Evan Calder Williams - Shard Cinema

SHARD CINEMA

EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS

SHARD CINEMA

EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS

Published by Repeater Books
An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

19-21 Cecil Court
London
WC2N 4EZ
UK
www.repeaterbooks.com
A Repeater Books paperback original 2017
1

Copyright Evan Calder Williams 2017

Evan Calder Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover design: Johnny Bull
Typography and typesetting: JCS Publishing Services Ltd
Typefaces: Adobe Jenson Pro and Corbel

ISBN: 978-1-910924-91-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-910924-82-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This book is for Vic, who makes weathering
all these storms worth it,
who knows that images matter

Like most books, this one owes a lot to a number of people whom Ive talked to and watched with, bounced ideas off and learned from. A few publications and institutions, too: The New Inquiry, Third Rail, La Furia Umana, Tabakalera, Maumaus, the Serpentine Gallery, the Architecture Department at ETH Zrich, and the University of Sussex have all supported this project in various ways, publishing early versions of some of these texts or bringing me to talk about shattering surfaces. My thanks to the people behind fxguide, whose site and interviews were an invaluable resource for this, as the frequent citations will make evident. Thanks to my editor, Emma Jacobs, for her astute edits and patience, to Tariq Goddard for taking on and seeing through the book, and to Johnny Bull for a brilliant cover. Thanks to Roda, who made me leave digital snow for the kind falling heavy outdoors. Thanks to the people with whom Ive had the lucky chance to talk about some of these ideas, in passing or at length: Erik Bachman, Laure Prouvost, Max Fox, Alberto Toscano, Esther Leslie, Sabu Kohso, Ken Jacobs, and my students at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

Three people in particular have left deep impressions on my thinking and are inseparable from the project. Mike Thomsen, whose brilliant thinking about video games and vision was a big influence, as was his generosity, friendship, and loan of a PS3 when I was broke and wanted to see how games had changed without me. Lucy Raven, whose work on the global network of digital compositing was a key touchpoint when I started and whos been a necessary friend and collaborator since. And Vic Brooks, with whom Ive watched, talked, learned, obsessed over CSI, whispered bad ideas to during the chase scene, and who has been a constant interlocutor and partner throughout my work on this.

This book is in memory of Harun Farocki, Chantal Akerman, and John Berger, who all taught me to see better.

to see, it is necessary to lose consciousness of ones own being, it is necessary in some way to stop seeing.

Plotinus

It was like being pinned to the ground while an angry dishwasher shat in your face for two hours.

Charlie Brooker on Transformers

At one, very practical level, there seems to me to be not enough fragmentation at the moment.

Doreen Massey

FRAGMENT 1

he says, very slowly and clearly, each word bullet-spat past the teeth and terse lips, making sure it cannot be misheard, because Karl did not understand him the first time, when he told him in their mother tongue to do so. Karl, long-suffering blond hulk Karl, doomed to fail and flail and smash flower arrangements in proxy for a hero who he cannot kill, just looked at Hans, perplexed and silent. Perhaps, some speculate, it is because the German was incorrect, leading fans to bemoan the missing step of actually checking with a native speaker. Or, others suggest, it was just confusing in the given situation, telling poor Karl to shoot the glass, which colloquially would mean shoot the window. But in this room there are no windows. Only walls of glass, screens of glass. Besides, the office has already been well shot up, as has everything inside it, all the computers and the walls, the limbs and monitors and files, everything except the one intended target. What remains to ruin? Shards and splinters and sparkling dust pile the floor and get slicked with blood, and this is what spurs Hans tactical innovation and confusing command: not to hit the target but to attack the surroundings. To devastate more and more of the glassy room and make their enemy run unprotected across it. To make him leave a trail to be followed, a red ellipsis that draws a line to its author.

We know this, and Karl does not, because we who watch have been directed to see those cut and naked feet. Weve seen the dawning grasp of Hans that all the worlds a trap provided you know how to miss your enemy and

My personal theory: when Hans says schiess den Fenster, Karl is stunned. Absolutely horrified. Because Hans, by using the accusative article den, has assigned the masculine gender to the window. But everyone who speaks German knows that windows are neuter. (Comment on Quora)

Which window? Which is a window and which is a wall and which is a screen? Karl might ask, if the situation werent so urgent. All windows. Because all are windows and walls and screens, the next three decades of moving images will come to respond in increasing unison.

barefoot and softly through the night, to continue the mutation into de Sade hero, endlessly subject to pain, puncture, and mutilation, yet endlessly durable, ready to track fresh blood into the next set piece, the newspapers scattered on the floor, the stain over MONEY INTO TRANSMISSION, the small splatter on The Southern California guide to lower heating bills

make an interior collapse in on itself. But Karl does not, beleaguered Karl who is not a camera but a henchman. So Hans shakes his head in frustration. He says it again, and he says it in English this time, as he is no longer just telling Karl. He is also telling the camera operator and the focus puller where to point the lens, playing on that linguistic doubling there since tienne-Jules Mareys repeating camera rifle: shoot the glass, not the character. He says it in English, and in whatever tongue it is dubbed into for global distribution, because he is telling us, we who are watching Die Hard, so that well eventually realize the gravity of these words, even if it takes a couple decades, because shoot the glass inaugurates and names the nascent start of a relation to images that will come to be inseparable from basic parameters of how we see and how we touch.

Later, we wont need to be told twice, because were already doing it, already aiming eyes and phones and virtual rifles, but were not there yet, and neither is Karl, though it isnt his fault. He hasnt seen this film yet, hasnt seen the scene that follows (or the ones after that, his death waiting in the concrete wings), and so were all told, all given this direction to watch closely, because what happens is a portrait in miniature of what is to come. Like how when Karl leans out to do as told, it is past the hard drive of a computer behind which he has taken shaky shelter, the kind that in another decade will be the source of that glasss shattering, collaborating with its operator to forge the flawless digital sparks here made by more direct means: just blowing up the computer itself, while Karl who cant catch a break skitters to the side. Like how the film, one that is as pro-cop as it is anti-plan, is