Rene Thoreau Bruckner_Travels in Flicker Time (Madre!)

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The InstantRen Thoreau Bruckner, editor, Spectator 28:2 (Fall 2008): 61-72.

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Travels in Flicker-Time (Madre!)

Ren Thoreau Bruckner

In an audio recording made by Tony Conrad onMarch 5, 1963, filmmaker Jack Smith can be heardgasping with delight at the spectacle producedby a lensless film projector running at reducedspeed, sans film, with performer Mario Montezilluminated in its unsteady beam. Smith exclaims:Oh, Tony, can you see that? Have your actualeyes, in reality, ever seen anything as exaggeratedand raging as this? I mean, aside from theatricalexperience (gasp) [] Oh,Madre!1e recordingdocuments the first of Conrads experiments withcinematic flicker, the first seed of an idea for a

future film.e dazzling, dizzying, and fitful visualexperience to which Smith is respondingthe rapid,mechanical flashing up and dying away of projectedlightepitomizes the most common sense of theword flicker in contemporary parlance. However,before the last few decades of the nineteenth century,the word might just as well have been employedin reference to a flirtatious glance, a pilferer, orthe fluttering movements of a winged creature:2 abird, a moth, or, as in the following description ofan exchange between lovers (Chaucers Troilus andCressida), a spirit that has evacuated its body to flitaround outside of it:

And at that she began more deeply to sigh,and he began to comfort her as best hemight:took her in his two arms, and kissed her oft,and to comfort her set his best intent:at which her ghost, that flickered aloft,into her woeful heart again it went.3

Given this lexical heritage, it seems fitting that in1878, Etienne Jules-Marey immediately associatedthe photographic study of motion with thequestions connected with the flight of birds inan enthusiastic letter to La Nature. Responding tothe journals publication of Eadweard Muybridgesnewly published photographic motion studies,Marey writes: I was dreaming of a kind ofphotographic gun, seizing and portraying the birdin an attitude, or, better still, a series of attitudes,displaying the successive different motions ofthe wings4e technique Marey has in mind,

of course, is the proto-cinematic techniquehe would come to call chronophotography: thedepiction of movement in successive instantaneousphotographs. What he was dreaming of amountsto the ability to shoot a bird, not to kill it but tocapture its living, vision-confounding motion andconvert it into legible, fixed image sequences. epassing into obsolescence of older meanings offlicker thus marks a contemporaneous shift in theway movement and time could be viewed. Sincethe birds incomprehensible flying movementshave become reducible to a number of arrestedinstants, its bodyceases to move. Once it had beenseized over and over, cinema proved it could bringthe bird back to life, so to speak, by spinning theimage sequence back into motion. e dazzlingand continuous flicker of flight becomes a dazzlingbut discontinuous flicker of light on the screen.As such, the flicker presents itself as a model formodern temporality, in which the present proceedsby successive instants, bursts of barely perceptiblelight intersected by empty intervals, all passing at


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TRAVELS IN FLICKER-TIME (MADRE!)

a blinding pace.is model of time met with some criticism in

the early days of cinema. I have written elsewhereon one such criticism: Henri Bergsons challengingof quantitative time, which he characterizedin 1907 as cinematographic.5 For Bergson,one of the problems with building time like acinematographic image, instant by instant, is theaccompanying assumption that time is eithercompletely objective and thus independent of anyperceiving, remembering subject, or completelysubjective and thus incompatible with the pre-existence of any outside world. Bergson sought todemonstrate that if either of these extreme viewsis true, time cannot exist, because there can be no

passage from one instant to the next. He arguesinstead that duration requires a bridge: a fusion ofrealism and idealism, inside and outside.6 Bergsonused the cinematic apparatus, passing as it doesfrom one instantaneous photograph to the nextto project its illusionary image of movement, as amodel of the incorrect time of everyday intellectualconstruction.

What follows is a sketch, tracing the outlines ofa larger argument composed of three main claims:first, that the flicker stands as a visual manifestationof a certain understanding of time as essentially

discontinuousflicker-timewhich despite initialappearances is notstrictly opposed to Bergsonianduration; second, that this particular temporalityhas played an important part, since the 1890s, incultural productions that play at imagining time;and third, that the device of the flicker makes visible,albeit dazzlingly so, a certain practical potential forradicalized uses of flicker-time: implicitly criticaland even destructive of certain conventionaltemporal constructsbut always alluring as well.e present article primarily attends to the secondclaim, brought into focus through the lens of thepopular trope of time travel. In order to illustrate

this times transformative talents, and at the sametime to suggest that it is not necessarily an entirelynew kind of time, I will take the liberty of firstdigressing into a very old fable.

The Wolfs Trick

In his bookHistory of the Aesopic Fable, publishedin 1889, Joseph Jacobs includes an English

translation from the original Hebrew of the tale,e Fable of the Wolf and the Animals bytwelfth century fabulist Berachyah Hanakdan.7Like some better-known parallel fables,8 the taleemploys the figure of the hungry Wolf to impart alesson about unchecked voracity and the slipperypower of language.

Berachyahs fable begins as the Wolf standstrial, dragged by all the birds and beasts, wild andtame, before the sovereign Lion to be punished forhis greedy, murderous eating habits, as a monsterworthy of detestation. e Lion sentences theWolf to two years without meat and forbids himfrom kil ling ever again. Although the Wolf acceptsthis punishment, it is not long before his voracious

nature returns. He finds himself hunting, comesupon a fat sheep, and hesitates: en to himselfhe said, Who can keep every law? and his thoughtswere bewildered with what he saw. Having begunhis transgression against the law by hunting downthis sheep, the Wolf is faced with a puzzle: he feelshungry and has food within sight, but is forbiddento perceive it as food because of the Lions sentence.To resolve this contrary vision, he conjures a trick:

He said to himself, It overcomes me thelonging to eat, for two years day by day

I must fast from meat.

is is my oathto the king that I swore but Ive thoughthow to fulfill it as never before. reesixty-five are the days in a year. Night iswhen you close your eyes, open them, andthen the day is near.

