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Prelude to Live Cinema

This article investigates the increasingly prevalent discourse of ‘live cinema’ as the name of a concrete practice and conceptual aspiration within contemporary media aesthetics. The author argues that this oxymoronic conjunction encapsulates certain fundamental questions recurring throughout the history of 20th-century art in its increasingly important intersection with both media technology and performance. Contrasting contemporary digital ‘interfaces’ with classical musical instruments, he asks how traditional forms of embodiment and virtuosity have been transformed within contemporary audiovisual performance. Finally, he explores ideas of speed and the cut from Sergei Eisenstein’s film theory to explore Abigail Child’s 1983 film Mutiny as a work that, while not itself ‘Live Cinema’, sheds important light on what such a future aesthetic might conceivably entail.