Monday Night 02.09.09 — Mark Boswell — Nova-Kino
Comments Off on Monday Night 02.09.09 — Mark Boswell — Nova-KinoMonday Night 02.09.09 — Mark Boswell — Nova-Kino
1. About this Monday Night.
2. About Nova-Kino
3. About the films
4. About Mark Boswell
5. NOVA-KINO: The History of Cinematic Agit-Prop
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1. About this Monday Night.
Who: Anyone interested is invited
When: 7.00 pm, Monday 02.09.09
Where: 16 Beaver Street 4th floor (direction below)
What: Screening / Presentation /Discussion
Many of you may know Mark from the many different discussions and evenings at 16Beaver. We have been talking for a while about showing his films and discussing his ideas.
Mark will present NOVA-KINO 2001-2009 in the form of 7 assymetrical motion picture detournements followed by a discussion of the films, media art strategies, Nova-Kino theory, and other topics related topics. So please join us for what will be an interesting evening.
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2. About Nova-Kino
Nova-Kino is a digitally active, 21st century cinematic theory that has its’ departure point in various 1920’s artistic movements including Dada, Surrealism, and the theorists and practitioners of early Russian cinema, Vertov, Eisenstein, et al. (all roads lead to Moscow.) Hurtling forward from this point, with Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility” prophesizing the future impact of cinema on contemporary culture as well as certain aspects of Bertoldt Brecht’s “distancing” effects; Nova-Kino traverses through film noir, the French new wave, international avant-garde film movements, Situationsim, and then wholeheartedly springs to life by Bruce Conner’s maverick found footage masterpieces.
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3. About the films
3.1 USSA: Secret Manual of the Soviet Politburger. 6:30 mins. 2001
The History of the mythical hamburger is investigated here in this political crypto-documentary. Starting from the origins of the hamburger, then the rise of McDonalds led by Ray Kroc (an unscrupulous milkshake salesman)
Who acquires a bootleg copy of the seminal soviet food manual – “The Acme of ground Bovinity” and trans forms a humble L.A. burger outlet into one of the world’s most sinister meta-corporations.
3.2 Agent Orange 5:00 mins. 2002
“The effects are only superficial” – Agent Orange is a toxic pesticide
used during the Viet Nam War by the U.S. Army for the purpose of destroying the vast foliage covering Vietnamese jungles in order toprevent the enemy from hiding. The end result was that both Vietnamese andAmerican soldiers and civilians were permanently exposed to this lethal agent causing death and/or lifelong sickness. Agent Orange (the film) uses the political backdrop of the sixties as well as the cinematic avant-garde
of the same period that have effectively “sprayed” us with what Paul Sharits referred to in his seminal structuralist film as a “Ray GunVirus.” The corollary results of this cinematic spraying (Conner,Brahkage, Kubelka, et. al.) is the mass appropriation of experimental style by the agents of celluloidic sellout a.k.a. “The M.T.V. Generation,”
Agent Orange is thus the toxic consequence of the digital conversion of avant-garde cinema that not only addresses the problems of the canon, butthe current political crisis brought to head by the liquidation of the twin towers.
3.3 DEEP BLUE 8:00 mins. 2003
Karl Kelvin is an astro pilot for an undisclosed international diplomatic
union who is sent into outer space to challenge Deep Blue (the IBM
computer) in a game of chess. The stakes are high as the winner has the diplomatic right to declare war or to establish world peace. The old world collides with the new. Dr. Strangelove resurfaces along with Donald Rumsfeld. Déjà vu all over again. The end is near!
3.4 The End of Copenhagen. 8.30 mins. 2004
A disillusioned intelligence officer (Frank Sinatra) from a 1960’s classic
American conspiracy film wakes up in the year 2004 to find himself on the
edge of an upcoming apocalypse. On a train he meets a woman who is an
expert on Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle.” This uncertainty gives him the cold sweats as he can barely light a cigarette. The End of Copenhagen finds the meaning of its own title in two forms: Heisenberg’s original trip toCopenhagen to discuss the possibility of NAZI nuclear capability with his mentor, Niels Bohr; and also from the Situationist art book by Asger Jornand Guy Debord entitled- “Fin de Copenhague.” The end result is a crypto-documentary that re-routes the utter madness of American foreign policy and the ability of its citizens tosupport apresident who was not legally elected. “We got to stop these fascists” are the last words he (the intelligence officer) mutters.
