Situating the Immersive Experience: Exploring Intermedial Situations in Art/Cinema Installations

This thesis performs an analysis of three art/cinema case-studies in relation to a selection of cinematic, art historical and cultural theory. The text is split into three theoretical chapters with accompanying case-studies, each of which connects to the others in order to develop contemporary critical theory which corresponds to the experience of affective spectatorial engagement. The first chapter analyzes the 20th century philosophical, psychoanalytic and cultural theories of “aura” as per Walter Benjamin and filtered through Miriam Bratu Hansen, Henri Bergson's conception of “memory”, and Julia Kristeva's “chora” in regards to the creation of equivocal experiences in William Kentridge's The Refusal of Time (2012). The second chapter activates theories around haptic visuality and spectatorial embodiment as developed by Laura Marks via Vivian Sobchack and Henri Bergson. It also applies related affect and embodiment theories by Gregory Seigworth and Melissa Greg, Jill Bennett and Sylvia Lavin in order to explore the tactile spectatorial relationship between the physical and virtual in Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's Alter Bahnhof Video Walk (2012). The final chapter explores research around the nature of the event and contingency through the research of Mary Ann Doane, Malcolm Le Grice, the situationist international movement and Johannes Huizinga. These theories are brought together to explore the active spectatorial participation within Anthony McCall's Five Minutes of Pure Sculpture (2012). This research concludes by collecting all of the above theories and positing ways in which they might be productively applied to the creation of new, affective and participatory experiences of contemporary art. It also presents directions for continued research.