Dotknąć światła. Kino jako przestrzeń dotyku

Abstract

The dominant trend in describing 19th-century culture is to emphasize the role of the eye and visual perception, taking the cinema as a perfect realization of the modernist hegemony of vision. However, when examining more profoundly the phenomenon of the cinema, it reveals itself as a source of many different sensations, at the same time providing us with a wider perspective on modern culture. By “cinema” I understand not only “movies”, but cinema as a specific place (the building, the projection hall) in the city as well. The article focuses on the dimension of touch and tactility, created by a movie “séance”. The first part gives a short revision of the most common theories and concentrates on the emergence of cinema in the modern metropolis, symbolized by the city of Paris. The second part of the essay explores the tactile space of the movie theatre, while the third part is meant to be an introduction to the analysis of the touchable qualities of light projection.