Experimental Film and Photochemical

Practices Kim Knowles

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EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND ARTISTS’ MOVING IMAGE

Experimental Film
and Photochemical
Practices
Kim Knowles
Experimental Film and Artists’ Moving Image

Series Editors
Kim Knowles
Aberystwyth University
Aberystwyth, UK

Jonathan Walley
Department of Cinema
Denison University
Granville, OH, USA
Existing outside the boundaries of mainstream cinema, the field of experi-
mental film and artists’ moving image presents a radical challenge not only
to the conventions of that cinema but also to the social and cultural norms
it represents. In offering alternative ways of seeing and experiencing the
world, it brings to the fore different visions and dissenting voices. In re-
cent years, scholarship in this area has moved from a marginal to a more
central position as it comes to bear upon critical topics such as medium
specificity, ontology, the future of cinema, changes in cinematic exhibition
and the complex interrelationships between moving image technology,
aesthetics, discourses, and institutions. This book series stakes out excit-
ing new directions for the study of alternative film practice – from the
black box to the white cube, from film to digital, crossing continents and
disciplines, and developing fresh theoretical insights and revised histories.
Although employing the terms ‘experimental film’ and ‘artists’ moving
image’, we see these as interconnected practices and seek to interrogate
the crossovers and spaces between different kinds of oppositional film-
making.
We invite proposals on any aspect of non-mainstream moving image
practice, which may take the form of monographs, edited collections, and
artists’ writings both historical and contemporary. We are interested in
expanding the scope of scholarship in this area, and therefore welcome
proposals with an interdisciplinary and intermedial focus, as well as studies
of female and minority voices. We also particularly welcome proposals
that move beyond the West, opening up space for the discussion of Latin
American, African and Asian perspectives.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15817
 Kim Knowles

Experimental Film
and Photochemical
Practices
Kim Knowles
Aberystwyth University
Aberystwyth, UK

ISSN 2523-7527 ISSN 2523-7535 (electronic)

Experimental Film and Artists’ Moving Image
ISBN 978-3-030-44308-5 ISBN 978-3-030-44309-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44309-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Cover image: A strip of phytogram imagery from It Matters What, Francisca Duran, 2019
Cover design by eSTudioCalamar

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For all the photochemical radicals and free spirits.
 Acknowledgements

My interest in photochemical film practice in the digital era was first ig-
nited in 2008 when I saw Jeanne Liotta’s Loretta (2003) projected on
16mm at the Filmhouse cinema in Edinburgh. I was running a small
film festival called Diversions and Teale Failla, a postgraduate student
from New York, had put together a screening of work by Liotta, Jen-
nifer Reeves, M. M. Serra, Joel Schlemowitz among others. She proba-
bly has no idea how much that screening changed my life. Since then,
most of my academic work and much of my curation has been devoted
to contemporary engagements with a medium largely deemed obsolete. I
have returned to Loretta constantly and I am deeply thankful to Jeanne
for those images that led me on a long and exciting journey. Over the
years, I have crossed paths with a great many people with a similar pas-
sion and I have been inspired by their creativity, warmth and openness.
It’s difficult for me to imagine this book being written without them,
but it’s equally difficult to name them all. Every encounter, every conver-
sation and every film screening somehow resonate through these pages.
Heartfelt thanks to Jenny Baines, Erika Balsom, Dianna Barrie, Christo-
pher Becks, Lydia Beilby, Martine Beugnet, Stephen Broomer, Brad But-
ler, Guillaume Cailleau, Stefano Canapa, Pip Chodorov, David Curtis,
Karel Doing, Helen de Witt, Anja Dornieden, Franci Duran, Kelly Egan,
Phillip Fleischmann, David Gatten, Sandra Gibson, Sally Golding, Juan
David González Monroy, Nicky Hamlyn, Bea Haut, Gabriele Jutz, Chris
Kennedy, Eva Kolcze, Karl Lemieux, Luis Macías, Pablo Mazzolo, Penny

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

McCann, Lindsay McIntyre, Miles McKane, Peter Miller, Noor Afshan

Mirza, Tomonari Nishikawa, Jem Noble, Elena Pardo, Aurélie Percevault,
Sasha Pirker, Greg Pope, Charlotte Pryce, Sarah Pucill, Luis Recoder,
Nicolas Rey, Daïchi Saïto, Vitkoria Schmid, Tanya Syed, Richard Tuohy,
Sarah Turner, Esther Urlus, Sami van Ingen, Erwin van’t Hart, Adriana
Vila, Christo Wallers and Antoinette Zwirchmayr. Thank you particularly
to all the artists who went out of their way to provide me with viewing
materials and images, and who let me into their creative world, explain-
ing in detail their working methods and philosophical approach by phone,
Skype or in person.
Emmanuel Lefrant, Vicky Smith and James Holcombe have been loyal
friends and mentors, endlessly generous with their technical knowledge
and intellectual insight and patiently explaining and re-explaining the
workings of this or that machine. They have guided me throughout this
journey and have inspired me to keep going. My friends at Bristol Ex-
perimental and Expanded Film (BEEF) were instrumental in helping me
to understand film communities from the inside: Stephen Cornford, Matt
Davies, Louisa Fairclough and Marcy Saude in particular gave me fresh
insight into film processes and the spirit of invention. Marion Schmid and
Angela Piccini were the most attentive readers, offering thoughtful advice
and encouragement each step of the way.
It’s fair to say that this book took a slight change of direction after my
trip to The Independent Imaging Retreat (Film Farm) in Canada. I can-
not thank Phil Hoffman, Terra Long, Chris Harrison, Scott Miller Berry,
Rob Butterworth, Deirdre Logue and Janine Marchessault enough for an
experience that moved me physically, spiritually and intellectually. They
inspired me to think, feel, see and write differently, as did my fellow trav-
ellers on that journey: Alix Blevins, Gerry Fialka, Tara Khalili, Annapurna
Kumur, Markus Maicher, Elian Mikkola, Ramey Newell, Kelly O’Brien,
Emily Pelstring, Mike Rollo, Ángel Rueda, Cindy Stillwell and Hagere
Selam ‘shimby’ Zegeye-Gebrehiwot.
I have been assisted by several organisations over the years, who have
always been eager to help with the research process: Light Cone in Paris
(Eleni Gioti, Emmanuel Lefrant, Mariya Nikiforova), LUX in London
(Matt Carter, Ben Cook), Sixpack Film in Austria (Brigitta Burger-Utzer,
Isabelle Piechaczyk, Dietmar Schwärzler, Gerald Weber), Vtape (Wanda
vanderStoop) and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (Genne
Speers, Lauren Howe, Jesse Brossoit, Shannon Gagnon, Madison More)
in Toronto. My long involvement with the Edinburgh International Film
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