3.5 The St. Petersburg Paradox. 7:50 mins. 2007.
The St. Petersburg Paradox was invented by the Swiss Mathematician Nicolas Bernoulli in 1713. The SPP describes a particular casino game (in a hypothetical St. Petersburg, Russia casino) that features a random variable with an infinite expected value. The game involves the flipping of a coin of which two things can happen: a) the coin lands on heads and the game is over rewarding the player with a small sum of money; or b) the coin lands on tails and the sum is doubled while the game continues until the coin lands on heads. The catch is to enter this game, a player must pay the Casino an unreasonably large amount of money to start. The SPP is a classical situation where a gambler makes a naive decision theory (which takes only the expected value of winning into account) – a gamble that no rational person would take. SPP-the film-utilizes footage from Night of the Living Dead, One Plus One, & Casino by M. Scorsese and through a hallucinatory re-montage draws a grim portrait of a Texas Wastrel’s interpretation of l’Etranger with a gut punch Dadaistic finale.
3.6 Unknown Unknown(s) 13.27 mins. 2009.
Unknown Unknown(s) is a dialogue between film history and the concept of art as an activistic practice that reaches outside the cinematic screen/space. Iconic characters from classic films including: “Breathless,” “The Killing,” and “Sunset Boulevard” engage in a discourse between themselves, the spectator, and post-modern theory through various linguistic devices “imbedded” in the work that confront critical issues of global warming and other subjects. The crucial device in this process is the overt usage of subtitles that are at times similar, slightly altered, or completely different from the original dialogue. Unknown Unknown(s) is a post-modern comédie tragique featuring a soundtrack by the electronic experimental duo Matmos. This project was specifically produced for Transmediale’s 2009 “Deep North” thematic.
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4. About Mark Boswell
Mark Boswell studied film & film theory at various institutions in Switzerland, France, Germany, and the U.S. from 1986-1992. His experimental media art works have been screened internationally in over 25 countries in museums, biennials, and film festivals, including The Transmediale Berlin, The 10th Biennial of The Moving Image, Geneva, National Center of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia, Artists and Arms Show, Moscow, The Avanto Media Arts Festival, Helsinki, The Los Angeles Freewaves Biennial, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The Image Forum Festival Tokyo, and the Chechnya Emergency Bienniale. In 2004, He was awarded the “International Media Art Award” from the ZKM Museum of Karlsruhe, Germany. He is currently in post-production of his latest film “The United Nations is Decadent and Depraved” and preparing a project comparing a remote KGB training facility to Disneyworld’s EPCOT Center for the upcoming “Art & Espionage” conference in London at the Courtauld Institute. (www.socialeast.org)
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5. NOVA-KINO: The History of Cinematic Agit-Prop
by Mark Boswell
Nova-Kino is a 21st century cinematic theory represented in the works of various international filmmakers, media artists, and cultural jammers who utilize found footage as source material to be re-edited or re-animated, giving radical re-birth or second life in their reconstructed state. A crucial component of this process is the usage of critical, political, and other highly charged points of view embedded within the structure of the work that challenge hegemonic power structures at large or in more specific realms. The end result is a didactic, oppositional warhead historically recognized as Agit-Prop, the eternal bi-product of the Russian Revolution.
Numerous academic papers, magazine articles, anthologies, museum shows, and media art festivals have presented, discussed, and documented the general phenomena of found footage films in all of their variegated forms. The intent of this paper is to focus on how a development of a certain sub-sector of found footage filmmaking occurred and how it exists in certain forms today. A practice that is specifically political and/or radically theoretical in its’ opposition to numerous power structures; capitalism, corporate media, American malevolence, etc. I will attempt to show how Nova-Kino exists in two distinct forms: theory and practice. The theory is on the page while the practice is in the films.
