Jean Ma - At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators

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At the Edges of Sleep

At the Edges of Sleep

Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators

Jean Ma

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2022 by Jean Ma

An excerpt from was originally published by University of Minnesota Press as Deep in the Cave, in Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures , eds. Karen Redrobe and Jeff Scheible (Minnesota, 2021): 5769.

A version of part of was originally published by MIT Press as Sleeping in the Cinema, in October 176 (Spring 2021): 3052.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses .

Suggested citation: Ma, J. At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators . Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.132

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ma, Jean, 1972 author.

Title: At the edges of sleep : moving images and somnolent spectators / Jean Ma.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: Many recent works of contemporary art, performance, and film turn a spotlight on sleep, wresting it from the hidden, private spaces to which it is commonly relegated. At the Edges of Sleep considers sleep in film and moving image art as both a subject matter to explore onscreen and a state to induce in the audience Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022004974 (print) | LCCN 2022004975 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520384514 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520384521 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Dreams in motion pictures. | Art and motion pictures. | Motion picture audiences. | Sleep Psychological aspects.

Classification: LCC PN1995.9.D67 M3 2022 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.D67 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/653 dc23/eng/20220616

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004974

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004975

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FIGURES

This project began when I saw Cemetery of Splendor and found myself returning to the theater to rewatch the film, haunted by its narcoleptic vision and hooked by some dim reflection of my own issues with sleep. Many colleagues contributed to its development. For their invitations, hospitality, and generous engagement, I thank Kaveh Askari, Zarena Aslami, Weihong Bao, Dominique Bluher, Joel Burges, Iftikhar Dadi, Nicholas de Villiers, Jennifer Fay, Richard Grusin, David James, Amanda (Xiao) Ju, Chika Kinoshita, Lutz Koepnick, Sean Metzger, David Rodowick, Patrick Sullivan, Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, Pao-chen Tang, Beth Tsai, Madeline Ullrich, Johannes von Moltke, Xueli Wang, Elizabeth Wijaya, and Jennifer Wild. Davids inspired anecdote about sleeping in the cinema was just the push I needed to plunge all in. This would be a different book if not for the honing touch of spirited discussions with students at Stanford and the places where I presented my research: the University of Chicago, Shanghai University, Kyoto University, UCLA, Cornell, Michigan State, Vanderbilt, Rochester, and Yale.

The incredible gathering of scholars at the conference Haunted: Temporalities of (Moving) Image in Asia played a crucial role in the formation of my ideas. I thank Arnika Fuhrmann for her insights, camaraderie, and organizational genius, and the trees of Ithaca for their kaleidoscopic magnificence, which certainly affected the proceedings. I have at many points relied on the brilliance and generosity of May Adadol Ingawanij, who also put me in touch with Apichatpong Weerasethakul. For the images in these pages, I thank Joei, Shu Lea Chang, Tiffany Lee, Ernesto Sopprani, Amara Tabor-Smith, Bik Van der Pol, and the Museum of National Taiwan University of Education.

My department chair Alex Nemerov supported my work in countless ways at every stage of the projectnot least by sharing with me the photograph that planted the seed for . The artists, filmmakers, and scholars I work alongside are an amazing community, and my admiration for them has grown with these trying times. A big thanks to my colleagues Peggy Phelan and Pavle Levi, for their reliable wisdom and support, and Rafael Pelayo, for warmly welcoming me to the sleep research community at and around the university. A Stanford Humanities & Arts Enhanced Sabbatical Fellowship provided time for me to focus on research. The completion of this book was enabled by a 2019 Arts Writers Book Grant; I gratefully acknowledge the support of Creative Capital | The Andy Warhol Foundation. I thank Alex for making it possible to publish this book in an unrestricted open-source digital edition through the Luminos program at the University of California Press.

I give my deepest thanks to Karen Redrobe and the anonymous referee who read the manuscript from beginning to end with a truly extraordinary degree of acuity and rigor. They brought into clearer focus the big picture along with the devilish details, and their feedback improved the books final form and substance. Karens impact on my thinking is present in all of its layers. Thanks to Raina Polivka at UC Press for her sage editorial guidance and encouragement to admit creativity into the writing process. Whether working with her as a coeditor or author, I am continually struck by her intellectual integrity and collaborative spirit. It has been a pleasure to work with Madison Wetzell, who brought superlative patience and detail orientation to the production process.

There are not enough thanks and praises in the world to heap upon Franklin Gilliam and Melissa Anderson, the indomitable keepers of my spiritual home away from home. To Chika Kinoshita, Lisa Outar, and Nerina Rustomji, whose presence in my life supersedes all distances: thank you for your gifts of adventure, inspiration, and true friendship. Much love to Ayling, CQ, Yvette, and Amber.

This book is dedicated to Ed Simnett, with whom I would shelter in place any time and for however long, and to the incandescent memory of Barbara Ess.

The 2018 International Film Festival Rotterdam included among its programs a specially commissioned work by Apichatpong Weerasethakul that resists ready classification. SLEEPCINEMAHOTEL , presented by the festival organizers as an immersive one-off filmproject, cannot be described simply as a film or straightforwardly as an installation, despite having the characteristics of both categories. Its filmic component consisted of a found footage montage, compiled from the collections of the Netherlands two largest film archives, the Eye Filmmuseum and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Landscape imageryof earthly terrain, sky, and bodies of water (in a nod to the maritime siting of the festival)dominated the visuals. Accompanying the images was a dense soundtrack of natural ambient noises, such as the lapping of waves and the soughing of leaves stirred by wind. These sounds were created from field recordings made in Thailand by Apichatpongs frequent collaborator, the sound designer and artist Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr. The fragments of footage, which ranged from the earliest years of moving pictures to more recent aerial drone imagery, unreeled like a series of shifting views from a journey across places and periods, animated pages from an album of nature and history.