At the Edges of Sleep bookcover

At the Edges of Sleep

Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators

Jean Ma 

(Author)
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world

Description

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

Many recent works of contemporary art, performance, and film turn a spotlight on sleep, wresting it from the hidden, private spaces to which it is commonly relegated. At the Edges of Sleep considers sleep in film and moving image art as both a subject matter to explore onscreen and a state to induce in the audience. Far from negating action or meaning, sleep extends into new territories as it designates ways of existing in the world, in relation to people, places, and the past. Defined positively, sleep also expands our understanding of reception beyond the binary of concentration and distraction. These possibilities converge in the work of Thai filmmaker and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who has explored the subject of sleep systematically throughout his career. In examining Apichatpong's work, Jean Ma brings together an array of interlocutors--from Freud to Proust, George Méliès to Tsai Ming-liang, Weegee to Warhol--to rethink moving images through the lens of sleep. Ma exposes an affinity between cinema, spectatorship, and sleep that dates to the earliest years of filmmaking, and sheds light upon the shifting cultural valences of sleep in the present moment.

Product Details

PublisherUniversity of California Press
Publish DateOctober 04, 2022
Pages280
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9780520384514
Dimensions8.9 X 6.0 X 0.8 inches | 1.1 pounds

About the Author

Jean Ma is the author of Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema and Sounding the Modern Woman: The Songstress in Chinese Cinema. She is the Victoria and Roger Sant Professor in Art in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.

Reviews

"At the Edges of Sleep is a courageous, ambitious and graceful effort to upend established assumptions of sleep in film studies. . . . By taking sleep and passive spectatorship seriously, the field of film studies can widen its horizons, diversify its methodologies and open up to new ways of imagining a better world. Ma's book is a fantastic starting effort in what ought to be a sustained exploration of liminal psychic territories and recalibrations of our assumptions about attention, spectatorship, subjectivity and sleep."-- "Film-Philosophy"
"Ma's book shines, taking us deep into the wayward itineraries of moving-image works and spectatorial experiences with a sustained sensitivity to how they can open up new conceptual horizons."-- "Theater Journal"

Earn by promoting books

Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.sign up to affiliate program link
Become an affiliate