Nova-Kino departure point lies in various early 20th century artistic movements including Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and the theories of early Russian cinema, Vertov, Eisenstein, et al. (all roads lead to Moscow.) Hurtling forward from this point like a theoretical snowball, with Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” prophesizing the future impact of cinema on contemporary culture as well as certain aspects of Bertoldt Brecht’s “distancing” effects; Nova-Kino traverses through Film Noir, the French New Wave, international avant-garde film movements, Situationism, and then wholeheartedly springs to life through Bruce Conner’s maverick found footage masterpieces.
Conner’s output represents the final snowflake of the first tier of a massive, hypothetical snowman firmly packed in the brilliant winter light of post-modern perspective, closing a circle between Duchamp’s Ready-Mades, Vertov’s Agit-Prop and Eisenstein’s montage theory. His works still able to inspire a parallel cinematic universe as they embody the quintessential Nova-Kino method: the re-contextualization of previously shot material through the editing process that results in a newly formed critical, political, or theoretical position. A prime example is the renowned sequence in A-Movie- Conner’s first film, where an attractive woman in a bikini is spotted on a telescope by an American submarine operator. Reacting excitedly to what he has just seen, he launches a missile that we see traveling under water for a short time. This is followed by a devastating overhead shot of an atomic bomb mushroom cloud exploding. By simply inter-cutting between a Hollywood war film and documentary footage from various military weapons tests an unparalleled examination of the American psyche is created.
Will film theory meltdown our snowman at its completion date and reappear in other art practices? Nova-Kino envisions the route of the alchemists, converting the silver nitrate of various relational aesthetics into a boiling cinematic concoction projected on subversive, non-traditional screens interrupting the methodical flow of capital’s post-spectacularized urban space. Witness the continual shrinkage of the public cinematic screen and the widening of the private one, a tendency described in Baudrillard’s simulation theories.
The tautological concept of a cinema folding in upon itself, then unfolding in the form of epic pirate re-makes, or re-takes and distributed for free hits the ground running on the subway tracks of Manhattan. Currently in Union Square, one of New York’s largest subway stations, Walter Benjamin’s prophesy of mechanical reproduction has actualized itself in two full-time, separate pirate dvd distribution operations. Operation A is an international phenomena that consists of the black market dvd sale of current Hollywood movies recently released in commercial cinemas. Scrounged right off the big screen by surreptitious camera operators, who employ elusive, constantly evolving techniques, as they slip into the seats of a current Blockbusters and shoot the entire film with a tiny, hand held mini dv cam. The tape is immediately converted to dvd, slapped into a case with a cover version printed right off the official website from the film and straight into your hands for a meager 5 bucks. Laughter, sneezes, the backs of heads, all right there on your live version of a real movie. Operation B is run by a lone, philanthropic anarchist, wearing a sandwich board dvd menu around his neck listing films that he offers to hand out for free (donations accepted, not required.) He sits there stoically, day after day, hovering over large stacks of freshly ripped dvds including Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit, Al Gore’s Global warming doc, numerous 911 conspiracy films, and a handful of other explosive features. These situations become all the more ironic after viewing the detourned Meisterwerk “Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction as told to Keith Sanborn.”A 3-minute film depicting various international FBI, Interpol, and other governmental snoop agency warning signs that explicitly state not to do exactly what these subway track bootleggers are doing. The various warning signs unfold, one after the other, in unison with a snappy, easy listening version of “Mack the Knife” bubbling on the soundtrack for the entirety of the piece. A Brechtian device with a Situationist flair!
