LENTINI family - Intrusions of the virtual
Intro
An apparently funny moment during the celebration of a wedding becomes a point of reflection through the process of creative editing. The boy’s wave with the wedding bouquet acts as an element of distraction and a starting point of reflection.
Intrusions of the virtual
The boy waving the bouquet in front of the camera and being pulled away by a man is an element of distraction from the solemnity of the moment. Yet beyond representing an intrusiveness element, the boy becomes the key to the interpretation of the amateur style of representing and presenting events. It is well known that home movies are mainly known for possessing no style at all. Yet in this lack of style, in its randomness, we can identify a specific way of doing that is peculiar to the genre.
The openness towards intrusion, randomness and chaos becomes the key to exploring the amateur style as a manifestation of the virtual. The creative re-editing process turns into a tool of abstraction, one that is able to bring create the suitable frame for the intrusion of the virtual as a generating force.
Exploration of the virtual
Essential in the exploration of the amateur mode of making an image is the concept of the virtual. I will use here Deleuze’s understanding of the virtual as something that is ‘as if’ it were real, that is virtually so, but not so in fact. Considering that this is an exact definition of memory and that home movies are objects of memory, it overlays perfectly with the aims of the home movie genre. Yet in its virtual acceptance, the home movie image becomes something more than something that exists as if it were real. Beyond what it represents, the home movie projects itself towards what it would and could be, towards a potentiality.
Notes
The creative re-editing of the scene enabled me to reflect upon the home movie style as a fluid style, a style that is always in becoming and never reaching an end. As an audio-visual format based on the manifestation of the virtual, the home movie opens itself towards endless potentialities.