Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Paolo Cherchi Usai describes how in 1895 the Edison Kinetoscope company marketed Annabelle’s Dance, a single shot view of a serpentine dance painted in a range of transforming, colors (2000, 21). At Edison’s Black Maria factory, the desire was to capture Loïe Fuller’s chemical experiments in the production of the illusion of color. The serpentine dance became an eroticised spectacle displaying the ability of film to capture and exhibit movement, the image as a reminder of the movement of film itself. Hand painted and stencilled colours that trace movement in early film often appear ‘undisciplined’, unable to be constrained by the diegesis. Colors that are painted across film frames create additional patterns of time and movement. In early cinema colors pulse and move, many escaping outlines creating spectral spectacles of their own. The transformation of the hues projected from the flowing robes makes the viewer aware of the patterns of time, duration and the broader history that intersects early experiments with celluloid and those using digital film. This paper will explore the interrelationship between color and temporality, movement and spectrality in celluloid and digital serpentine dance films. It relies on Tom Gunning’s model of dialogue and engagement to extend towards recent forms of the Serpentine Dance (1995, 79). This paper is dedicated to an exploration of the interrelationship between experiments with color in expressing time through movement. Positioning the Serpentine Dance within a continuum, refusing to limit the discussion to firsts or origins, and focusing on some of the dynamic intersections across histories and performances allows for a reading of the dynamic intersections that connect the materiality of celluloid with the digital.