12. Mai |  19:00   |  Patricia Pisters (Amsterdam)

Signs of Time: Cerebral Metaphysics of the Neuro-Image

In the digital age cinema is said to have died (again). In this lecture I will propose to conceive of cinema´s survival (or rebirth) as »neuro-images.« A return to the cinema of Alain Resnais, especially Je t´aime, Je t´aime (1968) and My American Uncle (1980) will allow seeing how the screen considered as a cerebral membrane can anticipate the digital age. It will also enable a definition of the neuro-image that follows directly from Gilles Deleuze´s books on the movement-image and the time-image. As such the neuro-image is not just a sign (or symptom) of contemporary audio-visual culture, but also a »sign of time« that moves cinema´s brain-screens beyond the temporal metaphysics of Bergson in Deleuze´s cinema books toward a philosophy of time as developed in Difference and Repetition. The lecture will be framed in a larger project in which I try to look at the connections between new findings in neuroscience, Deleuzian schizoanalytic and cerebral metaphysics, and contemporary cinema in digital screen culture.