In ‘Meta- and Inter-Images in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture‘, Taban characterizes the phenomenon of the prefixes ‘meta’ and ‘inter’, as;
…paradoxes, incompleteness, oxymora, inconsistencies, tensions, contradictions, assumptions, inadequacies, displacements, multiplicities and idiosyncrasies.
Illustrating the ‘structural conditions’ that are formed, Taban characterizes these ‘possible definitions’ as being ‘web’ and ‘constellation’ like, through which we can ‘group’ and ‘map’ multiple configurations. Exploring how ‘meta’ and ‘inter’ images allow us to transcend everyday ways of looking at things, through the (re)positioning of readings, she describes the reader as being ‘free’ and ‘welcome’ to form their own configurations.[1]
In the call for papers to contribute to this book, Taban signifies the 1980s as a time which underwent, what she describes as a ‘visual/pictorial/iconic turn’. Though Taban defines how images are ‘still predominantly studied in verbal terms, i.e. through verbal discourses that disciplines construct on, about and around them’, the essays that collectively make up this volume offer a wide and reflective debate, to challenge the preconceived reading of images. Referring to ‘indexing’ images, as a way to respond to images ‘without resorting to verbal language’, by linking values and creating a ‘discourse’ between images, Taban defines the functions ‘meta’ and ‘inter‘, as the ‘re-contextualization’ and ‘re-presentation’ of images, created by ‘layering’ connections amidst ‘still and moving’, ‘transparency and opacity’, ‘illusionism and flatness’, ‘coherence and incoherence’, through which, we can form new meanings between images. Though Taban characterizes the ‘(inter)disciplinary’ act of ‘reshaping’ images as being ‘volatile’, she contends such capricious changes in behaviour, as being necessary to encourage reflexivity.[2]
In the text; ‘Works of Art as Meta-Images: On the Use of Photographs for the study of Art History’, that accompanies Taban’s collective works, Orfila refers to the transformation of images becoming meta-images, as belonging to a process of;
…de-realization of the world, the withdrawal of the real, and its dissolution into a play of images associated with modernity and the crisis of representation.
Reflecting upon the simultaneous nature of ‘reduction and expansion’ held within photographs of sculpture, Orfila starts, by describing how the photograph ‘flattens’ three dimensional forms, while contending how the ‘photographic vision’ of the photographer, also enables different points of view to be incorporated within the composition of the photo, which she portrays as allowing the photograph to capture ‘potential changes in the position of a body and thoughtful reflections’ within the mind, forming the physical experience of walking around a sculpture, taking in, a sense of the whole sculpture, by capturing multiple viewpoints within a two dimensional plane.
Reflecting beyond the ‘truth-value of photographs’ as ‘evidentiary proof’, Orfila refers to Terdiman’s definition of photography as having an ‘extra-individual mnemonic mechanism’, which Orfila defines as ‘the ability to reconfigure how reality becomes representation in perception and memory’, through which, the photographer can shape aspects of documentary photography, to form patterns reflected within memory, that intersects and forms moments for ‘contemplation’. In this sense, Orfila refers to sculptural installations made-up from a multitude of photographic shots, as having the ability to reinforce and multiply, to visually testify an abundance of feelings felt.[3]
Relating back to my ‘Insatiable’, sculptural mountain, in regards to Stella Hockenhull’s contribution to this text, in her case study ‘Picturing the Frame: An Aesthetic approach to Film Studies’, here, Hockenhull undertakes a cinematic analysis of the indulgent feasting of a decadent, eight course, dining room scene, in Martin Scorcese’s, 1993 film, ‘The Age of Innocence’, through which, I will reflect upon Scorcese’s framing of anticipatory scenes as mental weakness, in regards to the pursuit of pleasure.
Framed shots, taken from Scorcese’s dining scene, in ‘The Age of Innocence’, 1993.
Unpicking Hockenhull’s reference to Scorcese’s use of ‘momentary’ shots, I refer to Kaori O’Connor’s ‘The Never-ending Feast: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Feasting’, in which Connor refers to the ‘literary analysis’ of sensual feasting, remarking upon the metaphorical reference of food as;
…not sustenance but metaphor, a vehicle for morality and values, and a discourse on its own, distanced from history and everyday life. Persistent themes were the dangers of pleasure and the disapproval of luxury and excess.[4]
Hockenhull refers to Scorcese as having enhanced his dining room scenes, through framed shots which ‘lure’ the cinema viewer, creating ‘moment’s for ‘introspection’, through which, she describes his direction as having ‘subconsciously’ depicted inanimate table settings, akin to viewing a ‘momento mori…Dutch still life painting’. Reflecting upon the shiny and sparkling materiality of the ‘silver ware’ and ‘glass’ table settings, placed alongside the ‘succulent’ food, as ‘motifs associated with life’s impermanence and transience’, Hockenhull questions the ‘opulence’ and ‘excess’ of Scorsese’s pictorial scenes, as ‘coding affluence’ and ‘the notion of a social order in turmoil’. Reflecting upon Scorsese’s ‘foregrounding of the feast’, as ‘question[ing] the position of the characters, through close-up shots, which Hockenhull characterizes as having captured a ‘loss of moral grip, through ‘thought processes’ held ‘outside the parameters of narrative theory’, she cites to Dalle Vach, in her 1996 text; ‘Cinema and Painting: How Art Is Used in Film’, as follows;
…the close up and still life rearrange scales of value and challenge hierarchies built into the act of looking.
Defining how Scorcese tells a ‘visual’ story using a ‘mise-en-scene style of narrative’, by using a ‘series of static images…to appear as a moving images’, alongside ‘superimposed’ images, in which images are layered over and diffused into one another, Hockenhull refers to Scorcese’s scenes, together with shots which frame ‘inaccessible…overhead’ views, followed by ‘close-up’ shots, directed by the camera ‘situated on a level with the table’, as a technique in which he has ‘obliterated’ all ‘human presence’. By literally placing the viewer at the table, Hockenhull defines Scorcese as having created a visual form of ‘semiotic aestheticization’, in which, she describes the ‘overflowing… excess’ of ‘exotic’, ‘sumptuous’ and ‘succulent’, highly decorated dishes, served upon ‘shiny’ gilded porcelain plates, silver platters and fine silver cutlery, as ‘ornamentation’, that makes an ‘appeal to [the viewers] senses’, causing the eye to ‘linger’ and, creating ‘an arousal of feeling’.[5]
[1] Carla Taban. ‘Meta- and Inter-Images in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture’. Leuven University Press, 2013. p29-33
[2] Carla Taban. ‘CFP: Meta- and Inter-Images in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture’. Online Source: http://www.fabula.org/actualites/meta-and-inter-images-in-contemporary-visual-art-and-culture_49901.php. Source cited: Nov 2016.
[3] IBID., p47-57
[4] Kaori O’Connor. ‘The Never-ending Feast: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Feasting‘. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. 2015. p3
[5] Carla Taban. ‘Meta- and Inter-Images in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture’. Leuven University Press, 2013. p61-75