Thinking Out Of The Box:La dislocazione dell’esperienza filmica in Where Is Where? di Eija Ahtla

It is certainly true that in a post‐medium condition the cinema has migratedto numerous new exhibition situations within new moving image practices as wellas the products of the movie theater are increasingly shown in gallery settings.However, even if since the 1990s the idea of moving‐image installation has alreadybecome the norm within museums, these two institutions, these two models ofexhibition and spectatorship (art gallery and cinema) have been conceptualizedin diametric opposition. In the present essay, my aim is to take into accounttheoretical debates concerning gallery films and how they address the situationof the subject in mediatized spatial and temporal dynamics. In order to exploreaesthetic and conceptual issues raised by this hybrid exhibitionary andspectatorial models, I will focus on Where Is Where?, a multi‐screen installationby Finish artist and filmmaker Eija‐Liisa Ahtila. Through a series of historical remediationsand re‐enactmens, re‐defining and restructuring family relations,colonialism, nationalism and cultural identity conflicts, this work consists in aparadigmatic case of study in order to investigate the dislocated condition ofviewers as well as the processes of perception and attribution of meaning in thefragmented and unstable virtual space beyond the frame.