Cinema was purportedly in a state of decline in the early the 1990’s as the potential mass digitalization of celluloid’s hegemonic domain emerged. The portable video camera had created a fork in the road of experimental film history two decades prior to this time and now the digital camera threatened the urgency of Godard’s cinematic postcards, that he sent out at a rate of 25 times per second on moving celluloid. Avid non-linear edit systems were on the way in as the revered Steenbeck went out to pasture, lounging around classrooms like an old piano. A new democratic access to mass media production had finally arrived. Sony became the brand of cinematic choice, as Nizo and Beaulieu went into the sentimental display cases of film school offices, camera stores, or inordinately shackled into the netherworld of dank storage units. Tokyorama versus the Franco-Germanic technological cult. Even old school avant-gardists put there Bolex on the shelf. A hundred years of cinema slowly coming to an end. Jean-Luc Godard famously refusing to lament its burial.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard. Global communication fueled by the internet, low cost access to high quality digital video production, and the ability to copy, steal, borrow or appropriate film and video footage at virtual no cost, enabled guerrilla filmmakers a new and dynamic entry point into the expanding world of international experimental cinema. The lines between film and video blurred. Film festivals, cinemas, and classrooms were suddenly equipped with video projectors. Access to a computer and a mini dv camera meant that anyone could unleash a political assault on the dominant paradigm and call it a movie. Coupled with the largesse of a film archive or the increasingly simple savoir-faire to rip a dvd, copy a vhs tape, or download a digital file, in short; a lit fuse on the bomb was placed in the hand guiding the ubiquitous mouse. It is now apparent to see how we arrived at this technological juncture, where film and digital media (once adversaries,) became joined at the hip.
However, the critical question remains: how did we get to this point conceptually? The point where found-footage began performing a full frontal assault on the history of cinema. Bruce Conner launching his immortal sperm missile into the militarized subconscious of the American male. Craig Baldwin stretching the genre to a dizzying new height in TRIBULATION 99 or Martin Arnold’s breathtaking ability to de- or re-construct cinematic events, discombobulating the annals of narrative structure. These filmic maneuvers represent the manifestation of Dada’s original conquest of the unique aura of a work of art. In simple math -Duchamp + Vertov = Nova-Kino. Alas, Agit-Prop for the masses. Mashing up footage into bits and mpg’s for the electronic you tubers of the global network of biennials and media art festivals. Before this road led to Moscow, it started in Rome.
“We will sing of great great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot: we will sing of the multi-colored polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung from clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnast, flashing in the sun with the glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.”
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti “Futurist Manifesto” 1909.
The Italian Futurists were the first twentieth century art movement to recognize the machine as the impetus for radical change in anachronistic societies. Led by the bombastic Filippo Marinnetti, where the shock-waves of his ideas quickly spread to other European capitals as he personally proselytized the public and other willing artist through brilliant self-promotional trips and schemes. These manic whistle stop tours were highlighted by fiery speeches, agitating the bourgeoisie and common man alike. In St. Petersburg around 1916, Marinetti bombastically expounded on the dynamic possibilities of speed, advanced machinery, and rapid industrialization. These startling ideas lit the artistic and intellectual fire of a certain David Abel Kaufmann, a.k.a. Dziga Vertov
( “spinning top” in Russian). At that particular time Vertov was a student at the Neuro-Science Institute in St. Petersburg. He also frequented bohemian cafés filled with artist who would eventually form into Russian futurists and constructivists splinter groups inspired by Marinetti. Vertov would soon shift from student of Neuro-science to practitioner of documentary film, eventually adopting futuristic concepts into his own fiery manifestos that would launch an entirely different cinematic movement still affected to this day by his cinematic notion of the real. Radically separate from his own Russian contemporaries as well as international trends in Berlin, Paris, and Hollywood in the twenties.
