The appearing memory: Gilles Deleuze and Andrey Tarkovsky on `crystal-image'

Abstract

In this article I examine the concept `crystal-image,' as developed by Gilles Deleuze in the two volumes of Cinema (1986—89). In these texts, Deleuze examines the ways in which phenomenality of time discloses itself through the semiotic dimension of cinema. Subsequently, Deleuze identifies three distinctly different senses of cinematographic time: (1) time as the movement of image; (2) the movement of time-image; and (3) the appearance of time itself. In this article I elaborate the latter via the concept of `crystal-image'. The main objective behind my examination is two-fold: demonstrate that cinema can be approached as a special kind of phenomenological inquiry (semiotic phenomenology) and, on the strength of this hybrid method, further our understanding of memory and its materiality. An analysis of Andrey Tarkovsky's film Solaris provides an illustration.

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