Invisible Culture, Issue 8: Please Post (apologies for cross postings)

The editors of _Invisible Culture_ are pleased to announce the
release of

ISSUE 8: THE LOOP AS A TEMPORAL FORM
Edited by Margot Bouman

Available online at:
http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/ivchome.html

The common-sense formulation of time understands it as a
progression forward from moment to moment to moment, with a
clear division of past, present and future.  Articles in this issue by
Miriam Bankovsky, Greg Hainge, Jaimey Hamilton, Alanna Thain,
Eric Sonstroem as well as Nicolas Dulac and André Gaudreault
demonstrate otherwise.  They show how the loop, as a temporal
form, functions either as a closed cycle, or a form that while
apparently repeating itself is always differentiated.  As such its
length may be chosen by the participant, produce catharsis, evoke a
dreamlike state, mimic everyday life, or all of the above.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari describe a loop folding back on
itself, while not returning to its place of origin.  Jacques Derrida uses
this failure of origins to structure a system of ethics grounded in the
elusion of the eternal return of the same.  While Deleuze, Guattari
and Derrida insist on this failure in their use of the loop as a
temporal form, Sigmund Freud understands time in terms of telos,
and the failure to reach this ultimate object or aim through the
obsessive return to a previous moment.  Both formulations of the
loop are at work in this issue.

In addition to using work done within psychoanalytic theory and
philosophy, articles in this issue demonstrate how use of the loop as
a temporal form has surfaced repeatedly in work by musicians such
as Phil Niblock, filmmakers such as David Lynch, artists such as
Paul Pfeiffer, proto-filmic forms such as the phenakistoscope, and
ongoing public projects such as the AIDS quilt.  The loop here
becomes an act of editing that involves the telling and retelling of a
narrative.  Thus, as a form, the loop potentially sets in motion
patterns that reconfigure the boundaries of space, time and
perception within the work.

The work of art, psychoanalytic theory and philosophy are not the
only sites where the loop emerges.  The participant in a loop also
modifies its form by choosing to (or not) let the (potentially)
perpetual story unfold, either viewing the unresolvedness as an end
in itself, or waiting for the cathartic moment to return again and
again.

Issue designed and uploaded by Catherine Zuromskis, Lucy Dane
Curzon and Aviva Dove-Viebahn.

For information on upcoming calls for papers, or a list of books
available for review, visit
http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/ivchome.html and click
on Submissions.

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