Bogdan Nita

The effect of the principle »present« is neutral because it stands outside of its own historicity. The idea of »present« raises the possibility of a spatialized concept of time where the experience and expression of film are neutral, and leads to an absence of reality within the reality. 

The cinematic space is not just an image of reality, a transposition of the object from spatio-temporal materiality to the cinematic mode of being: the cinematic space is neutral manifestation of objects within a special ontological framework. With this we enter in the figurative dimension of cinema that determines the relationship between cinematographic representation and sensible reality. The film’s reality is a neutral suspension of the binary opposition of terms (real/fictional, masculine/feminine, etc.). However, the idea of neutral does not fudge the logic or the ontology but, as Barthes puts it, substitutes a metaphor: the neutral reality of film is the cinematic space that baffles between »will-to-be« and »will-to-exist«. The ontology of film’s neutrality conjures tolerance for its own »un-reality«, which means that the neutrality advocates non-neutral.  

The film’s neutrality makes possible a new ontological system regardless of any bias, a system that emphasises on the process rather than on the effect. In this terms, the cinema is the possibility of objects, “a beginning of visible which is not yet figure, which is not yet action” (Deleuze 1989: 201), a process of »will-to-be« of objects that comes from the neutral image. In what follows, I intend to demonstrate the neutrality of the film in terms of »will-to-be« starting from the idea of “neutral image”.

Dr. Bogdan Nita takes part at the doctorate program at the Acadamy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He holds a PhD in philosophy at the University of Bucharest with the specialization on aesthetics, philosophy of art and culture theory. He was a member in different networks as at the Institute Vienna Circle. Among his most important publications are the books »Clip cantece amoreze« (2007) and »The ontology of work of art« (2016).