This is my contribution for our research seminar on Ghosts and the Spectral.

In this paper, I will discuss the presence of what I will call screen spectrality in Chris Cunningham’s audiovisual remix of Gil Scott-Heron’s “New York Is Killing Me.” My emphasis will be on the way that the spatial construction of the screen diegesis is collapsed in Cunningham’s work, underlining a certain anxiety of the presence and meaning of the screen in current visual culture. For this reason, I do not find it to be an accident that ghost films have undergone a popular renaissance since the turn of the millennium, nor do I believe it is an accident that very often these cinematic ghosts are tied to screens or screen technologies. We can of course invoke the Spielberg/Hooper collaboration Poltergeist as one genesis for this anxiety, yet we should at the same time keep in mind that there are at least two shows which predate Poltergeist and our anxieties over the sudden presence of an animated screen in the midst of our home: The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Jeffrey Sconce has already shown in his Haunted Media how these shows and many other films reveal a fear over the presence of new media and the strangeness they bring with them. Viewed in this manner, Poltergeist is simply one example in a long line of screen anxieties, so far culminating the in the invasion of J-horror beginning with Ringu/The Ring and so far continuing in its own American way with not just the inevitable remakes but also original films such as White Noise 1 and 2 and others such as Dark Mirror.

Yet while gothic horror genre is a highly pregnant field for these anxieties, it is not the only place where we see a reaction against the invasion and proliferation against screens. This is where Chris Cunningham’s video art becomes significant, for the questions it raises and the way it complicates screen/space relations. For one thing, there is no literal ghost in Cunningham’s video – whatever a literal ghost would look like. My contribution to the ghostly is instead my discussion of spectrality as a result of the visual strategies employed in the video. Clarifying what Cunningham’s visual work is seems relevant, then, if only because it is a rather unusual work. While it is based on Gil Scott-Heron’s song “New York Is Killing Me” it extends the original work by adding a visual dimension to it, while at the same time remixing the song. Yet Cunningham’s work is not a music video in the traditional sense, nor has it received any circulation on MTV or other music television channels, online or not. Rather, it is a piece of video art and an installation piece, since the full work requires three screens for full display. The piece originally premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on September 26th, 2010. (“PopRally Presents New York Is Killing Me”), but was also streamed on Cunningham’s own website, complete with a view of all three screens simultaneously. It is here that we find the first hint of what the installation video tries to do, while also revealing some of the spectral problematics of the screen; clearly, an aesthetic space is opened up, quite literally, by the juxtaposition of the three screens. As audience, we need to decide which screen we focus on while the two other ones remain in the periphery of our vision. It is my contention, then, that this spatial construction of the artwork renders visual space ambiguous and spectral. It is also my contention that one of the best ways to open up this spectral visual screen space is to examine this screen phenomenon through the lens of architecture theory and urban space theory, while keeping a peripheral focus on the visual theory of the screen, primarily as recently developed by Kaja Silverman and others.

Let us turn then to the actual artwork created by Chris Cunningham, based on Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken word piece “New York Is Killing Me.” As already mentioned, the artwork has been called an audiovisual reworking of Scott-Heron’s song employing three screens placed next to each other. These three screens generally show different images, although as we shall see there is a certain overlap between the left and right screens at times. Briefly, then, the central screen is occupied by Scott-Heron singing the song and a number of video images of New York City, particularly the back and front end of subway trains. The left and right screens are dedicated mainly to the view from subway trains and later on cars driving along bridges and streets in New York. We immediately find a number of narrative contradictions and instabilities, not least of which is to organize visual space into a coherent whole, something which has been the hallmark of narrative cinema since its inception, to the extent where is has become the dominant mode of visual image production.

My argument is that Cunningham’s installation generates an uncanny tension between the visual images and the viewing subject. We are forced realize that we are looking at several layers that all collapse uncannily onto each other, allowing a feeling of spectrality to emerge. I will argue that we encounter four different collapses in the artwork: 1) the collapse of narrative space, 2) the collapse of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, 3) the collapse of human and screen, and finally 4) the collapse of space between screen and viewing subject.

