Griffiths, D.A., 2010.

UnSpooling Cinema 4.0

After enduring decades of fractured observation and remixing (in collage, cut-ups, sampling) now film images are somewhat embedded as open-source materials in contemporary art practice, along with the staple concerns of re-siting the cinema event and repurposing the audience's function. Cinema's seductive constellation of illusion and ideology has consistently inspired and resourced generations of artists. The international practitioners featured in UnSpooling - Artists & Cinema continue this perennial obsession with the archive, and the lonesome/collective movie-going experience, to propose new possibilities of cinematic production, spectacle and storytelling.To celebrate 25 years of Manchester's Cornerhouse it seemed apt to survey current artistic engagement with cinema's canon and methodologies, and the productive function of the institution. These models of cinema, which are a mere sample of international practice in this field, establish a staging post in the future acceleration and mutation of form -- Cinema 4.0 perhaps. Such formal junctures, however temporary, are novel convergences of the technical lineage (photographic film, sound and digital), along with an infinitely variable range of materials, sites and social production strategies, and a memory of the deep archaeological time of media.