Festival and Filmhouse has fed my passion and has given me important ac-
cess to films and filmmakers that I might never have encountered. I have
several people to thank there—employees past and present—for always
having faith in my ideas and for continuing to provide a vital infrastruc-
ture for 16mm and 35mm screenings, as well as countless complicated
set-ups: Mark Adams, Ali Blaikie, Emma Boa, David Boyd, Ali Clarke,
Chris Fujiwara, Niall Greig Fulton, Diane Henderson, James Rice, Evi
Tsiligaridou and Rod White.
A special thank you to all my colleagues at Aberystwyth University
for their patience and the best home-baking I’ve ever tasted, and to
Emily Wood, Lina Aboujieb and the anonymous peer reviewers at Pal-
grave Macmillan for helping me through the crucial publication stages.
Most importantly, much love and endless gratitude to Tree, who, with
the patience of a saint, has been my rock, my reality checker, my deadline
setter and my proof-reader.
 Contents

1 The Matter of Media 1

The New and the Obsolete 2
Reinventing the Medium 6
Photochemical Practices 15

2 Materials, Materiality, New Materialism 25

Material Bodies 27
Materiality and the Ecological Thought 34
(Re)Visioning the World: The Aesthetic of Contact 42
Material Entanglements 50
The Politics of Representation: Structural/Materialist
Film Revisited 53

3 Process and Perception 71

Earthly Engagements and Radical Landscapes 74
Ecologies of (Small) Things 86
Colour and Chemistry 101
Materialist Action Films 117

4 From Film Labs to Film Farm: Alternative Communities

and Eco-Sensibilities 137
DIY Film Culture 138
Film Farm—The Independent Imaging Retreat 143

xi
xii CONTENTS

A Personal Journey to Mount Forest 149

Crashing Skies and Falling Bodies: Twenty-Five Years
of Film Farm Aesthetics 161
Social Ecology and Everyday Utopia 173

5 Projecting Film, Expanding Cinema 185

The Death (and Rebirth) of Film Projection 186
Reinventing Exhibition 191
Projection as Installation 196
Contemporary Expanded Cinema and the Cinema of
Attractions 203

Conclusion: Past Present Future Perfect 225

Bibliography 229

Index 245
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Closed Circuit, Sasha Pirka, 2013. Installation view, ‘Slow
Down! Cinematic approaches on reduction’, 8 November—16
December 2018, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna © Kunsthalle
Exnergasse (Photo: Wolfgang Thaler, 2017) 12
Fig. 1.2 The Clouds Are Not Like Either One—They Do Not Keep One
Form Forever, Viktoria Schmid, 2015. Installation view, ‘Slow
Down! Cinematic approaches on reduction’, 8 November—16
December 2018, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna © Kunsthalle
Exnergasse (Photo: Wolfgang Thaler, 2017) 14
Fig. 2.1 Polte (Flame), Sami van Ingen, 2018 (Image courtesy of the
artist and testifilmi) 30
Fig. 2.2 Loretta, Jeanne Liotta, 2003 (Image courtesy of the artist) 32
Fig. 2.3 Loretta, Jeanne Liotta, 2003. Black and white rayograms prior
to the addition of colour (Image courtesy of the artist) 33
Fig. 2.4 Sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars, Tomonari
Nishikawa, 2014 (Image courtesy of Light Cone) 49
Fig. 3.1 Three frames from Bouquets 9, Rose Lowder, 1995, filmed
near the town of Signes, Var, in the south-east of France
(Image courtesy of Light Cone) 77
Fig. 3.2 Parties Visible et Invisible d’Un Ensemble Sous Tension,
Emmanuel Lefrant, 2009 (Image courtesy of Light Cone) 83
Fig. 3.3 Le Pays Dévasté, Emmanuel Lefrant, 2015 (Image courtesy
of Light Cone) 84
Fig. 3.4 Primal, Vicky Smith, 2016. Installation photo by
Deborah Weinreb (Image courtesy of the artist) 90

xiii
xiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.5 Punched holes in successive frames in Small Things Moving