To begin with the construction of narrative space, which is generated as we know by visual and aural cues ordered in a system of conventional continuity, emphasizing lines of sight, the 180-degree rule, sound bridges and so forth – all things which amount to what Bolter and Grusin have referred to as transparency in the service of an experience of immediacy, easily re-dubbed as an experience of presence. In Cunningham’s video, however, there is no such easy construction of narrative space, because all the typical conventions are broken. The most obvious example is that the different screens present us with different views of recognizable New York City landmarks, most prominently Empire State Building.
Not only are we confronted with a form of uncanny urban geography in the way that we get no clear access to the views of New York, but we find the same inherent instability in the spaces between the screens because the relation between them is never fully established or fully stable. The left and right screens end up destabilizing the middle screen, because they distract of from the action there but also because their internal relationship is destabilized through a variety of strategies. The most disruptive strategy is the mirroring of images on left and right screens; we see the same subway station being passed by but in different directions on left and right. Which image is the original and which is the mirrored copy – the question hardly even makes sense but obviously questions the ontological stability of these images. Much the same happens with the brief pulses of light on an otherwise black screen, where we inevitably try to decode this almost-instantaneous image, generating a proliferation of various interpretations, ghosts of what might actually be present on the screen. Again, the screen becomes the site for an instability and an ambiguity which we are not allowed to settle comfortably. Instead, we see more and more ghost images of New York flickering by with way to locate them securely on any ontological level. Rather than generating any kind of continuous relationship between on-screen space and off-screen space, the instability of the two screens collapse the notion of screen space completely. We know from Benjamin that the cinematic camera plunges us deeply into the same space as the actors, erasing the difference between the represented and the viewer, while at the same time the use of editing cuts pushes us away from the cinematic space. For “New York is Killing Me” there is no stable cinematic space into which we can be pulled or pushed away from; there is only a flickering of the screen.

Screen spectrality occurs when we as viewing subjects experience an overlay between that of presence and absence at the same time; when we are unsure of where the experience is located. This creates a threshold, an opening into screen space where we somehow cross over and are still kept separate, since it is not possible to be completely inside an image because the screen inherently ‘gazes back’ in the form of a cultural imposition. We are caught in the gaze of the screen as much as we gaze on it. This argument is significant because it reveals that the screen is a highly potent site, because it simultaneously brings us closer to the cinematic events while at the same time separating us from them; this is the spectral, unmarked space of the screen.

Secondly, if we turn to the sound on-screen, so to speak, we encounter yet another conflation. If we contrast Cunningham’s version with the original song released on I’m New Here, we find that the rhythm is very different. The album version has a fast-paced rhythm with hand claps and minimal percussion. In contrast to this, Cunningham’s version is slow-paced and there is no discrete rhythm immediately noticeable, as the only rhythm we hear come from the train tracks of the subway trains. This generates a spatial tension in terms of where the train rhythms belong. Since Scott-Heron is superimposed on the images of the moving trains, they clearly do not belong to the same narrative level and as such neither can the sound. It seems that the rhythms must belong to the level of the trains, yet it is also clear that Scott-Heron performs in sync with the rhythm, which means that the space between these two diegetic levels collapses. Furthermore, there is clearly more than one train yet only one train rhythm is audible – which one? One proposed answer might be to argue that the rhythm is a non-diegetic soundtrack to the visuals, yet here we still encounter a collapse between the diegetic level of Scott-Heron and the non-diegetic level of the soundtrack, as his performance still depends on the rhythm of the non-diegetic level.

The sound, then, as Michel Chion would say, is neither inside nor outside the image and we cannot decide which ontological level the train rhythms belong to and instead this sound belongs to the spectrally unmarked space which is at once inside and outside the cinematic frame. The sound is instead a sound from nowhere. We are accustomed to the effect of music and sound in audiovisual images typically acting as bridges which heighten continuity. But in this case, with the sound of the train rhythms not belonging to any of the ontological, diegetic levels but also at the same time not belonging to the non-diegetic level of the musical score or even the ontological level of the original song, we are confronted with a sound which moves across and between all of the levels and so both belongs and does not belong to these levels at the same time. Much like Hans Belting’s argument that images perform the presence of an absence, so too does this acousmatic sound perform the absence of its own distinct ontology, a move which only acts further to tear away the ground of the image because the sound is meant to secure the ontological stability of the image. The relevance of this collapse is made clear by K.J. Donnelly when he argues of recent films that we are experiencing a development in audiovisual image production where certain works attempt to move beyond representational functions in their use of the sonic dimension, thus exploring and challenging the ways in which the viewing subject’s mental space is constructed in relation to the screen. In this way, the soundscape is configured in psychogeographic ways to provide new configurations of experiential and emotional space; what Anthony Vidler has dubbed warped space. (Vidler 2001) Sound thus moves out of its typical place as a mainly temporal art as one which also generates space, something which is also emphasized by the fact that the train rhythms reverberate, underlining a distinctive spatial dimension of the soundtrack which follows the already unmarked space of the screen.