With this play of wordsa clever redefinition ofday and nightthe Wolf opens up the possibilityof accelerating the passage of time. He does so byreducing the situation, for the time being, to apicture.e sheep is an object that the Wolf wantsto kill and eat, a matter of utmost physical intimacy,

but the passage of time becomes a matter of optics,harmless and distant. Having induced this distance,this space, the Wolf performs the trick: His eyeshe closed and opens straightaway. It was eveningand morning, one day. us he winked till he hadnumbered two years and his greed returned andhis sin disappears. His sentence now complete, hegrants himself the authority to devour the helplessanimal before him.


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e Wolfs trick, his invention, is a devicefor moving things along by blinking, producingfor himself a proto-cinematic, flickering picture.9Camera, projector, and spectator all in one, heinduces a spectacle that passes time. As each of hismomentary days pass, he closes his eyes and thesheep disappears; when he opens his eyes to thenext day, there stands the object of his desire, anobject of vision, virtualfood (the future), immobile,visible, and within reach, prone to become actualfood (the present). A mysterious substitution occursat this point in Berachyahs tale, marking the preystransition from virtual to actual, there to here, futureto present.e sheep turns into a goat:

His eyes fix the goat they had seen andhe said, See beforehand I have atonedfor my sin, and he seized the neck of thegoat, broke it to pieces, and filled up histhroat as he was wont to do before.

Having transformed back into food, the animalstanding before the wolf also has undergone ataxonomic metamorphosis. Jacobs, our translator,acknowledges the lexical switch in a footnote, butdoes not attempt to explain it: ere is a curiousvacillation between sheep and goat in Berachyahs

version.10

Perhaps the transformations significanceis simply symbolic: as the sacrificial animal ontowhose head the sinner places his sins, the goatappears as the disappearance of the wolfs sins.11His optical trick functions on the condition thatthe animal intermittently disappear each nightand reappear each day for the proper number ofdays, after which the sheep vanishes and his sindisappears. e uncanny transformation of theanimal certainly bolsters the scenes resemblance toa cinematic encounter. As in a simple substitutionsplice,12 sheep becomes goat in the blink of an eye(perhaps the switch itself occurs during an interval,

at night, while the Wolfs eyes are closed). Ratherthan simply manifesting a goat, the trick subsistsin removing the sheep to make way for the goat.Just like that, the situation ceases to be a matter ofoptics. No longer an image, the animal transformsback into meat.

e Wolfs game, his object, is to momentarilyreverse the power of the sovereign Lion, the law,to displace his sins onto the animal and then to

devour it. Before he can fill up his throat, however,he must empty it by making an utterance; that is,in order to justify assimilating the weak animalusing force against the word of the sovereign, thestrong, ultimately to capture the weakhe mustregurgitate the language and logic by which thelaw makes itself known (passes its sentence). In hisessay, e Fabulous Animal, Louis Marin makesa striking claim to this effect: It could very well bethat the fable, the story of the weak and marginal,generally constitutes a particular kind of apparatuswithin discourse itself, Marin says. e function ofthis apparatus is to allow the weak to displace andreverse the power contained in the discourse of thestrong.13 In a complementary essay on Marie de

Frances Fable of the Wolf and the Lamb, Marinmaintains that the clever and insatiable figure ofthe Wolf uses the power of speech to straddle theborder between nature and culture, and does thisprecisely by establishing a temporal deferral betweenthe desire to eat and the actof devouring.14 As inBerachyahs fable, the temporal interval between thehungry present and a wished-for future is bridgedby a hesitation, a gap. Time becomes space, a stageon which the fable can play out: language anddiscourse establish a new boundary between theneed that drives the animal and the act of devouring.

ey bring about a distance, a temporal diff

erencethat defers the immediate satisfaction of desire.15

What makes Berachyahs Wolf remarkableis the way he doubles the fables time-distancingeffect with his blinking trick. e hunters eyeblinks to capture his prey, holding the passingscene in place by alternating successive looks withdark, unseen intervals. In order to hold the objectof his desire in place as an image, the Wolf mustlet the sheep out of his sight each time he blinks.A captivating image emerges, and arrests bothhunter and hunted, like spectator and film. eobject of desire is captured in the flicker, but so is

he; although the trick affords the Wolf a satisfyingmeal, in the end he has fooled only himself, as histransgression puts him back at the mercy of theLion, back inside the law, the rule: regular time.

Travel by Time Machine: the palpitation of night andday

From 1888 to 1895, contemporaneously with the


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publication of Jacobs fabulous translation, H.G.Wells was busy inventing the time machine.16 Andmuch like the Wolf s blinking technique, Wellsdevice would speed up the succession of nightand day to flickering velocity. His novella, aptlytitled e Time Machine, was published in the lateSpring of 1895, two months after the Lumirebrothers first demonstrated their cinematographefor a private audience, and six months beforethey unveiled it to the public. In Wells story, aninventor known only as the Time Traveller buildsa machine to prove the principle that timeis space(the fourth dimension). He uses his contrivanceto travel into the distant future; the machine isclearly conceived as a vehicle, undoubtedly inspired

by the modern locomotive technologies that hadalready accelerated the experience of moving fromplace to place. As such, the time machine movesits operator: I took the starting lever in one handand the stopping one in the other, pressed the first,and almost immediately the second. I seemed toreel17 Given the vehicular character of the timemachine, it becomes clear that it is designed withthe built-in presumption that time can be treatedpractically as space.18

Importantly, this machine, as it propelsthe driver through time as if through space, also

provides a corresponding visual experience. Wellsrich description is worth quoting at length:

I pressed the lever over to its extremeposition.e night came like the turningout of a lamp, and in another momentcame to-morrow. e laboratory grewfaint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter.To-morrow night came black, then dayagain, night again, day again, faster andfaster still. An eddying murmur filled myears, and a strange, dumb confusednessdescended on my mind.

