Abstract

This is the result of a live performance at the International Conference on Videographic Criticism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Sept. 22-23, 2022 https://blogs.umass.edu/videoessay/ Taking Jacques Rancière’s concept of the emancipated spectator and the fascinatingly awkward performance of Jerry Lewis as NUTTY PROFESSOR as inspiration, I tried to turn a lecture into a communal performance, which is no longer controlled by an authoritarian teacher but set free by all of us as students. I handed out my cell phone for the audience to shoot their own spontaneous footage which then would be combined with excerpts from THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and other films in an academic teaching spaces. The images are underlined but also interrupted by the sound of another actor in this communal process: the electrostatic sound of the electronic devices we were working with. The result is literally a video essay of audiences: the student audiences from these old films seem to look at footage shot this other student audience. And instead of just us watching film history, film history seems to watch us. With no teachers ever in sight. Only us, all students in and of film, engaged in writing a shared poem.