in Unison, Vicky Smith, 2018 (Image courtesy of the
artist) 91
Fig. 3.6 Bee wings on individual frames in Not (a) Part, Vicky Smith,
2019 (Image courtesy of the artist) 95
Fig. 3.7 An insect stilled in Departure from the Garden, part 3
of Concerning Flight—Five Illuminations in Miniature,
Charlotte Pryce, 2004 (Image courtesy of the artist) 98
Fig. 3.8 The moth in Thin Breath Quivering, part 1 of Concerning
Flight—Five Illuminations in Miniature, Charlotte Pryce,
2004 (Image courtesy of the artist) 99
Fig. 3.9 Prima Materia, Charlotte Pryce, 2015 (Image courtesy of
the artist) 101
Fig. 3.10 Home-brewed emulsion with colour added in Konrad &
Kurfurst, Esther Urlus, 2013 (Image courtesy of the artist) 104
Fig. 3.11 Film strips from Deep Red, Esther Urlus, 2012 (Image
courtesy of the artist) 106
Fig. 3.12 Film strips from Elli, Esther Urlus, 2016 photographed
on a light (Image courtesy of the artist) 109
Fig. 3.13 The chromaflex technique in Ginza Strip, Richard Tuohy,
2014 (Image courtesy of the artist) 111
Fig. 3.14 A strip of phytogram imagery from It Matters What,
Francisca Duran, 2019 Image courtesy of the artist 116
Fig. 3.15 Sawing a ladder whilst standing on a white cube in the
middle of an empty room in I Saw, I See, I Look, Bea Haut,
2013 (Image courtesy of Light Cone) 119
Fig. 3.16 Gravure, Bea Haut, 2013 (Image courtesy of Light Cone) 121
Fig. 3.17 Climbing a lamppost in Untitled (Victoria Park), Jenny
Baines, 2007 (Image courtesy of the artist) 124
Fig. 3.18 Double screen actions in Untitled (#1 25/25 x 10/4), Jenny
Baines, 2016 (Image courtesy of the artist) 125
Fig. 3.19 Acts of civil disobedience in Drag, Bea Haut, 2017 (Image
courtesy of Light Cone) 127
Fig. 4.1 First workshop on the newly built Debrie Contact Printer
by Sophie Watzlawick at LaborBerlin. Participants learn how
to blow 35mm down to 16mm (Photo: Laurence Favre.
Image courtesy of LaborBerlin) 140
Fig. 4.2 The workspace at Filmwerkplaats, Rotterdam (Photo: Esther
Urlus) 142
Fig. 4.3 Barn screening at the Independent Imaging Retreat (Photo:
Marcel Beltran. Image courtesy of Philip Hoffman) 148
 LIST OF FIGURES xv

Fig. 4.4 Markings 1-3, Eva Kolcze, 2011 (Image courtesy of the
artist) 163
Fig. 4.5 Negative imagery in Strawberries in the Summertime,
Jennifer Reeves, 2013 (Image courtesy of the artist) 166
Fig. 4.6 Split toning in Strawberries in the Summertime, Jennifer
Reeves, 2013 (Image courtesy of the artist) 167
Fig. 4.7 Split toning in Crashing Skies, Penny McCann, 2012
(Image courtesy of the artist) 169
Fig. 4.8 Farm animals coexisting in vulture, Philip Hoffman, 2019
(Image courtesy of the artist) 172
Fig. 4.9 Traces of hand-processing in vulture, Philip Hoffman, 2019
(Image courtesy of the artist) 173
Fig. 5.1 Diffraktion 2017 at LaborBerlin. Expanded film set-up
(above: New Museum of Mankind by OJOBOCA, and below:
Highview and Cluster Click City Sundays by Simon Liu)
(Photo: Laurence Favre. Image courtesy of LaborBerlin) 192
Fig. 5.2 Installation view of Absolute Pitch II, Louisa Fairclough,
2014 (Photo: Oskar Proctor. Image courtesy of the artist
and Danielle Arnaud) 200
Fig. 5.3 Threadbare, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, 2013.
Installation view, Gibson + Recoder Studio, Brooklyn,
New York (Photo: Rachel Hamburger. Image courtesy of the
artists) 203
Fig. 5.4 Light Spill, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, 2005.
Installation view, ‘Borderline Behaviour: Drawn Towards
Animation’, 25 January–18 March 2007, TENT, Rotterdam
(Photo: Roel Meelkop. Image courtesy of the artists and
TENT) 204
Fig. 5.5 Documentation of Ghost - Loud + Strong, performance by
Sally Golding at Cable Festival, Nantes, 2016 (Photo: Pierre
Acobas. Image courtesy of the artist) 208
Fig. 5.6 Documentation of Cipher Screen, performance by Greg
Pope at Inmute Festival, Athens, 2015 (Image courtesy of the
artist) 210
Fig. 5.7 Section of a filmstrip used in the performance of Cipher Screen
by Greg Pope (Image courtesy of the artist) 211
Fig. 5.8 Documentation of Parallaxe, performed by Nominoë
(Image courtesy of Emmanuel Lefrant) 213
Fig. 5.9 Documentation of Light Leaks, performed by Filmwerkplaats
at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, January 2016
(Image courtesy of Nan Wang) 214
 CHAPTER 1

The Matter of Media

Throughout the recent wave of books and articles on the current state
of film in the digital era one finds more or less the same conclusion:
film, or cinema, in its previous incarnation is no longer. The technolog-
ical shifts that have been taking place since the 1990s have dislodged
the ontological foundations of the medium as well as its spaces of recep-
tion.1 As several writers have demonstrated, we now live in an era of dig-
ital ‘convergence’, where the moving image manifests in numerous forms
and contexts, sliding across a multitude of platforms and implicating the
spectator/consumer in new ways.2 What was previously associated with
the cinematic experience has exploded into a moving image environment
that resists any unified definition and infiltrates almost every aspect of our
lives, from small handheld devices to gigantic public screens. Accordingly,
current scholarship sets out to navigate this heterogeneous terrain and to
make sense of its multifaceted and dispersed nature, revisiting and revising
established theories whilst developing new ones. For André Gaudreault
and Philippe Marion, ‘cinema is going through a major identity crisis’,3
whilst for Janine Marchessault and Susan Lord the scope is wider—‘digital
technologies are transforming the semiotic fabric of contemporary visual
cultures’, they state, appropriating Gene Youngblood’s concept of ‘ex-
panded cinema’ to account for the new landscape of ‘immersive, interac-
tive, and interconnected forms of culture’.4 Clearly, it is not just cinema
that is questioned in the digital era, but the entire realm of human expe-
rience: artistic expression, forms of communication and modes of being.

