Stan Brakhage, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the renewed encounter with the everyday

摘要

For a number of years, the late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein has surfaced in debates about the future of film theory and the possibility of a film philosophy. This paper investigates the conceptual similarities between ‘The Philosophical Investiations’ and the films of Stan Brakhage, asking whether these similarities point to how film rather than philosophy may articulate the future of film theory or picture a film philosophy. I argue that the philosophizing advanced by Brakhage's lyrical filmmaking is particular to the poetic, showing how Brakhage's films in establishing an ethos of renewed encounters with the everyday and self-investigation not only imitates the interest of Wittgenstein's later writings in ordinary language but also draws upon the word-play of Gertrude Stein and the minimalist poetics of Robert Creeley. Concentrating on how an engagement with the fragment and with the ordinary emerges from Brakhage's poetic interests, I show how his films enact a visual experience akin to the autonomy of linguistic meaning heralded by Wittgenstein as a replacement to theory.