I am afraid I cannot convey thepeculiar sensations of time traveling.eyare excessively unpleasant As I put onpace, night followed day like the flappingof a black wing e slowest snail thatever crawled dashed by too fast for me.e twinkling succession of darkness andlight was excessively painful to the eye.en, in the intermittent darknesses, I

Figs. 1-8. GeorgeWells (Rod

Talylor) duringthe flickering time

travel sequence.The Time Machine(George Pal, MGM,

1960). Copyright1960 Turner

Entertainment Co.and Galaxy Films,

Inc.


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saw the moon spinning swiftly throughher quarters, and had a faint glimpse ofthe circling stars. Presently, as I wenton, still gaining velocity, the palpitationof night and day merged into onecontinuous greyness; the sky took on awonderful deepness of blue, a splendidluminous color like that of early twilight;the jerking sun became a streak of fire, abrilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainterfluctuating band; and I could see nothingof the stars, save now and then a brightercircle flickering in the blue.19

Flickering. For this mid-1890s vision of time

travel, the experience is not only visual, but alsoremarkably cinematic: diurnal time reaches thepace of flicker-time.e mechanical acceleration ofnight and day into a continuous greyness suppliesthe same intermittent action of light and dark,accelerated just beyond the limits of perception,produced by the film image: at a certain speed, theflicker disappears. Neuroscientists call such a fusionof darkness and light critical flicker frequency(CFF): the point at which an increasingly fastintermittent light source ceases to visibly fluctuateand begins to appear continuous. Understood

as such, the passage from flicker-speed to CFFnames a visual phenomenon that teases vision withits own limits, making visible the transition fromseeing what is happeningthe flickerto seeingan illusory continuity. For Wells Time Traveller,this passage is excessively unpleasant and painfulto the eye, but once he reaches the proper velocity(faster than a year per minute), the displeasuregives way to thrill: e unpleasant sensations ofthe start were less poignant now. ey merged atlast into a kind of hysterical exhilaration.20

e flickering, fast-motion quality witnessedby the time machines driver presents this scene

as ripe for adaptation to film. In 1960, specialeffects technician George Pal directed the firstfull-blown film version of the novel for MGM. Palreceived an Oscar for speeding up time with hisstop-motion animation techniques. At least for thescene in question, his adaptation adheres to Wellsdescription with some fidelity. As the inventor,here called George Wells (played by Rod Taylor),drives into the future, stop-motion animation

visualizes the ride: a snail crawls speedily acrossthe ground, flowers bloom and close rapidly, and,as Anne Friedberg has observed, a dress shopmannequin across the street literally wears thepassing of time by displaying the ever-changinglook of ladies fashion within a frame that remainsconstantthe shop window functions as Georgesmarker of temporality.21 In order to arriveat this animated experience with its masterfulenvisioning of accelerated time, however, it mustbe noted that the scene passes through severalsustained moments of flicker. As the machinesspeed increases, days and nights grow shorter andshorter, and everything becomes illuminated byflickering light, including George (see Figs. 1-8). A

relatively slow alternation becomes a palpitation,accompanied by accelerating non-diegetic soundeffects that punctuate the accelerating flicker of theimage.e sequence unfolds as a shot/reverse-shotsequence showing George holding his lever whiledelighting in the flicker, glancing around the room,out his window, and also up through the panedskylight that reveals the changing pace of diurnaltime. (Figs. 9-11) In voiceover, George makes quiteclear the cinematic quality of the experience: usI was able to see the changing world in a series ofglimpses.

In both book and film, then, one eff

ect oftime travel is the production of a moving imagethat flickers to life. e machine reaches fullspeed by merging multiple glimpses which arepolar oppositesnight and day, light and darkinto one enthralling image. e time travellersprivileged view comes from his position inside themachinethis is what allows him to witness theacceleration of times passage from normal speedto flicker velocity and up beyond it. A spectator, heis immobile in space but mobile in time: spatiallystill, contained, insidethe machine, but temporallyin motion, uncontained and unsituated, outsideof

space.is is a temporal outside, as the machinestrick is precisely to evacuate the now.

To conceive of the fictional technologyof the time machine in this way is to imagine avehicle, but also a kind of fantastic cinematicdevice. It is first necessary to read time beforewriting a time-travel story,22 writes VeronicaHollinger. e time travel trope is a sign withouta referent, a linguistic construction originating in


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the metaphorical spatialization of temporality.23If time has classically been readable as a categoryof space, it becomes technologically writable withthe emergence of the cluster of technologies thatmust have informed the original literary text(clocks and watches, trains and their timetables,

photographic motion studies, chronophotography,the kinetoscope, etc.). e deep irony of this newtechnical claim is not lost on Wells: the inauguraltime machine narrative is also a sharp critiqueof the fourth dimension concept itself. esubversion of 19th-century scientific values which[the novel] undertakes on the level of narrativeevent, Hollinger argues, is complemented on thelevel of textual discourse by its deconstruction of

the metaphysics of presence.24 Wells definition oftime travel as a visual experience, then, suggests acommentary on technologys metaphysical effects.e time travelers unwise folly, his meddling withthe orderof time (chronology), is aligned with thenewly prevalent treatment of time and movementby cinematographic flicker.

