Danielle Sommer

Aby Warburg, Robert Smithson and Cinematic Time  

This project pairs Aby Warburg’s archival, photo-based project Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (1929) with Robert Smithson’s earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) in an attempt to establish a working framework of the concepts of “the instant” and “the interval” as they relate to cinematic time and the site of the cut. Cinematic time is not based on the availability of a projector and a screen; rather, it is both a technical apparatus and a conceptual one, the result of a manifestation of oppositions like past and present, continuous and discontinuous, and rational and contingent.  Using the similarities and differences in Warburg and Smithson’s projects, I argue that cinematic time is not just evident in other media besides film, but that spatial practices like der Bilderatlas and Spiral Jetty exploit these oppositions by inviting viewers to consciously inhabit such gaps.