Cinema as a space of experience

(Together with Ursula von Keitz and Marcus Stiglegger)

What does film experience mean? How is it shaped in relation to the architectural and social location of the cinema? And how does it change in the course of the digitalisation of the media and a possible upheaval of the cinematographic perception dispositif? These questions are the focus of the "Erfahrungsraum Kino" (cinema as a space of experience) network funded by the German Research Foundation. The network, which began its work in 2011 and consists of ten film scholars from Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, has set itself the task of tracing the transformations of the use and perception dispositif of cinema and, with the addition of two essays by young researchers on local cinema history, presents its first research results in this AUGENBLICK double issue.

The network approaches the topic from the various film studies fields of history, theory and aesthetics, with different methodological and theoretical approaches. According to the three sections "Film Experience and Cinema as a Social Place", "Film Reception between Knowledge Acquisition, Sensory Stimulation and New Aesthetic Perceptual Offerings" and "The Dispositive Cinema in the Horizon of New Digital Media and Accompanying Transformations", the current upheavals in the field of cinema and film will be analysed with a view to the viewer and his or her reception experience.

Read the whole introduction in German