Such a reading has been taken to indicate aturn of the century telos. Paul Coates posits theinvention of cinema as a product of the colonialcrisis as imperial powers ran out of undiscoveredspace: Time travel is in a sense travel betweenthe unevenly developed countries of this worldprojected onto the universethe Zeitgeistgenerated cinema to effect this time travel.25 While

there is little doubt that the emergence of cinemaparticipates in a dispersed concern over the finitudeof uncolonized territory, I would contend thatcinema is not simply generated by it. Even if thefilm image speaks to the disappearance of space (inboth the cartographic and the metaphysical senses),it does not simply treat time as the new space, soto speak. e time machines movement into thefuture is described as a literal disappearance fromboth the time and space of the present day.26 AsJonathan Bignell has noted, while traveling, theTime Traveller seems to master and control what

is seen on the screen, while being excluded fromthe action.27 Much like an ideal cinema spectator,he watches a scene from which he is absent. Morepractically, each spectator really disappears, overand over again, as the darkened space of exhibitionis bathed in the flicker of projected light.

The Flicker Film

Especially when I was younger, as ateenager, my experience with movies wasextraordinarily rich in the way that theytransported me to some other place and

time. I remember coming blinking out ofthe theatre into the sun and awakeningfrom the trance of the film, a kind ofnarrativity trance, which can be verystrong. Tony Conrad28

e same year that Pals e Time Machine wasreleased, another cinematic flicker appeared. InPeter KubelkasArnulf Rainer(1960), unlike in Pals

Figs. 9-11. (from top left, clockwise) Flickering view through theskylight. The Time Machine (George Pal, MGM, 1960). Copyright1960 Turner Entertainment Co. and Galaxy Films, Inc.


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film, the flicker does not interrupt or accelerate afilmed scene; instead, this films content amountsto the flicker itself. An experiment composed ofentirely black and entirely white frames whichalternate in modulated intervals (with a soundtrackthat alternates similarly, abruptly between silenceand noise), Kubelkas film prefigures a veritablesub-genre of experimental and avant-garde cinemaknown as the flicker film. It is a category thathas since come to emblematize the structuralfilm movement of the 1960s and 70s, comprisedof films whose modus operandi is, at least in part,to make visible or take advantage of the cinematicapparatus inherent propensity to create unstablevisual effects. An incomplete list of examples:

Tony Conrads materialization of his projectorexperiments, titlede Flicker(1966); Paul Sharitsseries of flicker films, including Piece Mandala/

End War (1966), Razor Blades, Ray Gun Virus,N.O.T.H.I.N.G., and T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G(all 1968);a trio of chromatic flicker works by Victor Grauertitled Angel Eyes (1965), Archangel (1966), andSeraph (1966); Around Perception (Pierre Hbert,1968); Raindance (Standish Lawder, 1972); andTaka Iimuras Shutter (1967) and Twenty-fourFrames Per Second(1975).

e image (or lack thereof) produced in the

flicker film exceeds the space of the screen and theframe that usually contains the image, producingwhat Sharits calls an internal time-shape.29 Whatone sees, William C. Wees writes, is impossible tofix in space. In fact, it is not in space at all. It isin the temporally organized firing of brain cells.30Although the normative film image is built of stillphotographs, fixity itself is not properly involvedin seeing a film, as the moving image can onlyappear in flux, operating faster than the eye. eflickers primary effect, one might say, is to makevisible the transitional stages between a static,fixed view of things and a moving, cinematic one.e moving image is always disintegrated, builton brief instants. e flicker film is no different,but it approximates the effect of a slowed-downprojection, like Conrads earlier experiments. It isstill constituted of instants, but instants that lingerslightly longer. Are these instants instantaneousat all, or are they bits of duration? Is the dichotomyduration/instantaneity anything more than anillusion?

e fact that flicker films, despite beingslowed down, are able to push vision beyondits own capacity points to their attraction forexperimental filmmakers, but also to the anxietiesthey stir up. e effect can have unpleasantphysical consequences: photogenic migraines and,in rare cases, epileptic seizures. Conradse Flickerhighlights the threat of photogenic epilepsy byincluding a warning at the beginning of the film. Inresearching the risks, Conrad found that childrenwho are epileptic, because the seizures can be fun,they sometimes will go outdoors and look up at thesun and then just wave their hand in f ront of theireyes and this will take them into a trance.31 erisks andpleasures associated with the flicker film,

then, have something to do with the trance, as ifit is the way that e Flickerarrests the spectatorsphysical functions, overriding self-control, thatmakes it successful. Writing about flicker films,Philippe-Alain Michaud corroborates:

e discomfort or illness that the spectatormay feel upon seeing these flickers has atranscendental function: the paradoxicaldemands on the perceptual apparatusgenerated by the flicker allow this veryapparatus to map itself out. Bedazzlement

is a visual oxymoron; at the extremelimits of vision, where, according toAristotle, the sensible destroys sensation,absolute brightness turns itself into adark image: what remains is a pure flutterbetween light and dark, which appearsas the unsurpassable limit of cinematicexperience.32

Even without the benefit of a seizure, one is giventhe pleasure of seeing ones own perception fail.e design of Conrads film allows the viewer toobserveor fail to observethis breakdown quite

clearly.e rate of alternation between black andwhite moves f rom twenty-four flashes per second(fps) down to four and then back again, overthe course of a thirty-minute runtime. Writingin 1966, Conrad explains, in the range from 6to 18 fps, strange things occur.33 Primarily anexperimental musician, Conrad was curious aboutthe possibility of inducing a harmonic contentthat is visual rather than aural, by producing poly-


