Opaque openings: on the ambiguous iconoclasm of the black screen Film Studies Speaker Series: Chiara Quaranta (Edinburgh)

“There is a long history of deliberate destructive gestures against images. Religious iconoclasm is its most critical manifestation: historically, it refers to the literal ‘breaking of images' that are conceived as idols (eidola), namely mere imitations, false doubles of things, and not as icons (eikones) in the proper sense, that is, true images of what can only be seen ‘in a mirror, darkly'. On the one hand, this crucial ambiguity underpins censorial practices; on the other hand, it reveals the potential for a more critical aesthetic, political and ethical approach to images. By foreclosing mimesis, in fact, iconoclasm within an artwork calls for the viewer's imagination to take responsibility for representation, liberating a plurality of senses and perspectives within images. My main contention is that iconoclastic gestures in cinema constitute both a way to criticise the illusion of the film image and a means for acknowledging its ability to provide an alternative engagement with the world.

In this talk, I explore the ways in which an iconoclastic aesthetics opens up a radically non-representational film world. In particular, I elaborate on the black screen as the most emblematic example of what I term ‘iconoclastic eikon'; that is, an image that maintains an internal likeness while breaking any external, visual similarity with its referent. In the film examples that I discuss, the black screen responds to an iconoclastic approach to representation, forcing viewers to inhabit a liminal, opaque space of the world that ‘moves' inside an image.”

Dr Chiara Quaranta is a Teaching Fellow in Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh, an editorial board member of the journal Film-Philosophy, and author of the recent book, Iconoclasm in European Cinema: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Image Destruction.