Cinematic chronotopes: affective encounters in space-time

This study makes a case for analyzing the chronotopes of the cinematic as affective encounters in space-time. It argues that, while the site of cinema is on the move, the extent to which technologically mediated sounds and images continue to be experienced as cinematic today is largely dependent on the intensified sense of a "here," a "now," and a "me" that they convey. This intensification, this thesis suggests, is fundamentally rooted in the cinematic’s potential to intensify our experience of time, to convey time’s thickening, of which the sense of space or place, and a sense of self or self-presence are the correlatives. This study traces this thickening of time across four different spatio-temporal configurations of the cinematic that have traditionally been conceived as different from, or even antagonistic to, each other: a multi-media exhibition featuring the early avant-garde films of Andy Warhol in chapter one; the handheld aesthetics of European art-house films in chapter two; a large-scale interactive media installation set-up in public space in chapter three; and the usage of the trope of the flash-forward in mainstream Hollywood cinema in the Coda. Only by juxtaposing these cases by looking at what they have in common, i.e. intensified thickening of time that they share, can we grasp the complexity of the changes that the cinematic is currently undergoing.