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rhythms with alternating light.34 Describing hisexpectations for the viewing experience of eFlicker, he observes that it is not coincidental thatone of the principal brain-wave frequencies, theso-called alpha-rhythm, lies in the 8 to 16 cyclesper second range.35is hypothesis suggests thatthe power of his film, its disturbing quality, derivesfrom the rough synchronization of the inside andthe outside, the hijacking of an internal timing byan external stimulus.e Flickers opening disclaimer is a sincere

one,36 but also has the effect of highlighting thefilms general function, which is to whisk thespectator off on an out-of-control journey. I didthink ofe Flicker as a kind of science fiction

movie at its best in which one experienced thefull impact of narrative transport,37 Conradexplains in a recent interview. Complaining thatscience fiction films tend to back off from themost extreme phenomenological problems,38he places his own flicker film at the outer edgesof the genre, but still within it, and suggests thatthe transportive potential of film is technicallyinherent; that is, it does not have to be expressedaccording to narrative conventions. e vehicle ishypnotic, pulsating light itself.

Considering this equation of film spectatorship

with transportation, then, one can begin tounderstand e Flickeras a vehicle that moves bypalpitation, feeling around for the right rhythm ortiming to take advantage most effectively of theinternal rhythms that make perception possible.Gilles Deleuzes evaluation of the flicker filmwhen the black or white screen stands for theoutside of all the images, when the flickeringsmultiply the interstices like irrational cutswouldseem to agree: e film does not record the filmicprocess in this way without projecting a cerebralprocess. A flickering brain, which relinks or createsloopsthis is cinema.39 What I would suggest,

one step further, is that the flickering image, by itscapacity to approximate internal rhythms, can alsoshed light on time consciousness.

The bottom of the origin of the concept of time

In his essay, A Note Upon the Mystic WritingPad, Freud confesses a secret hunch about timeconsciousness. e essay introduces a technical

analogy for explaining the working relationshipbetween perception, consciousness, and theunconscious: a device known as the MysticWriting Pad, or Wunderblock. A childrens toy, theMystic Pad is a tablet upon which one can write,erase what is written, and write again. It works bya three-layered arrangement of parts: on top is acelluloid sheet, beneath that a sheet of wax paper,and beneath that a wax substrate pliable enoughto receive impressions. With a pointed stylus, theuser writes on the top layer, and then lifts thesheets away from the bottom layer to erase theinscription. What makes this device attractive forFreud is the fact that the writing is erased onlyfrom the top two layers, which come to analogize

perception and consciousness, while the waxsubstrate underneath, which comes to representthe less conscious domain of memory, permanentlyretains all of its past impressions.40 Freud admitsthat his comparison only goes so far, since theMystic Pad cannot perform anything analogousto the creative act of rememberingit cannotrecall its impressions back up to the consciouslevel. As Akira Mizuta Lippit writes, traces ofpast contact cannot be reactivated from the insidebut are rather dependent on another intervention.Only in the dynamic flow of psychic action does

the unconscious counter the influx of externalstimuli with its own response, a form of desire.41In remembering, the unconscious works over thepast in ways that the Wunderblock simply cannot.None the less, writes Freud,

I do not think it is too far-fetched tocompare the celluloid and waxed papercover with the system Pcpt.-Cs. andits protective shield, the wax slab withthe unconscious behind them, and theappearance and disappearance of thewriting with the flickering-up and

passing-away of consciousness in theprocess of perception.42

In other words, the movement of consciousnessfunctions by the flickering on and offof perception.Having come upon this precise analogy for thepsychic mechanism, Freud finds the courage tomake some bold speculations about the way aperceiving subject understands time. To get there,


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he enters a confessional mode:

But I must admit that I am inclined topress the comparison still further. On theMystic Pad the writing vanishes everytime the close contact is broken betweenthe paper which receives the stimulusand the wax slab which preserves theimpression. is agrees with a notion Ihave long had about the method in whichthe perceptual apparatus of our mindfunctions, but which I have hitherto keptto myself. My theory was that cathecticinnervations are sent out and withdrawnin rapid periodic impulses from within into

the completely pervious system Pcpt.-Cs.So long as that system is cathected in thismanner, it receives perceptions (whichare accompanied by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to theunconscious mnemic systems; but as soonas the cathexis is withdrawn, consciousnessis extinguished and the functioning ofthe system comes to a standstill.43 [myitalics]

e secret thus far amounts to the speculation

that consciousness, or more accurately, the contactbetween the unconscious and the outside, proceedsonly intermittently, not continuously. Perceptions arereceived in rapid periodic impulses with intervalsin-between them, during which consciousnessis extinguished. e system closes itself offintermittentlyblinksin order to protect itselfby tucking away each influx of perceptions andmaking space for the next burst. Freud does notacknowledge the resemblance of this mechanismto that of a film camera, but the resemblance seemsclear: the film cameras method, in the simplest ofterms, entails opening the shutter to expose one

frame, and then instantaneously closing it whilethe film advances to stow away the exposed frameand bring the next segment of unexposed film intoplace, ready for another exposure. e spool ofphotosensitive film, theoretically endless, stands infor the endlessly impressionable wax slab.

Admittedly this facile comparison to cinemais a debatable conjecture from Freuds analogy andrequires a speculative leap, but not nearly as bold a

leap as the next step Freud himself takes: I furtherhad a suspicion that this discontinuous methodof functioning of the system Pcpt.-Cs. lies at thebottom of the origin of the concept of time.44is last proposition, which is not elaborated anyfurther, is what makes the Mystic Pad analogy avaluable revelation to the present essay. What arethe implications of a cryptic confession like this,daring to claim that time originatesfirst becomesperceptible, conceivableby way of a discontinuous,or continually distracted, engagement with theoutside world? Why had Freud been keeping thishunch a secret? Perhaps the obvious resemblanceto cinema embarrassed him (it is well known thathe disliked the movies). Or perhaps the reason

is that this turn is more boldly speculative thaneven his psychoanalytic technique could support.Perhaps Freuds method, built on the use of keenobservation to glimpse processes that take placebeyond the realm of observation, cannot quiteaccount for the dazzling flicker effect.

