Screendance as enactment in Maya Deren’s At Land
DAT Journal June 12, 2018 DOI: 10.29147/dat.v3i1.66 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Maya Deren's conception of film viewing as a socially determined ritual of intersubjectively shared experience anticipates the enactive mind approach, in which the body-brain system is situated and coupled with the world through interaction. The author analyzes Deren's film At Land as an expression of this situated, enactive body-brain system, drawing on neuroscience, neurocinematic studies, and screendance. |
Abstract
The dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Maya Deren can be seen as one of the pioneers of screendance. Her experimental films have challenged conventional plot- driven mainstream cinema by emphasizing an ambiguous experience, open for multiple interpretations. For Deren film viewing is a socially determined ritual embodying intersubjectively shared experiences of participants. This makes her films particularly interesting for today’s neurocinematic studies. Deren’s ideas also anticipate the recent enactive mind approach, according to which the body-brain system is in an inseparable manner situated and coupled with the world through interaction. It assumes that both private, such as perception and cognition, and intersubjective aspects of human enactment, such as culture, sciences, or the arts, are based on the embodiment of life experience. Reflecting this discourse, Deren’s film At Land is analyzed as an expression of a human body-brain system situated and enactive within the world, with references to neuroscience, neurocinematic studies, and screendance.