From the introduction: “Based on the phenomenological deepening of the relationship between realism and authorship, this book aims to name and describe a particular set of guidelines or poetic tendencies that can contribute to an understanding of cinema in its dialogue with aesthetic experience: persistence and contingency.”

From the introduction: “All art seeks some kind of authenticity or “truth”. We can recognize it in fiction or documentary, in painting or photography, in the abstract or the figurative. Authenticity can be pointed out in the immediacy of the senses or in the honesty of a purely conceptual proposal; it can emanate from the aura of the singular object or prevail in the multiple and the ephemeral; it can relate to objective exteriority or appeal to a phenomenological interiority (or even install itself on the perceptive threshold between exterior and interior, as in Impressionism); It can be mimetic, the result of a technical effort of meticulous recreation, or, on the contrary, it can invest in the opposite of technique and structuring, praising the artist’s chaos, randomness or passivity, so that the raw virginity of the real is not corrupted.
Authenticity appears to be involved in aesthetic fruition in different ways, forming one of the axiological pillars of the artistic field, regardless of the historical regime in which one addresses it. But art’s implicit contract with authenticity is in stark contrast to the polysemy of the latter concept. How to describe this authenticity in its transversality to the most diverse forms of artistic expression? How does it operate in the process of validating the different poetics? How does it manifest itself throughout different historical regimes and what resists over the successive paradigmatic revolutions in the art world? What is the properly aesthetic authenticity?”

From the introduction: “The topic of memory is frequent in contemporary thinking about art and aesthetic experience. More than a revivalist drive, a revaluation of the old, a hypervaluation of the present (and its archiving), a historical detachment or a chronic nostalgia in the age of postmodern disenchantment, the influence of reflections on memory in the course of the arts suggests, above all, a profound complicity – perhaps unavoidable – between the notions of temporality and aesthetic experience.”

From the introduction: “With the increasing proliferation of personal records, we are placed at the center of an ethical, aesthetic and political discussion about an archive of intimacy that reflects the panoptic era in which we live. While the archive is discussed in its materiality and proposals, questions also arise about the immateriality in the construction of memory and identity. Unframing Archives continues the discussion about the boundaries of art frameworks, as a fundamental guide to a multiple and open archive to which artists have been making a radical contribution.”

From the introduction: “In the early summer of 2016, the third edition of the Narrative, Media and Cognition colloquium took place at the Noble Amphitheater of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. Over the course of two days, the event brought together dozens of presentations distributed across thematic panels, proposing a comprehensive intersection of fields that, in various ways, engage with the problem of narrativity. (…) The richness and diversity of the themes that occupied the two days of the colloquium prompted the organization of the book now presented. The essays gathered here respond to an invitation extended to the speakers and constitute an essential selection of the content shared across the colloquium’s various panels.”

In the comprehensive analysis of discursivity, narrative studies naturally occupy a privileged space. The concepts of discursivity and narrativity even tend to converge, which immediately imposes the need for a renewed questioning of the specificity of strictly narrative discourse vis-à-vis other discourses. Should the concept of narrative be limited to the strict domain of poetics and narratological methodologies, as they manifest across various media of performativity and artistic expression, from literature to cinema? Or, conversely, should narrativity be understood as a foundational process of experience (in the phenomenological realm) and of culture (in the political and epistemological realms)? Through a post-metaphysical reframing of phenomenology, the author proposes a trans-communicational approach to discourse, positing it as a general process of formativity. From this point, the hypothesis of a vocational duality of discourse emerges: informative or performative. While informativity relates to a literal sense of discourse, performativity relates to a narrative sense. This diversification of sense, in turn, will serve as a conceptual foundation for the problematization and refounding of theoretical spheres ranging from philosophical anthropology to communication studies.

From the opening note: “Following the ‘Displacements of Intimacy’ conference held in 2014, the 4th edition of the Family Film Project launches an eponymous book featuring various articles that traverse and problematize the theme of intimacy as the nerve center of the festival’s own exploration.”

From the Summary: “This edition is structured into two parts. The first part gathers a collection of texts that approach the family theme in diverse ways, recreating a map of inexhaustible and stimulating problematics. The second part consists of the presentation of the program that comprised the inaugural session of the FFFilm Project cycle.
The FFFilm Project (Family Fiction Film Project) is a video and film cycle that explores various possibilities surrounding the family/familiar theme: documentary or fiction about the intimate, the personal, the private, family records, home movies, self-portraits/identities, familiar landscapes, alternative families, etc. In the era of the democratization of image use, objects produced within the intimacy and precariousness of production resources are increasingly common. There is a new way of making films and telling stories. Public and private, or global and local, are relationships in constant transformation, with an enormous impact on our way of producing, both creatively and financially.”

