Paganopoulos, Michelangelo (2022) Imagined cities of the world: from expanded cinema to expanded ethnography. Media Watch, 13 (1). pp. 9-33. ISSN 0976-0911 (Print), 2249-8818 (Online) (doi:10.1177/09760911221085836)

PDF (VoR) 52653 PAGANOPOULOS_Imagined_Cities_Of_The_World_(VoR)_2022.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (674kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

By looking at ethnography as a multi-sited and evolving field in the tradition of George Marcus and Michael Fischer, the article returns to the cinematic concept of ‘expanded cinema’, focusing on current forms of expansion in audiovisual ethnographic representation (i.e., ‘expanded ethnography’). In doing so, it analyses the live cinematic performances of Supereverything* (The Light Surgeons, 2011–2017) and Invisible Cities (59 Productions, 2019) in terms of convergences, correspondences and intermedial staging, all of which dialectically synthesise the expanded field as it emerges from within the world system. The article deconstructs the aesthetical dialectics that produce the collective feeling of enlargement of the ethnographic field from a singular stage to a multiplicity of actors and stages (fields) via staged live interconnections made between intermedia technologies and social/bodily intersubjective relations, as they emerged via exploratory practices on and beyond the limits of the stage. By using sources deriving from cinematic theatre and philosophy, the article argues that the illusion of enlargement of the effigy of the world picture is techno/socially manufactured as part of the marketed media turn to imagination and subjectivity, with political consequences for ethnographic representation and its ‘expanded’ claim to a reality beyond the material history of the cosmopolis.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	expanded ethnography, intermediality, fluid screen, phantasmagoria
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theater T Technology > T Technology (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Information & Library Services
Last Modified:	13 Mar 2026 15:30
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/52653

Actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads