ubiquitous and immediate cultures of sharing. Departing from the history of home movies, this volume offers a sophisticated understanding of technologically mediated, mostly ritualized memory practices, from early beginnings in the fin-de-siècle to today. Departing from a longue durée perspective on home movie practices, Materializing Memories moves beyond a strict historical study to grapple with highly theorized fields, such as media studies, memory studies, and science and technology studies (STS). The contributors to this volume reflect on these different intellectual backgrounds and perspectives, but all chapters share a common framework by addressing practices of use, user configurations, and relevant media landscapes. Grasping the cultural dynamics of such multi-faceted practices requires a multidimensional conceptual approach, here achieved by centering around three concepts as central analytical lenses: dispositifs, generations, and amateurs.

PART ONE

Dispositifs

1

Amateur Technologies of Memory, Dispositifs, and Communication Spaces

Roger Odin

And soon, mechanically, dispirited by the dreary day and the prospect of a depressing tomorrow, I raised a spoonful of tea in which I had soaked a morsel of madeleine to my lips. But at the very moment the sip with the crumbs of madeleine reached my palate, I trembled, feeling something extraordinary happening in me. I was overcome by a wonderful feeling of delight, without any idea of what had caused it.… And suddenly I remembered. It was that taste. That taste of a small piece of madeleine Aunt Léonie had given me that Sunday morning in Combray (because on Sundays I never went out before mass). I had gone up to her room to say good morning, and that piece of madeleine had been soaked in her herbal tea.

PROUST 1954, 45

We are inside the communication space of family memories.¹ Marcel Proust is using what I call the private mode of meaning production:² such a feeling is produced intimately, with the hero going deep down inside himself, in search of what evokes a memory. The madeleine is what triggered the memory, but not the whole madeleine. Proust subsequently describes that it was not the madeleine’s physical appearance (“seeing the small madeleine didn’t remind me of anything”), but its smell and taste that conjured up the memory:

when nothing remains of a distant past, after people have died, after things have been destroyed, the only things that remain in our minds are smell and taste, frail but long-lasting, immaterial, persistent and faithful. Like souls, they wait and hope, on the ruins of everything else, staunchly holding that immense edifice of remembrance in their almost impalpable droplets.

PROUST 1954, 45

These two elements are the operator³ of our memories, but we cannot speak of a dispositif: the madeleine is an involuntary operator. A dispositif, at least in the sense that I use it, is an intentional operator, a structure with a set of components (often technical) linked together in a specific context, including the users, and subjecting them to a well-defined type of behavior (Albéra and Tortajada 2011, 27ff). If one accepts this definition, a grave is a dispositif in which the headstone, statue, plaque, inscriptions, etc. form a whole (the grave), i.e., a space around which we are invited to come together to pay tribute to those no longer with us.

Since time immemorial, the communication space of family memories has always featured several different dispositifs: graves, chapels, sculptures, perfume jars (Frère 2012), oratories,⁴ medals, painted portraits, jewelery, medallions, a glass cloche containing small objects (a lock of hair, a menu, figurines representing a wedding couple, etc.), letters, postcards, sound recordings (on tape, disk, or film), photos on the wall or mantelpiece (cf. Mary 1999), family photo albums, furniture, and the family home itself. In the view of Anne Muxel (1996), a house can be several things at once: an archaeological memory, a memory of certain rituals, a frame of reference. In this contribution I explore the functioning of family memory dispositifs that use movie technology.

Let me first make three introductory remarks. First, in a great number of cases, theorists speak of the filmmaking dispositif. In particular, the scholarship on the early days of cinema has taught us, however, that it is necessary to construct several dispositifs in order to account for the diversity of cinematic experiences (Kessler 2011). This observation also applies to videos and even more so to digital media. Secondly, in the late 1970s, Jean-Louis Baudry made a distinction between what he called the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus, a term covering the whole filmmaking equipment and processes needed to produce and screen a film (i.e., the camera, film reels, film strip, its development and editing, the sound work, projector, screen), and the dispositive, which only applies to the screening (film theater or darkened room, projector, screen, and audience) (Baudry 1978, 31). Ever since, analyses of the cinema dispositif have tended to take into account the film’s screening dispositif only. Although this theoretical position may have its relevance, I will adopt another one that fits better with my approach in terms of communication spaces. Specifically, I suggest making a distinction between the production dispositif (at work inside the communication space of production) and the screening dispositif (at work inside the reception space). While it is obvious that both are generally interlinked, we will see that this is not always the case, and that each has its own function. I will also look at two further sets of dispositifs involving diffusion and archiving. Thirdly, we need to take into account the fact that the same dispositif may function differently depending on the communication space: the functioning of a neighborhood theater will differ from that of an art house theater or a blockbuster movie theater in downtown Paris. Similarly, there is a difference between a movie theater in Paris and one in India or Africa. At the end of an article on the imaginary signifier, Christian Metz argued in this respect that his account applied solely to “one ethnography of the filmic state, among others remaining to be done” (1977, 170).

In line with the need for “historical pragmatics,” as argued by Frank Kessler (2011, 22ff), I will construct three communication spaces: the traditional family and the home movie (a period starting with the birth of filmmaking and going up to the 1980s); the new family, television, and home videos (ending in the 2000s); and finally, the current period in which family structures are changing and we are seeing a transition to digital media and smart devices. Let me emphasize that even when viewed from a historical perspective, these spaces remain theoretical constructions; they stick to a certain line, simplifying and neglecting the intersections and superimpositions manifested in reality. Their function is not to describe, but to allow questions to be posed: in this sense, they are heuristic tools. Each of these spaces will be constructed as a set of constraints governi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Dispositifs
• 1 Amateur Technologies of Memory, Dispositifs, and Communication Spaces
• 2 Hybrid Histories: Historicizing the Home Movie Dispositif
• 3 The Emergence of Early Artists’ Video in Europe and the USA and its Relationship to Broadcast TV
• 4 Materiality, Practices, Problematizations: What Kind of Dispositif Are Media?
• 5 How to Grasp Historical Media Dispositifs in Practice?
• Part II Generations
• 6 Belated Screenings of Home Movies: Biographical Storytelling and Generational Referencing
• 7 The Social Construction of Generations in a Media Society: The Case of Postwar West Germany
• 8 “Generation Channel 36”: Pirated VHS Tapes and Remembering the Polish People’s Republic in the Age of P2P Networks
• 9 Becoming YouTube’s Grandad: Media, Age, and Generation in a Virtual Community
• Part III Amateurs
• 10 Amateurs: Naïve Artists or Everyday Experts?
• 11 Charting Changing Amateur Production Practices: Testimonials of Moviemaking Enthusiasts
• 12 Home Mode, Community Mode, Counter Mode: Three Functional Modalities for Coming to Terms with Amateur Media Practices
• 13 “Something More”: The Analysis of Visual Gestalting in Amateur Films
• List of Contributors
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index1
• Index2
• Copyright