I would suggest that there is another reasonfor Freuds furtiveness: if time consciousnessis built on a flickering between perception andmemory, inside and outside, then the order ofthings is called into question. Even underneaththe everyday notion of quantitative time Bergson

criticized as cinematographic, there remains apresumption of a linear flow, a continuity of timethat persists entirely outside of consciousness,independent of it, with the present ahead of thepast and behind the future. However, if Freud ispersuasive in suggesting that the flickering actionof perception/consciousness truly invents time,then chronology itself is called into question.Presence, or the progressive movement of time(into the future), is dictated by the blinking ofthe unconscious as it perpetually renews theregressive movement of memory (into the past).Past, present, and future become cotemporaneous

components of an interminable kind of gameexcessively unpleasant and hysterically exhilarating,like the Time Travellers first ride, and like JackSmiths Oedipal flicker film viewing: Madre! Inpsychoanalytic theory, time cannot be understoodotherwise: past, present, and future are strungtogether on the thread of a wish that runs throughthem.45 And given the Wunderblock analogy, thisthread looks less like a string than a series of


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glances, a strip of discontinuous snapshots. econtinuity that is generally presumed to governtime begins to look broken, less (chrono)logical,and without rule.

Freuds confession about time could beconstrued as dangerous, with profoundlytransgressive implications. By positing flicker-time as a normative and even originary temporalstructurethe time on top of which all othertimes are constructedhe implies a questioningof a larger system. Who would stand behind theillegitimate temporal claim made by the trick ofthe outlaw Wolf, blinking as he does to pass thetime, to pass his sentence and satisfy his hunger,to reverse the sovereign law by disrupting the

regular (regulated) and legible (legislated) flowof conventionally conceived time?46 In fabulousdiscourse, where the animal can speak, the Wolfreverses the law with a uniquely human invention:an act of stupidity, in the sense that JacquesDerrida treats the French word btise. An idiomaticterm meaning beastlike stupidity, btise describessomething that is reserved for the speaking subject(it does not apply to actual animals). Derrida revealsthe political stakes of Freuds confession, moreor less directly, by proposing btise as a fabulousvehicle for traveling beyond the boundaries of

psychoanalytic language:It is enough, a minimal condition, thatwe take into account the divisibility,multiplicity, or difference of forces ina living being, whatever it may be. It isenough to admit that there is no finiteliving being, human or nonhuman, thatwouldnt be structured by this differentialof forces between which a tension, if nota contradiction, cannot not locate or belocated in different instances, apparatuses,if you will, one resisting others, one

repressing or suppressing others, ortrying to put forward or make prevailwhat La Fontaine, in his e Wolf andthe Sheep, called la raison du plus forts,the reason/right of the strongest. In theseantagonisms made possible in every finiteliving being, made possible by differencesof forces and intensities, stupidity isalways necessarily on both sides, on the

side of the whoman, egoand the sideof the what47

Considering that the emergence and masspopularization of cinema was going on during thesame years that Freud was keeping his secret aboutflicker-time, Derridas line of thinking mightbe productively continued by looking into theflickering visuality of moving pictures. Cinema is,after all, an apparatus that proceeds by differencesof forces and intensities, dark and light, dim andbright, stupid (bte) and illuminated.

e flicker acts as a time machine in tworelated ways. First, it manipulates cinematic timeby effectively slowing down the apparatus, reducing

the frame rate in order to reduce the speed at whichtime passes. is is how the flicker makes visiblea normally-invisible mechanism of the apparatus.In the same gesture, however, flickering sequenceshave the capacity to make perception perceptible.Recalling Michaud, such films induce onesperceptual apparatus to map itself out; similarlyfor Deleuze, they function by projecting a cerebralprocess. I would only add the point that thismapping or projection is not properly topographic,not strictly spatial, but fundamentally temporal;and not chronographic or chronophotographic but,

more precisely, tempographic or tempophotographic:time or timing, inscribed in light. Only in timecan one glimpse such an image of perception, ofthe time of perception. It is tardyalways laggingbehind, arriving after the factand vulnerableto being duped. e result of this appearance ofvisions faulty technique, its flickering course, is notonly an image of perception, or of the time thatperceiving takes, but of the time that it produces.is time achieves affect through perception(nausea, headaches, seizures, exhilaration), but isnever reliably visible; if it is inscribed, it is alsoerased before anyone can read it. It appears in

flashes, brief exposures, like sudden excursionsor stops on a voyage, branches on a timeline. Inflicker-time, the past amounts to a discontinuousregister of brief, explosive encounters, and the nowis bedazzling, too much to handle, a shock alwaysin the act of passing into obscurity so that it can beregistered and, in the same stroke, clear the way forfuturity: the next instant.

On the suggestion of prominent psychoanalyst


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Sndor Rdo,48 Tony Conrad tried turning aroundto look at the audience during a screening ofeFlicker, and found that everyone in the space wasprojected into a trance-like situation. People werefrozen, looked frozen, and looked uncanny all inone sweep.49e film screen is not the only surfacecaptured in the flicker. e bodies in the audiencepulsate too, in that distinctly modern mode of

passing time in the reflected light of a repeatedlybroken beam. Not only present in absence, like theideal spectator of apparatus theory, these bodies areprojected into a flickering presence.e sickeningand exhilarating trance of flicker-time travel, seenin this light (darkness and light), is not only internalbut also external, both private and public, personaland political: discontinuous, disturbing, disruptive.

