Writing Images

Four Modes of Critical Visual Analysis

“Writing Images” explores several iconic examples of critical visual analysis within film and video as they demonstrate and embody a form of critical making; it argues that these works are of particular value in our current moment, one in which traditional academic disciplines are being rethought and revitalized through interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. This is also a moment when the critical methods of design are increasingly welcomed into the humanities. And it is a time in which, as Kathleen Fitzpatrick has argued, the lines between the creative and critical are blurring (Fitzpatrick, 2012). The works created in this arena constitute a form of critical making that reframes the fundamental acts of the humanities through cinematic tools and allows us to reconsider our ability to re-search, re-frame, re-edit, re-contextualize and re-write.

Looking to the future, the cinematic humanities invites us to imagine critical practices that are immersive, embodied, gestural and virtual, and to engage in acts that integrate thinking, writing, coding and designing, and to step into the making of moving images which continue to function as the dominant feature of the global condition. The move toward video-based scholarly work is but one step in a larger context of critical making; the models suggested by filmmakers and video artists engendered by the cinematic humanities, however, offer an instructive toolbox for others interested in this practice.

In the next four sections, I have gathered examples of specific examples of critical visual analysis from the histories of avant-garde film and video.

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