© The Author(s) 2020 1

K. Knowles, Experimental Film and Photochemical Practices,
Experimental Film and Artists’ Moving Image,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44309-2_1
2 K. KNOWLES

Disentangling one from the other is a challenging task, and their interre-
latedness demands theoretical approaches capable of teasing out the com-
plexities.
Until quite recently, discussions of technological transition were domi-
nated by the problematic concept of ‘new media’, a term that, like a stone
skimming across the surface of water, gained momentum with each suc-
cessive scholarly text dedicated to it. In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun’s intro-
duction to the revised 2016 edition of New Media, Old Media: A History
and Theory Reader, aptly titled ‘Somebody Said New Media’, several key
issues are put into play. ‘To talk of new media in the early twenty-first cen-
tury’, observes Chun, ‘seems odd: exhausted and exhausting.’5 Not least
because, tied to corporate interests, the increasing rate of technological
replacement means that nothing is ever new for very long. ‘To call some-
thing new’, Chun continues, ‘is to guarantee that it will one day be old;
it is to place it within a cycle of obsolescence, in which it will inevitably
disappoint and be replaced by something else that promises, once again,
the new’.6 This intricate relationship between the old and the new is cen-
tral to understanding what is at stake when we talk about ‘new media’
or ‘new technology’, and it has certainly been one of the focal points in
criticisms of ‘newness’. From Charles Acland’s perspective:

An inappropriate amount of energy has gone into the study of new media,
new genres, new communities, and new bodies, that is into the contem-
porary forms. Often, the methods of doing so have been at the expense
of taking account of continuity, fixity and dialectical relations with existing
practices, systems and artifacts.7

In the heady rush to embrace and theorise the ‘new’, we have neglected
to consider the wider cultural, economic and ideological implications of
the recent technological (r)evolution, including the ever-changing notion
of the ‘old’ and its precarious position in art, culture and society.

The New and the Obsolete

New technologies, like all consumer commodities, are aggressively mar-
keted on their ability to improve on an existing product in terms of cost,
speed, efficiency or style, to such an extent that the old is invariably
framed as ‘undesirable, dysfunctional and embarrassing, compared with
what is new’.8 In order to lock the consumer into a perpetual cycle of
 1 THE MATTER OF MEDIA 3

consumption, a visible dichotomy must be established that elevates the

status of the new whilst denigrating and devaluing the old. Obsolescence,
a concept that gained currency in the post-Fordist era, is the linchpin of
this dichotomy and the buzzword of contemporary accounts of techno-
logical ‘progress’. It is useful here to draw on Evan Watkins’s remarks
on the fabrication and ideological implications of the concept of the out-
dated. In what is perhaps one of the most rigorous investigations into
the subject, Watkins argues that ‘obsolescence is far from being a natu-
ral phenomenon—the invention of a new technology does not automati-
cally render the old ones obsolete; rather, the concept of the “outmoded”
or the “outdated” arises from very specific and targeted maneuvers by a
consumer-led industry that functions in the interests of capitalism, itself
“an economy of change”’.9 ‘Obsolescence’, he states, ‘must be produced
in specific ways’.10 Or, as Michelle Henning outlines in her discussion
of obsolescence in relation to photography, it ‘is an ideologically pro-
duced designation. To study the production of obsolescence necessarily
means to attend to social and cultural processes, to the production of a
“field of equivalence”’.11 Here, Henning picks up on Watkins’s concept
of equivalent use to demonstrate how technologies are developed and
marketed in such a way that ‘one thing [is viewed] as replacing the oth-
er’.12 The process by which digital image production renders obsolete old
analogue systems, for example, depends heavily on a particular narrative
that bypasses their material specificities in order to place emphasis on the
same basic functions. Thus, digital photography essentially does the same
as analogue photography, only better, cheaper, faster and, importantly, in
ways that allow more control over the final image.
Indeed, in the analogue-to-digital paradigm, the tendency to reduce
the intricate dialectics of media change to a historical-theoretical stand-
point that reinforces the cultural dominance of the new is often couched
in such narratives of continuity, which see new media as not simply replac-
ing old practices but perfecting the means through which their creative
potential may be realised. Slavoj Žižek refers to this discourse as ‘the his-
toriography of a kind of futur antérieur [future perfect]’ that involves
‘the well-known phenomenon of the old artistic forms pushing against
their own boundaries and using procedures which, at least from our ret-
rospective view, seem to point towards a new technology’.13 This view to
a large extent characterises early accounts of new media, particularly Lev
Manovich’s now well-cited The Language of New Media, in which one
finds the statement that ‘the computer fulfils the promise of the cinema
4 K. KNOWLES

as a visual Esperanto’.14 The narrative of equivalent use is problematic

because it encourages the understanding of digital technology as simply
a replacement for film, in much the same way that the desktop com-
puter replaced the typewriter, CDs replaced vinyl and the e-book is grad-
ually replacing printed material.15 Mark Hansen, for example, criticises
Manovich’s ‘circular history’, which ‘effectively reimposes the linear, tele-
ological, and techno-determinist model of (traditional) cinema history’.16
Hansen, along with other critics such as D. N. Rodowick, have pointed
out that this approach, with its emphasis on ‘overdetermined similari-
ties’, has largely prevented the digital from finding its own creative voice
as a medium with distinct technical properties and possibilities.17 Recent
media archaeological approaches have challenged dominant trajectories of
technological progress, pointing out the discontinuities and circumstantial
decisions that punctuate the history of the moving image and unearthing
alternative material histories.18 Garnet Hertz and Jussi Parikka’s explo-
ration of ‘zombie media’ as a form of critical art practice, for example,
demonstrates how discarded technologies condemned to the rubbish heap
enter new ecologies of repurposing and reinvention.19 In their refusal to
disappear, these undead objects complicate and reimagine understandings
of history, temporality, functionality and intended use, working against
the grain of capitalist desire.
Florian Cramer’s notion of ‘post-digital’ aesthetics follows a similar
line, arguing that creative forms of technological reuse and misuse are the
primary means through which individuals are able to navigate an alterna-
tive agenda to that of ‘digital high-tech and high-fidelity cleanness’.20 For
Cramer, using old media is ‘no longer a sign of being old-fashioned. It is
instead a deliberate choice of renouncing electronic technology, thereby
calling into question the common assumption that computers […] rep-
resent obvious technological progress and therefore constitute a logical
upgrade from any older media technology’.21 This is, of course, intri-
cately tied to questions of nostalgia and retro-fetishism, both bourgeon-
ing fields of scholarly enquiry in the digital era and inseparable from any
discussion of media transition. Since the turn of the millennium, and par-
ticularly in the ten or so years since the publication of Acland’s Residual
Media, a number of studies on cultures of retro, vintage and nostalgia
have emerged, opening up differing perspectives on contemporary soci-
ety’s fascination with the past in an era of rapid technological and stylis-
tic change.22 Svetlana Boym’s work has been particularly influential in
developing more nuanced understandings of how nostalgia operates not
 1 THE MATTER OF MEDIA 5

