# Oksana Bulgakowa (1996) *Eisenstein, the Glass House and the Spherical Book: From the Comedy of the Eye to a Drama of Enlightenment*. : Potemkin Press. > [!INFO] > Type:: [[article]] > Title:: Eisenstein, the Glass House and the Spherical Book: From the Comedy of the Eye to a Drama of Enlightenment > Author(s): [[Oksana Bulgakowa]] > Year:: NaN > Tags:: > DOI:: > Citekey:: bulgakowa_eisenstein_1996 > ZoteroURI:: [Open in Zotero: Eisenstein, the Glass House and the Spherical Book: From the Comedy of the Eye to a Drama of Enlightenment](zotero://select/items/@bulgakowa_eisenstein_1996) > ReviewedDate:: [[2024-02-06]] ## Citation ```latex [@bulgakowa_eisenstein_1996] ``` ## Summary: - 18, 19세기에 크리스탈, 유리, 빛, 물과 연결된 transparency - 월터 벤야민의 Walter Benjamin, ‘Surrealism’, in Selected Writings Vol. 2 (Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 209. 에서도 논의된 transparency [@benjamin_surrealism_2005]. - 건축가들이 이 재료에 의해 매료되었듯이 [[Sergei Eisenstein|에이젠슈테인]]도 이 문제에 매료되었다. - 글래스 하우스에 대한 영감은 1926년 프릿츠 랭을 방문하면서 (메트로폴리스에 대한 설명을 들으며 polemical response)이루어졌다. [@bulgakowa_eisenstein_nodate] - 또한 Bruno Taut and Mies van der Rohe’s glass architecture - ![[Taut_Glass_Pavilion_exterior_1914.jpg]]![[b7cdfe1694ad46a7661aed35805aafe3.jpg]] - 사회 계층에 대한 상징적 비전이었던 Metropolis 에대한 반응 - [[Sergei Eisenstein|에이젠슈테인]]의 글라스 하우스는 계층을 없애는, 카메라를 통해서만 볼 수 있는 무계층의 세상이었다. - surveillance and control 에 대한 이야기는 - Lang’s Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960) - Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) - Phillip Noyce’s Sliver (1993) - 그중에서도 중요한것은 [[Sergei Eisenstein|Eisenstein]]의 story of the eye ## Notes: #LiteratureNotes > The symbolic vocabulary of transparency was developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and correlated with light, glass, crystal, water and nakedness in contrast to stone, veiling and deception. [Bulgakowa 1996:109](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=1) - 스크린에서도 역시 > but it was unclear where to place a human being.[Bulgakowa 1996:109](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=1) > Walter Benjamin wrote in his 1929 essay on Surrealism: [@benjamin_surrealism_2005, 209] [Bulgakowa 1996:109](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=1) > The first version of script (1926-7) unfolds a drawn storyboard of an experimental abstract movie, with the mobile camera and an elevator serving as the protagonists: the elevator moves between planes, floors and ceilings, modifying the view of the observer (i.e., the camera). The camera alone is capable of seeing this building, with its blind inhabitants. [Bulgakowa 1996:112](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=3) > In the first version of the script, only the camera (unlike the characters) was able to ‘see’. [Bulgakowa 1996:112](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=4) > The camera as an eye, as an X-ray machine; the house as model for a new cinematic space – The Glass House blows up the system of cinematic representation, liberating objects from the force of gravity. [Bulgakowa 1996:112](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=4) > ‘comedy of and for the eye’ [Bulgakowa 1996:112](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=4) > The camera as an eye, as an X-ray machine; the house as model for a new cinematic space – The Glass House blows up the system of cinematic representation, liberating objects from the force of gravity. [Bulgakowa 1996:112](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=4) > The space of [[Sergei Eisenstein|Eisenstein]]’s Glass House is non-hierarchical; distance and the sensation of time are abolished (night becomes day, as in a green house). [Bulgakowa 1996:112](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=4) > now, cinematic space is not assembled as a montage space bridging the breaks and gaps. The experimental space is naturalised, acentric – with rotating figures, figures that are floating in space – without the force of gravity. Windows, walls, ceilings, floors do not limit the image; the distinction between above and below, near and far, inside and outside are removed and the view is open. This destroys the centred form, with perspective and symmetry that is assigned to a fixed viewer. The opaque materials such as carpets and doors limit the transparency, but float in space as fragments of Suprematist constructions