Notes

1 Jack Smith featuring Mario Montez,Jack Smith featuring Mario Montez, Silent Shadows on Cinemaroc Island: 56 Ludlow Street 1962-1964, vol. II, Track 4 Marioand the Flickering Jewel, produced and recorded by Tony Conrad, 1997 Tony Conrads Audio Artkive, an imprint of Table ofthe Elements, CD 107.868.2 Oxford English Dictionary, flicker (n.3 and v.).e quotations traced by the OED suggest also that up until the latter half ofOxford English Dictionary, flicker (n. 3 and v.).e quotations traced by the OED suggest also that up until the latter half ofthe nineteenth century, the word referred less often to light effects than it did to fluttering or palpitating movements in general,including air, liquid, and fire.e word appears in reference to the action of lightning and candle flames, but it is not until the latenineteenth century that its sense begins to include the strobe-like qualities more readily associated with flicker today.3 Geoffrey Chaucer,Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, a modernized version, IV. 1193 (1221), c. 1374. Modernized by A.S. Kline, 2001. http://

www.tonykline.co.uk/PITBR/English/TroilusandCressidaBkIV.htm (accessed Dec. 08, 2007).4 La Nature, December 28, 1878.5 See Ren oreau Bruckner, e Instant and the Dark: CinemasSee Ren oreau Bruckner, e Instant and the Dark: Cinemas Momentum, Octopus no. 2 (Fall 2006), 21-36; see HenriBergson, Creative Evolution (1907), trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York, Holt, 1911).6 See Bergson,See Bergson,Matter and Memory, trans. N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 1991), especially Chapter 1:Of the Selection of Images for Conscious Presentation. What our Body Means and Does, 17-76. In an introduction to the 1910edition, Bergson writes, e aim of our first chapter is to show that realism and idealism both go too far, that it is a mistake toreduce matter to the perception that we have of it, a mistake also to make of it a thing able to produce in us perceptions, but in itselfanother nature than they. Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of images (9).7 Josef Jacobs,Josef Jacobs, History of the Aesopic Fable(New York, Burt Franklin, 1970), 172-173. is citation applies to all references to this

tale.e translation is Jacobs own, and this fable is one of only a few reprinted in full in the book.8 For example: Marie de Frances Fable of the Wolf and the Lamb. See Harriet Spiegel, trans. and ed.,For example: Marie de Frances Fable of the Wolf and the Lamb. See Harriet Spiegel, trans. and ed., Marie de France: Fables(Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 150-153.9 It should be noted that the French word for blink,It should be noted that the French word for blink,clignoter, also means flicker.10 Jacobs, 174.e switch is indeed curious (perhaps a hallucinatory symptom of the hungry wolf s blinking game),but certainlyJacobs, 174.e switch is indeed curious (perhaps a hallucinatory symptom of the hungry wolf s blinking game), but certainlynot a mere mistake on the authors part: the fabulists very mode of discourse is to differentiate between animals. Sheep and goatare far f rom synonymous in the fabulous bestiary.11 In Hebrew tradition,the goat would be set free into the wilderness once the sins have been transferred onto its head. Given theIn Hebrew tradition, the goat would be set f ree into the wilderness once the sins have been transferred onto its head. Given theanimals symbolic resonance, the wolf s devouring of the goat multiplies his insolence.e wolf displaces the law in order to atonefor his sins, only to immediately take them back in (through the same passageway out of which his speech has rationalized thedisplacement in the first place). Instead of being properly sacrificed, the symbol becomes a meal.12 For more on the substitution splice, see: Tom Gunning, Primitive Cinema: A Frame-Up? Or, the Tricks On Us,For more on the substitution splice, see: Tom Gunning, Primitive Cinema: A Frame-Up? Or, the Tricks On Us, EarlyCinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, ed.omas Elsaesser (London: BFI, 1990), 99-103; and Scott Combs insightful discussion ofeExecution of Mary, Queen of Scots in this volume.13 Louis Marin, e Fabulous Animal, from Food forought, trans: Mette Hjort (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1989),p. 53.14 Marin,e Reason of the Strongest Is Always the Best,fromMarin, e Reason of the Strongest Is Always the Best, from Food forought, trans: Mette Hjort (Baltimore, Johns HopkinsUniv. Press, 1989), 55-84.15 Ibid., 74.Ibid., 74.16e Chronic Argonauts was a three part series printed in Wells own Science Schools Journalin 1888; it was next published, thoughnot in full, in early 1894 as a series titled e Time Travellers Story ine National Observer.e full story was then serialized ase Time Machinein five installments in theNew Review, from January to May of 1895. It would be published as a single novellabefore the end of May.17 H. G.Wells,H. G. Wells,e Time Machine(New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 2004), 23-4.18 is spatialization of time is a major component of the thinking against which Henri Bergson had been arguing at least sinceis spatialization of time is a major component of the thinking against which Henri Bergson had been arguing at least since1889, with Time and Free Will. His concept of duration explicitly opposes treating time as space.19 Wells,24-5.Wells, 24-5.


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TRAVELS IN FLICKER-TIME (MADRE!)20 Ibid., 25.Ibid., 25.21 See Anne Friedberg,See Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of CaliforniaPress, 1993), 104-6.

