From Art Gallery to Movie Theatre: Spectatorship in Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto

Abstract

Experimental films have historically had a contested and marginalized position within film exhibition. With his Manifesto (2015), which has been exhibited both as a video installation in art galleries and as a feature film in movie theatres, Julian Rosefeldt collapsed the barriers between these exhibition spaces. By performing a comparative analysis of Manifesto in both forms, this article outlines the way spectators behave differently in the theatre and the gallery, the different demands the work makes on the viewer in each venue, and the difficulties of transforming the work from one form to another. By asking what is lost and what is gained, this article explores how the text, form, and venue function differently, to reveal underlying assumptions about spectatorship.   Article received: December 31, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper   How to cite this article: Ljungbäck, Hugo. "From Art Gallery to Movie Theatre: Spectatorship in Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): 135–146. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.237