Marinetti’s speeches purposely sought to arouse controversy and to attract publicity by repudiating the conventionality of the times. This agitational style would also become the trademark of Vertov’s persistent rant against commercial cinema, specifically narrative fictional or theatrical devices. Famously denouncing his own revolutionary colleague, Sergei Eisenstein, practice of staging historical events through cinematic application. Vertov insist that it is reality that must be documented versus Eisenstein’s theatrical interpretation of it. In 1919, Vertov writes: “Watching the films that came from the West and from America, taking into account the information we have on the work and searching abroad and here: I come to the following conclusion: Verdict of Death to all motion pictures without exception…”) Vertov’s first stint in filmmaking involved making short documentaries advancing the successes of the recent revolution for the Russian Government. At this time in the U.S.S.R., Agit-prop (agitation-propaganda) trains were specifically employed as self-contained mobile propaganda centers to disseminate information and entertainment in faraway places. Vertov and other revolutionary filmmakers, painters, photographers, and poets would traverse the monstrous Soviet empire to educate the public about Lenin’s achievement. He and other filmmakers simultaneously shot and edited films while on the train or at a stop, immediately projecting them to curious citizens and workers to elucidate communist concepts or evaluate technical procedures inside factories (filmed the day prior). This would lead into his Kino-Pravda (film-truth) series, where he would capture everyday life on the streets, sometimes with hidden cameras, in order to reveal deeper truths about the communist struggle. On Kino-Pravda he writes: “if truth is shown by means of the cinematic eye, then a shot of the banker will only be true if we can tear the mask from him, if behind his mask we see the thief.” Vertov is already interested in deconstructing perceived notions of the cinematic device and this holds true to Nova-Kino films of today. For example, Bryan Boyce’s 2002 short film: “State of the Union,” where he superimposes George W. Bush’s face onto that of a Teletubby floating passively in the sky while zapping sheep in the pasture below to their instant death. Boyce takes the seemingly soothing quality of Teletubbies effect on infants, and exposes it for what it actually might be; the indoctrination of an extremely malevolent force.
The term HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda”propaganda in the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language”Russian language did not bear any negative connotation during Vertov’s time. It simply meant “dissemination of ideas”. In the case of agit-prop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism”communism, including explanations of the policy of the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPSU”Communist Party and the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_state”Soviet state. In other contexts, propaganda could mean dissemination of any kind of beneficial knowledge, e.g., of new methods in agriculture. “Agitation” meant urging people to do what Soviet leaders expected them to do; again, at various levels. Propaganda was supposed to act on the mind, while agitation acted on emotions.
Vertov’s filmic propagandizing was seemingly harmless compared to the extent that Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays employed it. Bernays, a scheming advertising agent from Zurich wrote the definitive book on the subject in 1928, appropriately titled: “Propaganda.” This book is a prime example of what happens when the wrong man gets a hold of a weapon of mass delusion. Here is the opening paragraph from the lead chapter entitled: “Organizing Chaos: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” Once he teams up with Henry Ford and the American government to support WW2, you can guess where this is going.
At the same time that Vertov began filming “Kino-Pravda” newsreels for the Russian revolution, the international Dada movement began its’ own sensational assault on art and society. While Marinetti gravitated towards Mussolini, Fascism, and the glorification of war; the Dadaist in Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere where linked closer to anarchism and nihilism with clear opposition to the ominous signs of more nationalistic wars on the European continent. In Berlin, the German Dadaist John Heartfield started critiquing mass media through the simple slicing of photographs with a pair of sharp scissors, then taping them together, producing an entirely different meaning and context. Heartfield’s didactic photographic montage punctured through the real meaning of Hitler’s propaganda with a few simple cut and paste’s and a sardonic title. Montage theory and practice is born extraneous of Eisenstein’s own research. Duchamp’s appropriation tactics are applied to the unlimited field of mass media. The fundamental element to nova-kino/agit-prop is hatched through Heartfield’s simple cutting device. “A chance to cut is a chance to cure”- (album title of experimental electronic duo Matmos that they cleverly appropriated from a California Plastic Surgeon advertisement.) Still today, the Dada movement is consistently cited by contemporary artists and numerous found-footage filmmakers as an extremely potent source of inspiration and influence.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is Walter Benjamin’s seminal 1936 essay that prophesizes the future impact of cinema on the fields of mass media and political theory. He unknowingly thrusts certain Duchampian concepts of appropriation towards the future subversiveness of found footage filmmaking. He states that “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.” The ritual of lights, camera, action is annihilated through the future pirate hand that will guide the mouse. Instead of the filmic process being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics. The politics of distribution. Hence our pirate dvd vendors on the subway tracks of Manhattan are the true-to-life reincarnation of Benjamin’s mechanical reproducers as radical agit-propsters. In reproduction, Benjamin sees democracy.
