ÉRZÉKI TEXTÚRÁK ÉS EMLÉKEZETSTRATÉGIÁK ATOM EGOYAN FILMJEIBEN
SENSORIAL TEXTURES AND FORMS OF MEMORY IN THE CINEMA OF ATOM EGOYAN

Author(s): Zsolt Győri
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: film;video image;intersubjectivity;Atom Egoyan
Summary/Abstract: The essay concentrates on the phenomenological difference between the visual texture of the film and the video image, as well as the working of this difference into a critique of contemporary audiovisual culture, its reconstitution of the forms of intersubjectivity. It seems that in the works of Atom Egoyan the uses of image follow identical strategies as the mechanisms of intersubjectivity. Both exercise the movement of substitution: the image as a fetishized prosthetic device comes to organize family life, whereas the act of remembrance will be understood as the necessity to record and imagify. These strategies are analyzed in two early films – Family Viewing (1987) and Speaking Parts (1989). Relying on the textural difference of video/film-image, the paper identifies Egoyan's preoccupation with the ways the hand, forms of tactile communication, the ”culture” of tactility are portrayed, and – in the act of cinematic representation – subordinated to the eye and audiovisual culture. In The Adjuster (1991) there is a clear hierarchy between these two regimes/orders of intersubjectivity, the visual sphere with its vicious circles of recording/deleting devours practices of tactility. In the Calendar (1993) Egoyan clearly confronts the video image with the photographic image, intensifying their difference. The visually beautiful, yet artificial photos create a totally different reading of the narrative events than the archival video segments. Questions of memory and individual/collective identity in Ararat (2002) are likewise addressed through the distinction between visual textures and media (film, video footage, painting).

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