simply as a ‘yearning for yesterday’, but also as a productive means of

negotiating the past.23 Nostalgia, she argues, ‘is not always retrospective;
it can be prospective as well’.24 Whilst restorative nostalgia is associated
with a reconstruction of the past, reflective nostalgia moves towards a
process of deconstruction, ‘calling into doubt’ the certainties of the past
and acknowledging the complexities of our relationship to the past in
the present. As we shall see, interrogations of obsolete media still carry
with them negative associations of retro-fetishism, but adapting Boym’s
concept of ‘reflective’ nostalgia as a form of resistance provides a starting
point for more fruitful theoretical formulations of technological appropri-
ation.
We must not forget, however, that the past is also often packaged as a
commodity and now appears in many forms of mainstream media, fashion
and design. From retro Instagram filters to the explosion of vintage cloth-
ing and furniture shops, looking back has proved to be a highly lucrative
gesture. This complicates any straightforward reading of appropriation as
an exclusively counter-cultural practice and asks us to navigate both main-
stream and alternative positions. In an artistic context, how might looking
back—at past forms, practices and techniques—create new possibilities in
the present and forge alternative creative pathways into the future?
In Obsolescence: Ouvrir l’impossible, Mathias Rollot argues that obso-
lescence relates less to the object or technology itself than to the social
context that determines its perceived relevance and functionality. In real-
ity, nothing in the essential makeup of the obsolete object changes; rather,
the needs and demands of society—often driven by capitalist notions of
‘progress’—give rise to new tools that are considered to be more adapted
to the milieu in question. In relation to this, Rollot emphasises the con-
structive impetus inherent in obsolescence, countering the dominant ten-
dency to approach it as negatively inflected:

Obsolescence is not a question of disappearance or destruction of a subject

or object, but, on the contrary, of its profound conservation, despite every-
thing, despite the changes to which the milieu is submitted, cultural dis-
placement, paradigmatic metamorphosis, technological evolutions. Obso-
lescence is the hyperconservation of an entity that becomes unsuited to its
times.25

It is this quality of anachronism that seems to drive much artistic interest

in film. Let us take the comment by British artist Tacita Dean: ‘Everything
6 K. KNOWLES

that excites me no longer functions in its own time’.26 Clearly this isn’t
simply a case of refusing to move with the times, but of cultivating a
deeper sensitivity to the way that different temporalities rub up against
each other to produce alternative perceptions and artistic possibilities. No
longer functioning in its own time is not ceasing to function altogether;
it is, as Rollot points out, and as Dean suggests, continuing to function
according to different rules, via a different pathway, ‘despite everything ’.
Anachronism plays a crucial role in the forms of material understand-
ing that I outline in the next chapter, since the obsolete object is almost
always defined by a material excess that is somehow out of kilter with
the modern world. In the case of film, it is the bulky and cumbersome
equipment with its stubborn mechanical presence that signifies times past,
but which also stimulates a counter-cultural impulse to travel in opposite
directions. Dutch artist Esther Urlus refers to the pleasures of working
with ‘useless media’, where use value relates to the potential to gener-
ate profit through perpetual ‘innovation’.27 Having dropped out of this
cycle, photochemical film finds itself in a position of relative freedom, no
longer useful in one sense, but endlessly valuable in another. Innovation
becomes multidirectional and (re)invention often involves looking back-
wards in order to move forwards.

Reinventing the Medium

As a result of its declared obsolescence or ‘crisis’ (both as photochem-
ical film-making practice and as a film theatre experience) cinema has
become a sought-after object for art institutions and amateurs of vin-
tage media alike and is being subjected to all forms of recycling and re-
appropriation—actual as well as virtual. One might suggest that with the
increasing cognisance of film’s disappearance comes to a stage of mourn-
ing, where the qualities of analogue are afforded special cultural signifi-
cance. This can be seen on the one hand in the digitally simulated mate-
rial characteristic of celluloid, such as camera flares, scratches and faded
colour, and, on the other, the abundance of archive, found footage or
‘ruin’ films, such as those by Bill Morrison and Gustav Deutsch, as well
as more contemporary compilation films by artists like Christian Marclay,
whose 24 hour sampling exercise in The Clock (2010) is an overt exercise
in cinematic remembrance. Indeed, the archive or the ‘lost object’ of film
has been one of the main focal points in discussions of analogue aesthetics
in the digital era, with attention firmly placed on the reworking of existing
 1 THE MATTER OF MEDIA 7

