Stiegler’s Timelines: Inserting the Political Back into Film

 In his essay entitled ‘The Duck and the Philosopher: Rhythms of Editing Between Bernard Stiegler and The Ister’ (2009), Patrick Crogan draws our attention to the role played by digital non-linear film editing techniques in providing spatio-temporal orientation. Employing the work of the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, Crogan seeks to track Stiegler’s critical observations regarding the complex imbrications of the analogue and the digital that can be found to occur in the use of these technologies.

 This paper proposes to take Crogan’s analysis of The Ister as a point of departure for exploring Stiegler’s observations in his essay ‘The Discrete Image’ (1996) regarding ‘analogico-digital’ analysis and synthesis and the potential engendered by the growing availability of audiovisual technologies of digital manipulation to foster a critical attitude on the part of the user. In exploring these themes and concepts I will consider how the experiments being conducted using Stiegler’s own ‘Timelines’ video editing software, developed at L’Institute de la recherche et d’innovation in Paris, are helping to facilitate the development of a critical ‘economy of contribution’. The aim of this presentation will be to explore the potential of digital technology for facilitating new modes of critical analytical engagement and to aim to show that such modes of engagement are not restricted to the realm of institutional academic discourses and practices, to the extent that they have the potential to contribute to the formation of a publicly oriented critical culture.

Marcel Swiboda is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. His current research mainly focuses on the exploration of cultural studies and critical theory as modes of technologically mediated symbolic activity. His research also focuses on the critical, ethical and political cross-hatchings between sonic, audiovisual and improvisatory practices.