Displacements: Reading Space and Time in Moving Image Installations

Alison Butler

Nov 2019 · Springer Nature

About this ebook

This book is about the aesthetics and politics of contemporary artists’ moving image installations, and the ways that they use temporal and spatial relationships in the gallery to connect with geopolitical issues. Displaced from the cinema, moving images increasingly address themes of movement and change in the world today. Digital technology has facilitated an explosion of work of this kind, and the expansion of contemporary art museums, biennales and large-scale exhibitions all over the world has created venues and audiences for it. Despite its 20th century precursors, this is a new and distinct artistic form, with an emerging body of thematic concerns and aesthetics strategies. Through detailed analysis of a range of important 21st century works, the book explores how this spatio-temporal form has been used to address major issues of our time, including post-colonialism, migration and conflict. Paying close attention to the ways in which moving images interact with the specific spaces and sites of exhibition, the book explores the mobile viewer’s experiences in these immersive and transitory works.

About the author

Alison Butler is an Associate Professor of Film in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading, UK. She is the author of Women's Cinema: the Contested Screen (2002) and has published widely on artists’ film, moving image installation and women’s cinema. She is an editor of the scholarly journal Screen and a member of the research team on the collaborative Anglo-Brazilian 'IntermIdia' project.