Thirdly, I want to return to the issue of the superimposing of shots on the screens, especially on the middle screen. It is unclear if Scott-Heron’s image is superimposed on the images of trains and bridges, or if it is vice-versa. One might argue that it makes little difference, yet much like the diegetic levels of sounds are confused and spectralized so too must we consider the levels of Scott-Heron and the trains as confused and spectralized. We might want to consider Scott-Heron as the ‘ground’ of the image simply because he is human and so immediately attracts more attention, yet we only see his face and it constantly fades away, while the shots of the trains moving remain constant and are furthermore emphasized by the fact that the two other screens contain similar images, thus we might argue that the trains and their passing is what is the focus. Yet we might resolve some of the tension by opening up for another tension, which is the uncanny tension of the machinic blurring with the human. There is an emblematic image which lasts only a few seconds but encapsulates much, I will argue, of the artwork’s effect. The image is the red, receding lights of a train taking the place of Scott-Heron’s eyes, fusing the two diegetic levels into one if only for a few seconds.
I do not intend to claim that this short overlap is simply a fortuitous moment which allows us to unravel all the rest of the artwork; instead, I believe it is an emblematic moment which encapsulates the rest of the work in a single frame. What happens in this moment is that the question of which ontological layer is primary becomes irrelevant. What is significant about the overlap is precisely the uncanny spatial moment where the two layers are recognizably distinct yet also the same. We thus experience a conflation of the human with the technological, an encounter which takes place only in screen space, thus configuring the screen as a space of reconfiguration. Both Scott-Heron and the trains are therefore spectralized in their ontological flickering, with the hybrid instance of the fusion bleeding into the post-cinematic and posthuman. The human is spectralized in this process as it is configured along the axis of the screen, rather than as separate from it. Yet it is not only Scott-Heron who is spectralized in this hybrid extension into the screen; the screen also extends into us and reconfigures our relation to the screen.

Fourthly, considering the physical space of the video installation we are confronted with the instability of the actual space between the screens and the fact that we cannot focus equally on all three screens at the same time. This is not even possible for the YouTube version, where the screens are placed as split-screen versions. However, the busy organization of the screen prevents a full focus and instead we have to choose which side to privilege. It is also not clear which screen would be the privileged one, since there is usually different images projected and while it is clear that the center screen seems like the most obviously privileged screen, especially because it is the only screen in which we see Scott-Heron, it is also the least interesting screen since it is the screen which most often turns completely black. As viewers, then, we are positioned so as to have to make up our own mind as to where we are to focus on our attention but always with the knowledge that there are things that we lose in our peripheral vision; not only the screen is problematized in this artwork but also the issue of vision.

While film and cinema studies have done relatively work on the physical positioning of the spectator to the screen, always assuming a more or less ideal and direct relation to it, there is one field of study which has dealt extensively with physical relation to the viewed image and this is the field of architecture and urban studies. Considered together, Cunningham’s three screens work as one environmental image – that is, a form of image which is mediated not just through the assemblage of the screen but also through physical space. Kevin Lynch’s argument in The Image of the City then underscores the point that I have already been making that we need to consider the three screens as one, while at the same time being aware that there will constantly be “more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or a view to be explored.” (Lynch 247) The installation thus problematizes the experiential space of our limited capacity to see all that there is to see; no matter where we look we miss part of the work. Yet it is my contention that this is precisely what the artwork is trying to do. The focus on the images on passing; the subway trains, driving across bridges, seeing New York pass by, the flickering presence of Scott-Heron, the lyrics emphasizing that he must get out of New York to Tennessee all these images both visual and verbal insist that things are passing us by, underlined by the epitaph to this paper: “It’s 24 frames in every second of a movie / Can’t see frame change but it’s always moving.” Although cinema only works due to the persistence of vision, there is always something we miss, something which is not visible to us and it is this invisibility which Cunningham tries to make visible.

Cunningham, then, attempts to reconfigure the screen assemblage in order to question and problematize the construction of the modern visual subject. Cunningham’s project is not limited to just this one work but rather it is something we find across all of his visual fictions, from his early work for Aphex Twin with “Come to Daddy,” Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” and also Rubber Johnny, the disturbing short about a human (?) confined to a wheelchair. Cunningham’s work typically draws heavily on horror and science fiction tropes, something not immediately apparent in “NewYork is Killing Me” but which I have tried to make present in the reconfiguration of the human as continuous with the screen and so bleeding into the posthuman. Certainly Cunningham’s work is generally filled with disturbing posthuman visions, whether it is the uncanny doubles of Aphex Twin, the love robots of Björk or the spectrally diffused presence of Scott-Heron as somewhere between a screen specter and a ghost train leaving the station.

Cunningham’s artwork here and other instances is thus an anxious vision of the modern subject caught in the spatial system of the screen, and his works may be seen as ways of representing this unstable relation to the screen, visualized most fully in the metamorphosing bodies which we are continually confronted with in his works. The screen is the location of the posthuman specter for Cunningham because that liminal space is the perfect place for representing the continuous reconfigurations which we are undergoing, it is a way to warp the normal to express the pathological of the avant-garde zeitgeist to paraphrase Vidler. (Vidler 1) It is this aesthetic movement which I have titled screen spectrality and which describes a particular relation between the viewing subject and the screen; this relation has part of its origins in the horror and science fiction genre, where a variety of anxieties have been visualized in order to give representation to the pathological and alternate human configurations. New screen media, what is sometimes also referred to as post-cinema, not only provides us with new representations of these different and developing pathologies, but also themselves represents, following medium theory, the site of these new pathologies. The screen is the uncanny liminal threshold for this spectralizing activity and serves precisely as a spectral space.