“As many philosophers have noted, a void as such is not possible: a void is not the absence of any content but simply the absence of anticipated content. This is why for Bergson, ‘the idea of the absolute nought’ is ‘a self-destructive idea, a pseudo-idea, a mere word’; the void is ‘only a comparison between what is and what could or ought to be, between the full and the full.’ Deleuze echoes this sentiment in his second Cinema book, where he explores the implications of cinematic emptiness. For Deleuze, ‘an empty space, without characters,’ can have ‘a fullness in which there is nothing missing.’ And the idea of the emptiness as a kind of fullness was explored in art before the experimental monochromes of the twentieth century. For example, as Paul Schrader points out, ‘Emptiness, silence, and stillness are positive elements in Zen art, and represent presence rather than the absence of something.’ Monochrome paintings and films simply carry on this tradition, reaffirming Rauschenberg’s assertion that ‘a canvas is never empty.’
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a film like Blue does not use the monochromatic screen to merely posit nihilism and emptiness. Rather, Jarman’s blue screen is a site of multiplicity, limitlessness, eternity. As Jim Ellis puts it, Blue ‘recalls Klein’s understanding of the void not as an absence, but rather as an infinity.’
Motion[less] Pictures: The Cinema of Stasis, Justin Remes.