material through various material interventions.28 It is perhaps here that

the complexities of film as a residual media emerge—the tension between
working with film in a manner that brings to light its historical status and
reinventing a medium that is considered a thing of the past. In Acland’s
brief discussion of analogue film, only one of these avenues—film as his-
tory—is suggested, that is, through works that ‘explicitly announce their
historicity […] through aged and aging [material] qualities.’29
This book argues for a wider understanding of photochemical film
practice in relation to discourses of technological transition and mate-
rial culture. It takes the view of film as persisting in the contemporary
moment, framed by obsolescence but developing in new directions as a
result of alternative networked cultures of collectivity and DIY skills shar-
ing. Although many artists have embraced the creative potential of digital
technology, photochemical film practice continues in a new, one might
say reinvigorated, form, despite—or in some cases because of—the chal-
lenges posed by a scarcity of resources and rising costs associated with
analogue technology. It is within this field that the model of equivalent
use highlighted by Watkins and perpetuated in the dominant accounts
of new media and technological change is most problematic, and indeed
problematised. To this end, we might take as our starting point Tacita
Dean’s response, published in The Guardian on 22 February 2011, to
the discontinuation of 16mm printing services at the London-based Soho
Film Lab, then recently taken over by the American company Deluxe:

Many of us are exhausted from grieving over the dismantling of analogue

technologies. Digital is not better than analogue, but different. What we
are asking for is co-existence: that analogue film might be allowed to
remain an option for those who want it, and for the ascendency of one
not to have to mean the extinguishing of another.30

In her powerful and militant stance against the reduction of artistic

choices driven by commercial interests, Dean draws attention to the pol-
itics of obsolescence underlying the phasing out of film: ‘Culturally and
socially, we are moving too fast and losing too much in our haste. We are
also being deceived, silently and conspiratorially.’31
The potential loss to which Dean refers is a range of practices partic-
ular to, and characteristic of, experimental cinema, where investigations
into the material support—celluloid—are an integral part of the artistic
process. Because experimental filmmaking is, by definition, a quest, no
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Fig. 7.—Harem court in the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad; compiled from
Thomas.
Observe that the courts of the harem give access to three main
groups of chambers, and that those groups have no direct
communication with each other. Each of the three has its own
separate entrance. Observe also that the three bed chambers we
have mentioned have no entrances but those from the inner court;
that they are all richly decorated, and that nothing in their shape or
arrangement admits of the idea that they were for the use of
attendants or others in an inferior station—-oriental custom having at
all times caused such persons to sleep on carpets, mats, or
mattresses, spread on the paved floors at night and put away in
cupboards during the day—and you will allow that the conclusion to
which those who have studied the plan of Sargon’s harem have
arrived, is, at least, a very probable one. Sargon had three queens,
who inhabited the three suites of apartments; each had assigned to
her use one of the state bedrooms we have described, but only
occupied it when called upon to receive her royal spouse.[26] On
other nights she slept in her own apartments among her eunuchs
and female domestics. These apartments comprised a kind of large
saloon open to the sky, but sheltered at one end by a semi-dome (T,
X, and especially Z, where the interior is in a better state of
preservation). Stretched upon the cushions with which the daïs at
this end of the room was strewn, the sultana, if we may use such a
term, like those of modern Turkey, could enjoy the performances of
musicians, singers, and dancers, she could receive visits and kill her
time in the dreamy fashion so dear to Orientals. We have already
given (Vol. I. Fig. 55,) a restoration in perspective of the semi-dome
which, according to Thomas, covered the further ends of these
reception halls.[27]
Suppose this part of the palace restored to its original condition; it
would be quite ready to receive the harem of any Persian or Turkish
prince. The same precautions against escape or intrusion, the same
careful isolation of rival claimants for the master’s favours, would still
be taken. With its indolent and passionate inmates a jealousy that
hesitates at no crime by which a rival can be removed, is common
enough, and among: the numerous slaves a willing instrument for
the execution of any vengeful project is easily found. The moral, like
the physical conditions, have changed but little, and the oriental
architect has still to adopt the precautions found necessary thirty
centuries ago.
We find another example of this pre-existence of modern
arrangements in the vast extent of the palace offices. These consist
of a series of chambers to the south-west of the court marked A, and
of a whole quarter, larger than the harem, which lies in the south-
eastern corner of the mound, and includes several wide quadrangles
(B, C´, C, D, D´, F, G, &c.).[28] We could not describe this part of the
plan in detail without giving it more space than we can spare. We
must be content with telling our readers that by careful study, of their
dispositions and of the objects found in them during the excavations,
M. Place has succeeded in determining, sometimes with absolute
certainty, sometimes with very great probability, the destination of
nearly every group of chambers in this part of the palace. The south-
west side of the great court was occupied by stores; the rooms were
filled with jars, with enamelled bricks, with things made of iron and
copper, with provisions and various utensils for the use of the palace,
and with the plunder taken from conquered countries; it was, in tact,
what would now be called the khazneh or treasury. The warehouses
did not communicate with each other; they had but one door, that
leading into the great court. But opening out of each there was a
small inner room, which served perhaps as the residence of a store-
keeper.
At the opposite side of the court lay what Place calls the active
section of the offices (la partie active des dépendances), the rooms
where all those domestic labours were carried on without which the
luxurious life of the royal dwelling would have come to a standstill.
Kitchens and bakehouses were easily recognized by the contents of
the clay vases found in them; bronze rings let into the wall betrayed
the stables—in the East of our own day, horses and camels are
picketed to similar rings. Close to the stables a long gallery, in which
a large number of chariots and sets of harness could be conveniently
arranged, has been recognized as a coach-house. There are but few
rooms in which some glimpse of their probable destination has not
been caught. In two small chambers between courts A and B, the
flooring stones are pierced with round holes leading to square
sewers, which, in their turn, join a large brick-vaulted drain. The use
of such a contrivance is obvious.[29]
We may fairly suppose that the rooms in which no special
indication of their purpose was found, were mostly servants’
lodgings. They are, as a rule, of very small size.
On the other hand, courts were ample and passages wide. Plenty
of space was required for the circulation of the domestics who
supplied the tables of the seraglio and harem, for exercising horses,
and for washing chariots. If, after the explorations of Place, any
doubts could remain as to the purpose of this quarter of the palace,
they would be removed by the Assyrian texts. Upon the terra-cotta
prism on which Sennacherib, after narrating his campaigns,
describes the restoration of his palace, he says, “the kings, my
predecessors, constructed the office court for baggage, for
exercising horses, for the storing of utensils.” Esarhaddon speaks, in
another inscription, of “the part built by the kings, his predecessors,
for holding baggage, for lodging horses, camels, dromedaries and
chariots.”[30]
We have now made the tour of the palace, and we find ourselves
again before the propylæum whence we set out. This propylæum
must have been one of the finest creations of Assyrian architecture.
It had no fewer than ten winged bulls of different sizes, some
parallel, others perpendicular, to the direction of the wall. There were
six in the central doorway, which was, in all probability, reserved for
the king and his suite. A pair of smaller colossi flanked each of the
two side doors, through which passed, no doubt between files of
guards, the ceaseless crowd of visitors, soldiers, and domestics. The
conception of this façade, with its high substructure, and the
ascending: lines of a double flight of steps connecting it with the
town below, is really grand, and the size of the court into which it led,
not much less than two acres and a half, was worthy of such an
approach.
The huge dimensions of this court are to be explained, not only
by the desire for imposing size, but also by the important part it
played in the economy of the palace. By its means the three main
divisions, the seraglio, the harem, and the khan, were put into
communication with each other. When there were no particular
reasons for making a détour, it was crossed by any one desiring to
go from one part to another. It was a kind of general rendezvous and
common passage, and its great size was no more than necessary for
the convenient circulation of servants with provisions for the royal
tables, of military detachments, of workmen going to their work, of
the harem ladies taking the air in palanquins escorted by eunuchs,
and of royal processions, in which the king himself took part.
As to whether or no any part of the platform was laid out in
gardens, or the courts planted with trees and flowers, we do not
know. Of course the excavations would tell us nothing on that point,
but evidence is not wanting that the masters for whom all this
architectural splendour was created were not without a love for
shady groves, and that they were fond of having trees in the
neighbourhood of their dwellings. The hanging gardens of Babylon
have been famous for more than twenty centuries. The bas-reliefs
tell us that the Assyrians had an inclination towards the same kind of
luxury. On a sculptured fragment from Kouyundjik we find a range of
trees crowning a terrace supported by a row of pointed arches (Vol.
I., Fig. 42); another slab, from the same palace of Sennacherib,
shows us trees upheld by a colonnade (Fig. 8). If Sargon established
in any part of his palace a garden like that hinted at in the sculptured
scene in which Assurbanipal is shown at table with his wife (Vol. I.,
Fig. 27), it must have been in the north-western angle of the
platform, near the temple and staged tower. In this corner of the
mound there is plenty of open space, and being farther from the
principal entrances of the palace, it is more quiet and retired than
any other part of the royal dwelling. Here then, if anywhere, we may
imagine terraces covered with vegetable earth, in which the vine, the
fig, the pomegranate and the tall pyramid of the cypress, could
flourish and cast their grateful shadows. The existence of such
gardens is, however, so uncertain, that we have given them no place
in our attempts at restoration.
 Fig. 8.—A hanging garden; from
Layard.
For the service of such a building a liberal supply of water was
necessary. Whence did it come? and how was it stored? I have been
amazed to find that most of those who have studied the Assyrian
palaces have never asked themselves these questions.[31] One
might have expected to find the building provided, as is usual in hot
countries, with spacious cisterns that could be easily filled during the
rainy season; but neither at Khorsabad, Kouyundjik, nor Nimroud,
have the slightest traces of any such tanks been found. With the
materials at their disposal it would, perhaps, have been too difficult
for the Assyrian builders to make them water-tight. Neither have any
wells been discovered. Their depth must have been too great for
common use. We must remember that the height of the mound has
to be added to the distance below the ordinary surface of the country
at which watery strata would be tapped. It is, on the whole, probable
that the supply for the palace inmates was carried up in earthenware
jars, and that the service occupied a string of women, horses, and
donkeys, passing and repassing between the river, or rather the
canal, that carried the waters of the Khausser to the very foot of the
mound, and the palace, from morning until night.[32]

