Article:

Am Anfang war das Blackout. Zur Konstruktion des Gedächtnisses in der Erfahrung des Films

The article explores the relationship between materiality and immateriality, visibility and invisibility in Sergej M. Eisensteins notion of film as a technique of constructing and transferring thoughts. Drawing on Eisensteins «Kinomorphisation» (Holl) of memory, as it is developed in his essay Montage 1938, and on a paradigmatic sequence taken from Fridrikh Ermlers Film DER MANN, DER SEIN GEDÄCHTNIS VERLOR (OBLOMOK IMPERII, 1929), that would not have been realised without Eisensteins Ko-Operation – as elucidated by O. Bulgakowa –, the text deals with the role of pre-semantic disruptions or blackouts during cinematic suggestion («Einbildung») of a dissolve. Moreobever, the article relates Eisensteins co-operative aesthetics with (a) the suture-theories of the 70s, (b) Münsterbergs psychotechnic approach to cinema and (c) with those (im-)material ghosts, which are brought into being by the postfilmic cinema.