as [[Sergei Eisenstein|Eisenstein]] defined them. [Bulgakowa 1996:112](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=4) > The first character endowed with this the gift of vision is the Poet, whom [[Sergei Eisenstein|Eisenstein]] sees as a kind of Messiah. The Poet’s willingness to pass his ability to see to other people (in order to render opaque relationships transparent) leads inevitably to a series of crimes (blackmail, murder and suicide). [Bulgakowa 1996:113](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=5) > At the same time, [[Sergei Eisenstein|Eisenstein]]’s project was also a sarcastic response to the Utopian Glass House theories of Constructivist and Functionalist architects. Both groups dreamed of placing the biological instincts of individuals under strict control by means of rational organisation of architectural space. [Bulgakowa 1996:114](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=6) > The European Constructivists firmly believed that glass walls would simplify communication and render social structures transparent – that social upheavals could and should be replaced by a revolution in architecture. [Bulgakowa 1996:114](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=6) > In his Glass House project, [[Sergei Eisenstein|Eisenstein]] clearly refers to these ideas of correct spatial organisation of social behavior. [Bulgakowa 1996:114](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=6) > the Poet, symbolises the anarchical nature of the Individual. The wall does not teach people to see, nor does it make the existing social hierarchy any more harmonious. [Bulgakowa 1996:114](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=6) > he subjects the Utopian ideas of Constructivist theoreticians to a skeptical treatment. The Constructivists thought they could convert people into submissive participants, or actors in the theatre of modern life. [Bulgakowa 1996:114](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=6) - He might thought that image is also unsubmissive participant in his film > What remains is a psychoanalytical drama of a son’s rebellion against his father. But it is not just an autobiographical scenario, and does not only refer to Utopian spatial concepts. It may also be a commentary on the larger Soviet project: Socialism. [Bulgakowa 1996:115](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=7) > **In a broader sense, [[Sergei Eisenstein|Eisenstein]]’s project could be seen as a comment on the project of the Enlightenment, or of modernity.** [Bulgakowa 1996:115](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=7) - #TODO/writing [[202103142058—에이젠슈테인과 모더니즘]] > He refused to utilise a traditional form for producing theoretical texts such as manifesto, book or scriptwriting/filmmaking manual. He intended to write not a two-dimensional but [[The Spherical Book (1929)|spherical book]]: his ideal reader would not simply read one essay after another, following a linear narrative, but instead perceive the whole book simultaneously. The essays were to be arranged in clusters, each oriented in a different direction, but circling around one common theme – in this case, montage. [Bulgakowa 1996:115](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=7) > On the one hand, he doubts that the modern subject is ready for this reconfigured perception but, on the other hand, his film suggests – in its first stage as a high comedy – a more sublime version of the apparatus’ vision, going far beyond the new constellations connected to mobility, panoramic or kaleidoscopic vision, and so forth. **He adds rotation and floatation in space, loss of gravity. He naturalises the Cubist pattern.** [Bulgakowa 1996:116](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=8) - #TODO/writing [[202103142058—에이젠슈테인과 모더니즘]] > The production story associated with the script shows us, in an ideal way, the problematic relationship between literacy and visuality. [Bulgakowa 1996:116](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=8) > In the book (Methode), a work of art as isomorphic to the structure of multi-layered consciousness, thus implying the unity of the logical and the prelogical, the [[Sergei Eisenstein|Eisenstein]]’s terms) rational and sensual mental activities. [Bulgakowa 1996:116](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/MC8XDTRJ?page=8)