We have now concluded our study of the arrangements of an

Assyrian palace, and we may safely affirm that those arrangements
were not invented, all standing, by the architect of Sargon. They
were suggested partly by the nature of the materials used, partly by
the necessities to be met. The plan of an Assyrian palace must have
grown in scale and consistence with the power of the Assyrian kings.
As their resources became greater, and their engineers more skilled,
increased convenience and a richer decoration was demanded from
their architects. We have dwelt at length upon Khorsabad, because it
affords the completest and best preserved example of a type often
repeated in the course of ten or twelve centuries. In some respects,
in its constructive processes and the taste of its decorations, for
instance, the Assyrian palace resembled the other buildings of the
country; its chief originality consisted in the number of its rooms and
the principles on which they were distributed.
The method followed in the combination of these countless
apartments is, as M. Place has said, “almost naïve in its
simplicity.”[33] The plan is divided into as many separate
parallelograms as there were departments to be accommodated;
these rectangles are so arranged that they touch each other either at
an angle or by the length of a side, but they never penetrate one into
the other, and they never command one another. They are
contiguous, or nearly so, but always independent. Thus the palace
contains three main divisions, the seraglio, the harem, and the khan.
Each of these is a rectangle, and each lies upon one side of the
great common square marked A on our plan. The same principle
holds good in the minor subdivisions. These consist of smaller
rectangles, also opening upon uncovered courts, and without any
lateral communication with each other. Examine the plan and you will
see the system carried out as rigidly in the seraglio as in the harem.
Thus the various sections of the palace are at once isolated and
close together, so that their occupants could live their lives and
perform their duties in the most perfect independence.
The methodical spirit by which these combinations were
governed was all the more necessary in a building where no
superposition of one story upon another was possible. The whole
palace was one vast ground floor. To arrange on one level more than
thirty courtyards and more than two hundred halls and chambers, to
provide convenient means of access from one to the other, to keep
accessory parts in due subordination, to give each room its most
fitting place in the whole—such was the problem put before the
Assyrian constructor. Profiting by a long experience he solved it with
the utmost judgment, and proved himself to be wanting neither in
forethought, skill, nor inventive power.

