In brief
Guest speaker - Dr Victor Fan (King's College London)
Title - The Insight-Image: Illuminating the Reality of Deleuze’s Time-Image
Host - Dr Pasquale Iannone (University of Edinburgh)
Venue - 40 George Square
Abstract
by Victor Fan
In Zen Buddhism, the notion of here and now is the key to attain – or return to – paññā/prajñā (insight). On a day-to-day basis, we live each moment with a preoccupation of the past and an anticipation for the future. Our retrospection and expectation produce afflictions such as avarice, anger and frustration, as well as delusion.
Our penchant for living every moment as a recollection of the past and an anticipation for the future is also propelled by our belief that our existence endures in time; that such afflictions and suffering are both inevitable; and that our self and all the other sentient beings and objects arise out of their self-natures. But as Nāgārjuna (150–250 CE) argues, the past does not exist, as its existence has already perished; the future does not exist, as its existence has yet to arise.
If the present is an extension of the past, and if it extends itself to become the future, the present does not exist either. Rather, it is a lived point-instant that instantiates an assemblage of interdependent conditions. But how does the cinema, as an image-consciousness, disconceals insight?
In 'Cinema Illuminating Reality' (2022), I conduct a comparative reading of here and now with Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Henri Bergson’s notion of time. I do so in order reconfigure Deleuze’s notion of the time-image into the insight-image. For Deleuze, the time-image is characterized as a pure optical and sound situation, which draws the consciousness’s attention to the present of the present as a sense-formation and a thought-formation.
In other words, Deleuze’s time-image is capable of generating a mindfulness of the here and now: that each moment is an instantiation of an ecology of interdependent conditions that affect, and are affected by, one another.
In my presentation, I will demonstrate how insight can be attained or returned to via the formational process of the image-consciousness. I will also conduct a close reading of Pema Tseden’s 'Tharlo' (2015) to examine how mindfulness is mobilized as a technology that gives the consciousness an agency over its own becoming.
Speaker bio
Dr Victor Fan is a Reader in Film and Media Philosophy at King's College London. He is the author of 'Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory' (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 'Extraterritoriality: Locating Hong Kong Cinema and Media' (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), and 'Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy through Buddhism' (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).
Fan is a classically trained musician and a working composer. He was a performance artist with his own theatre company Post [ET]2! in Hong Kong between 1993 and 1996. He also worked as a freelance sound editor, film composer, and re-recording mixer. He worked at Fissionarts (Los Angeles) and Solar Film/Video Productions (NYC) between the late 1990s and the mid 2000s. In New York, he also wrote for the magazines Film Festival Reporter and Film Festival Today, covering news from the MIX Festival, the New York Underground Film Festival, the African Diaspora Film Festival and MOXIE Film.
About the series
Edinburgh Film Seminars is hosted by Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh and brings together world-leading academics within the field to discuss their research.
How to attend
This is an in-person event. It is free and everyone is welcome.
If you have any queries, please email Dr Pasquale Iannone.
Are you interested in studying film at Edinburgh?
Exploring crucial concepts in the development of film theory and film-philosophy, one one-year taught Masters programme (MSc) centres on the criticism, analysis and interpretation of auteur cinema, with a focus on European and American film.
We also supervise PhD research in film theory, film-philosophy, various national cinemas, the work of individual filmmakers, and cinema in relation to other art forms.