22 Veronica Hollinger, DeconstructingVeronica Hollinger, Deconstructing

e Time Machine, Science Fiction Studies #42, 14:2 (July 1987), 220-21.23 Ibid., 201.Ibid., 201.24 Ibid., 221.Ibid., 221.25 Paul Coates,Chris Marker and the Cinema as Time Machine,Paul Coates, Chris Marker and the Cinema as Time Machine,Science Fiction Studies #41, 14:3 (November 1987), 315.26 In both the novel and the film, the time machine and its occupant vanish from view while traveling, as is evidenced by thedisappearance of the small-scale model of the machine in the Time Travellers early demonstration. In the film, the disappearanceof the model time machine is achieved with a substitution-dissolve.27 Jonathan Bignell, Another Time, Another Space: Modernity, Subjectivity, andJonathan Bignell, Another Time, Another Space: Modernity, Subjectivity, ande Time Machine, Liquid Metal:e ScienceFiction Film Reader, ed. S. Redmond (London/New York: Wallflower Press, 2004), 140.28 Quoted in John Geiger, Interview conducted 28 February, 2002 with Tony Conrad, by telephone from New York StateQuoted in John Geiger, Interview conducted 28 February, 2002 with Tony Conrad, by telephone from New York StateUniversity at Buffalo, http://tonyconrad.net/geiger.htm, accessed Dec. 06, 2007.29 Paul Sharits,Notes on Films, 1966-1968,Paul Sharits, Notes on Films, 1966-1968,Film Culture47 (Summer 1969), 13-14.30 William C.Wees,William C. Wees, Light Moving in Time: Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London:University of California Press, 1992), 147.31 Conrad, Interview.Conrad, Interview.32 Philippe-Alain Michaud,Flicker: le ruban instable,Philippe-Alain Michaud, Flicker: le ruban instable,Sketches: Histoire de lart, cinema (Paris: Kargo & Lclat, 2006), 133. My

translation (with thanks to James Leo Cahill for his counsel).33 Tony Conrad, Tony Conrad on e Flicker,Tony Conrad, Tony Conrad on e Flicker, Film CultureNo, 41 (Summer 1966), 2.34 See Toby Mussman,An Interview WithTony Conrad,See Toby Mussman, An Interview With Tony Conrad, Film CultureNo, 41 (Summer 1966), 4.35 Conrad, On e Flicker, 2.Conrad, On e Flicker, 2.36 Conrad was concerned about of the possibility of photogenic epilepsy, but this turned out to be less founded than the flickerConrad was concerned about of the possibility of photogenic epilepsy, but this turned out to be less founded than the flickerfilms reputation would suggest: Maybe I would really blow peoples brains right out the back of their head. I didnt knowBut totell you the truth, I never did have people complain about epileptic seizures without cause, and in the whole life of the film to date,Ive only heard of one case where someone did have a seizure. Conrad, Interview.37 Conrad, Interview.Conrad, Interview.38 Ibid.Ibid.39 Gilles Deleuze,Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2:e Time Image (1985), trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1989), 215.40 Sigmund Freud, A Note Upon the Mystic Writing Pad (1925),Sigmund Freud, A Note Upon the Mystic Writing Pad (1925), e Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XIX, trans. and ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1955), 228-30.41 Lippit interpretsFreuds turn to this technical, inscriptive analogy as a kind of last resort for figuring the working of memoryaLippit interprets Freuds turn to this technical, inscriptive analogy as a kind of last resort for figuring the working of memorya

working relationship between the inside and the outsideafter having been dissatisfied with previous analogies.

e very distinctioninside/outside breaks down because the unconscious, like a machine, acts as an other. Akira Mizuta Lippit, Cinemnesis: MartinArnolds Memory Machine,Afterimage:e Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, vol. 24 no. 6 (1997), 8-10.42 Freud,Note,230-31.Freud, Note, 230-31.43 Ibid., 231.Ibid., 231.44 Ibid.Ibid.45 Freud provides this lucid illustration of psychoanalytic time in Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,explaining that a phantasyFreud provides this lucid illustration of psychoanalytic time in Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming, explaining that a phantasy(which is implied to be illustrative of the work of consciousness as such), hovers, as it were, between three times. Freud, Creative

Writers and Day-Dreaming,e Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay (New York and London: Norton, 1989), 439.46 A tangential but relevant digression here would be to consider Freuds famous case of the Wolf Man, who in a dream findsA tangential but relevant digression here would be to consider Freuds famous case of the Wolf Man, who in a dream findshimself in a visual encounter that strongly resembles that of the sheep/goat in Berachyahs fable. He is faced by wolvesin thiscase, not a single wolf but rather a packsitting still, watching the dreamer. One of Freuds speculations about the encounter isthat the wolves stillness might be a reversalIn that case instead of immobility (the wolves sat there motionless; they looked athim, but did not move) the meaning would have to be: the most violent motionraising another intriguing link to photographyand cinema. Freud, From the History of an Infantile Neurosis, Standard Edition, vol. XVII, 35.47 Jacques Derrida,e Transcendental Stupidity(Btise) of Man and the Becoming-Animal according to Deleuze,Jacques Derrida, e Transcendental Stupidity (Btise) of Man and the Becoming-Animal according to Deleuze,Derrida,Deleuze, Psychoanalysis, ed. Gabriele Schwab (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2007), 59.48 A Hungarian born psychoanalyst and educator, Rdo was mentored by Sndor Ferenczi and, in 1924, chosen by Freud toA Hungarian born psychoanalyst and educator, Rdo was mentored by Sndor Ferenczi and, in 1924, chosen by Freud tosucceed Otto Rank as editor-in-chief ofZeitschrift. Eventually Rdo emigrated to New York, where he was contacted by Conrad in1965 for advice about the dangers of photogenic epilepsy (reportedly, Rdo had experimented with the therapeutic effects of flickerfor shell shock victims). See Aaron Karush, Sandor Rado, M.D1890-1972,e Psychoanalytic Quarterly 41 (1972), 613-615;and Hagop S. Mashikian, Sandor Rado:e Later Years,Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry2 (1974), 11-17.49 Conrad, Interview.Conrad, Interview.

Rene Thoreau Bruckner_Travels in Flicker Time (Madre!)

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