My new video essay, Tsai Ming-liang: A Cinema of Bodily Sense, has been published in the latest issue (10.2, 2023) of [in]Transition. The video, as well as my creator’s statement, and two peer reviews, can be found here: https://mediacommons.org/intransition/cinema-bodily-sense.
From the creator’s statement:
“Tsai’s cinema consists of sites of encounters where the phenomenological aspects of perception are mobilized in order to form aesthetic and thematic meanings and resonances. This phenomenological dimension becomes the primary force of the film, the primary level of engagement. Subject and form blur, the body becomes, in part, medium in itself, creating a state of heightened embodiment.”
From Andrea Bachner’s review:
“Approaching Tsai’s entire oeuvre in a video essay is a tough assignment. And yet, 'A Cinema of Bodily Sense' provides us with a remarkably clear impression of what is key in Tsai’s films, moving between and juxtaposing on the screen scenes from individual films while creating the impression that all of Tsai’s films could be combined into a whole work of art in progress.”
From Corrado Neri’s review:
“Cook’s hypnotic, slow-paced montage spirals in a vertiginous slow accumulation that lets the bodily presence be apparent in its weight, and ponders on the reactions of the spectators, immersed in an experiment of haptic visuality.”