Agit-prop becomes the “cris de coeur “ for generations of leftist filmmakers. Specifically the French heir apparents of Vertov and Dada: Guy Debord, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard and the Italian Gillo Pontecorvo, as they launched theoretical attacks
on conventional cinema from a political perspective with films like: Society of the Spectacle, Grin Without a Cat, Vladimir and Rosa, The Battle of Algiers, and numerous other works during the fertile period of political filmmaking from the early Sixties to
mid-Seventies. Debord and the Situationists concept of Detournement, where iconic works of art or films are given re-birth with new meaning through technical alteration, furthering Dada’s pillage of popular culture in a more sophisticated manner. Without question, Guy Debord’s film “Society of the Spectacle,” is the most ambitious appropriation of found footage ever in which he is able to present the broad spectrum of his seminal theory (of the same title) imbedded inside a feature film. Similar to Vertov, Debord also proposes a revolution of everyday life and a critical theory of contemporary society. Jean-Luc Godard, along with Jean Pierre Gorin form the post-68 film collective “The Dziga Vertov Group.” The Situationists and and especially Debord had a derisive opinion of Godard, considering him just a “another Swiss bourgoise” who borrowed heavily from their ideas without ever mentioning the debt. Conversely to Eisenstein
and Vertov, these French filmmakers were clearly against the state (particularly the Franco/Americano hegemon) versus proponents of the State (Soviet.)
Separately and simultaneously the American avant-garde filmmaker Bruce Conner began constructing short, experimental films made exclusive of previously shot material i.e. found footage, that he surreptitiously assembled from a San Francisco television station trim bin and myriad other sources. These collage films beginning with the 1958 short “A Movie,” would have a profound and lasting effect on many generations of experimental filmmakers to come. In a filmic sense, nothing before seen was like Conner’s work -a seamless mashing together of disparate bits of newsreels, advertising clips, industrial films, and odd strands of leader into an extremely cohesive and bombastic thesis critiquing the American way of life. Two of his later films, Mongoloid and America is Waiting co-collaborations with the American New Wave band Devo and the British experimental composer Brian Eno, paved the way for the coming “no holds barred” format of Music Television.
At the onset of the 1980’s, parallel to the advent of MTV, the San Francisco filmmaker Craig Baldwin, begins his own experimentation with the “found footage” format. Inspired by the Dada and Situationist’s movements, as well as his studies at San Francisco State with among others, Bruce Conner, Baldwin’s work represents thenext stage in the evolution of Agit-Prop cinema as he combines the found-footage montage laden aesthetics of Conner’s films, while inserting his own highly charged“speculative fiction” version of historical events through voice over. Adding reflection, analysis, bombastic humor, and a wild array of conspiratorial conjecture to the medium.His early works including the mind-bending Tribulation 99, set the stage for Nineties found-footage artists and the digital revolution.
2008:Mash it UP!!!
As computerized non-linear digital edit systems and mini-dv camcorders become extremely affordable as well as widely accessible through not-for-profit media centers and educational institutions during the mid-Nineties up to the present, the found-footage filmmakers now have an overwhelming amount of access to previously shot material of disparate origin. Where they once scoured the terrain of thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, library dumps, and garbage cans for material, they now have the possibility of downloading digital files of footage from various online archival sources or the expansive reach of e-bay and Craigslist; speeding up, customizing, and improving their ability to find the right material. A strong case can be made that such filmmakers as Craig Baldwin, Martin Arnold, Bryan Boyce, Keith Sanborn, Matthias Muller, Harun Farocki, Martha Colburn, Mika Taanila, Johan Grimonprez, Christian Marclay and Animal Charm are the front line of Nova-Kino’s audacious gauntlet. Gilles Deleuze said in a conversation with Michel Foulcault that: “at one time, practice was considered an application of theory, a consequence; at other times, it had an opposite sense and it was thought to inspire theory, to be indispensable for the creation of future theoretical forms.” I conclude that Nova-Kino is simultaneously a theory and practice with the direct intent to do what Foucault said in the same conversation: “this is a struggle against power, a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most invisible and insidious.”