Keywords: Seriousness, subjectivity, play, art, Camp.

Keywords: Cinema; optical dimension; haptic dimension; body; absence; kinesthesia.

Keywords: difference, otherness, subjectivity, realism, ethics, politics, aesthetic experience.

Keywords: immersiveness; difference; alienation; distancing; performativity; co-authorship.

“What type of realism is intended by the artistic expression? What kind of real do we refer to when reasoning about aesthetic truth or authenticity? In what sense does one speak of authenticity by claiming that art stands against the narrative, figurative naturalism or representation? According to J. Epstein, “cinema is truth, a story is a lie” (1983, p. 276); Heidegger considered that “truth happens in the Van Gogh’s painting” (1992, p. 44); and G. Deleuze and F. Guattari declared that “no art, no sensation, was ever representational” (1992, p. 170). If the real is the beacon for aesthetic authenticity, inspiring art realisms – and, especially, as we will see, the drive to conceal authorial marks – then the question arises about what this movement implies.”

All art seeks some kind of authenticity or “truth”. We can recognize it in fiction or documentary, in painting or photography, in the abstract or the figurative. Authenticity can be pointed out in the immediacy of the senses or in the honesty of a purely conceptual proposal; it can emanate from the aura of the singular object or prevail in the multiple and the ephemeral; it can relate to objective exteriority or appeal to a phenomenological interiority (or even install itself on the perceptive threshold between exterior and interior, as in Impressionism); It can be mimetic, the result of a technical effort of meticulous recreation, or, on the contrary, it can invest in the opposite of technique and structuring, praising the artist’s chaos, randomness or passivity, so that the raw virginity of the real is not corrupted.
Authenticity appears to be involved in aesthetic fruition in different ways, forming one of the axiological pillars of the artistic field, regardless of the historical regime in which one addresses it. But art’s implicit contract with authenticity is in stark contrast to the polysemy of the latter concept. How to describe this authenticity in its transversality to the most diverse forms of artistic expression? How does it operate in the process of validating the different poetics? How does it manifest itself throughout different historical regimes and what resists over the successive paradigmatic revolutions in the art world? What is the properly aesthetic authenticity?

Speaking about authenticity in cinema—including a distinctly aesthetic authenticity—always entails invoking some form of realism. The experience of authenticity necessarily relies on some realist referential; otherwise, it would not even make sense to speak of authenticity. However, realism operates in various ways in cinematographic perception. There are distinct modes of realism that can intersect and coexist within the same cinematographic object. Therefore, it is insufficient to speak of authenticity in broad terms to describe the aesthetic relationship between cinema and realism. It will be necessary to distinguish the different modes of authenticity applicable to cinema and its genres and regimes—starting with the inherently realist character of the technical device itself—so that the specificity of a distinctly aesthetic authenticity can eventually be deduced and described.

The aesthetic problematization that underlies the discussions about art tends to ignore the recurrent ambiguity of the notion of the sensitive (almost always related directly to its etymological root, the Aisthesis). In fact, this concept, which often serves as a nonproblematic basis for the study of art and its aesthetic objects, is extremely comprehensive and flexible, being involved in many disciplinary areas, methodologies and conceptual relations that need to be pointed out. In these terms, the question arises: does it make sense to speak of different sensologies? And, if so, is it possible to delineate the terms of a specifically aesthetic sensology? Is the Aisthesis – as aesthetic experience – a specifiable phenomenon within a wider sensological landscape?

Keywords: cinema; real; mirroring; narrativity; performativity; authenticity.

“That is why there is no narrative, that is why there are so many.”
Maurice Blanchot

“The theoretical and methodological opposition between realism and formalism tends to imply and integrate a whole array of dualistic tensions: the sensible versus the intelligible, the immanent versus the transcendent, the immediate versus the mediated, experience versus meaning, essence versus appearance (or existence versus essence), the particular versus the universal, and so on. By inviting the general alignment of all these dichotomous pairs, the theoretical opposition between realism and formalism ultimately proposes a common polarity. However, it quickly becomes clear that such a reduction is not viable.”…

The aesthetic problematization that underlies the discussions about art tends to ignore the recurrent ambiguity of the notion of the sensitive (almost always related directly to its etymological root, the Aisthesis). In fact, this concept, which often serves as a nonproblematic basis for the study of art and its aesthetic objects, is extremely comprehensive and flexible, being involved in many disciplinary areas, methodologies and conceptual relations that need to be pointed out. In these terms, the question arises: does it make sense to speak of different sensologies? And, if so, is it possible to delineate the terms of a specifically aesthetic sensology? Is the Aisthesis – as aesthetic experience – a specifiable phenomenon within a wider sensological landscape?