Dariusz Kowalski – Optical Vacuum

Director: Dariusz Kowalski
Year: 2008
Country: Austria | USA
Language: English
Length: 101 mins
Format: PAL | R0
Colour: Colour
Certificate: E

Synopsis

Nowhere else is talk of the "panoptic era" an eye that sees everything yet remains elusive clearer than in the medium that has taken omnipresence and fleetingness to a global scale: the Internet. On the Internet, the paradigm known thus far for our imaging apparatus has become invalid: there is no longer a single, central perspective, but instead, a myriad of viewing angles that broadcast over webcams, pumping incessant images into the digital data stream. The "vacuum" in the title of Dariusz Kowalski's cinematic essay, which follows his earlier works Elements and Luukkaankangas, is therefore not a void, but a powerful generator, an unremitting doubling of the world: in image.
Dietmar Kammerer