§ 3. Other Palaces of Mesopotamia.

The type of palace we have studied at Khorsabad, is, like the

staged towers, a development from Chaldæan structures whose
leading lines were established many centuries before the princes of
Calah and Nineveh began to raise their sumptuous houses. The
sites of the ancient cities of Lower Chaldæa inclose buildings that
seem to date from a very remote epoch, buildings in which we may
recognize the first sketch, as it were, for the magnificent dwellings of
Sargon and Sennacherib.
The most important of these buildings, and the most interesting,
is the ruin at Warka, which Loftus calls Wuswas (Fig. 172, Vol. I.,
letter B on the plan).[34] Unfortunately his explorations were very
partial and his description is very summary, while his plan of the ruin
only gives a small part of it (Fig. 9). There is, however, enough to
show the general character of the structure. The latter stood upon a
rectangular mound about 660 feet long and 500 wide. In spite of the
enormous accumulation of rubbish, Loftus succeeded in making out
an open door in the outer wall, and several chambers of different
sizes communicating with a large court. There was the same
thickness of wall and the same absence of symmetry as at
Khorsabad; the openings were not in the middle of the rooms. In the
long wall, decorated with panels and grooves, which still stands
among the ruins to a height of about twenty-four feet and a length of
about 172 feet, the posterior façade, through which there was no
means of ingress and egress, may be recognized. We have already
copied Loftus’s reproduction of this façade for the sake of its
decoration (Fig. 100, Vol. I.).

Fig. 9.—Plan of a palace at Warka;

from Loftus.
The building at Sirtella (Tello) in which M. de Sarzec discovered
such curious statues, was less extensive; it was only about 175 feet
long by 102 wide. The faces of the parallelogram were slightly
convex, giving to the building something of the general form of a
terra-cotta tub (Fig. 150, Vol I.). Here the excavations were pushed
far enough to give us a better idea of the general arrangement than
we can get at Warka. A great central court, about which numerous
square and oblong apartments are arranged, has been cleared;
there is a separate quarter, which may be the harem; at one angle of
the court the massive stages of a zigguratt may be recognized. The
walls are entirely of burnt brick. They are decorated only on the
principal façade, where the ornaments belong to the same class as
those of Wuswas—semi-columns mixed with grooves in which the
elevation of a stepped battlement is reproduced horizontally.
In none of the ruins of habitations found in this district by the
English explorers, were the chambers other than rectangular. Taylor
cleared a few halls in two buildings at Mugheir (Fig. 10) and Abou-
Sharein (Figs. 11 and 12) respectively. Both of these stood on
artificial mounds, and it is difficult to believe that they were private
dwellings. The walls of several rooms at Mugheir seemed to have
been decorated with glazed bricks; at Abou-Sharein there was
nothing but roughly painted stucco. In one chamber the figure of a
man with a bird on his fist might yet be distinguished.
Fig. 10.—Plan of chambers at Mugheir;
from Taylor.
Fig. 11.—Plan of chambers at Abou-Sharein; from Taylor.
 Fig. 12.—Plan of chambers at Abou-Sharein; from Taylor.
It is in Babylon that we ought to have found the masterpieces of
this architecture, in that capital of Nebuchadnezzar where the
Chaldæan genius, just before it finally lost its autonomy, made the
supreme effort that resulted in the buildings attributed by the
travelled Greeks to their famous Semiramis. We have no reason to
disbelieve Ctesias when he says that there were two palaces in
Babylon, one on the left and another on the right bank of the
Euphrates. “Semiramis,” says Diodorus, following his usual guide,
“built a double residence for herself, close to the river and on both
sides of the bridge, whence she might at one and the same time
enjoy the view over the whole city, and, so to speak, keep the keys
of the most important parts of the capital in her own power. As the
Euphrates runs southward through Babylon, one of these palaces
faced the rising, the other the setting, sun. Round the palace that
faced westwards, she built a wall sixty stades in circumference,
&c.”[35]
 The larger and more richly decorated of the two palaces was that
on the left bank.[36] Its opposite neighbour has vanished and left no
trace. The Euphrates has been gradually encroaching on its right
bank ever since the days of antiquity, and has long ago disunited
and carried away the last stones and bricks of the western palace.
The eastern palace is on the other hand still represented by one of
the great mounds that dominate the plain; this mound is called the
Kasr, or castle (Fig. 183, vol. i.). Its circumference is now not far
short of a mile.[37] Its form is that of an oblong parallelogram, with its
longest side next the river and parallel to it. The flanks of the mound
have, however, been so deeply seamed by searchers for treasure
and building materials that no vestige of its arrangements is now to
be traced. The bricks employed in the building all bore the name of
Nebuchadnezzar.
South of the Kasr there is another mound, rising about one
hundred feet above the plain and very irregular in shape. This is Tel-
Amran-ibn-Ali, or Tell-Amran, (Fig. 183, vol. i.). It is agreed that this
contains all that remains of the hanging gardens, a conjecture that is
confirmed by the numerous tombs dating from the Seleucid, the
Parthian, and the Sassanid periods, which have been found in its
flanks whenever any excavation has been attempted.[38] Tell-Amram
seems to have been a far more popular depository for corpses than
either Babil, the Kasr, or the Birs-Nimroud, a preference which is
easily explained. Whether we believe, with Diodorus, that the
gardens were supported by great stone architraves, or with Strabo,
that they stood upon several stories of vaults, we may understand
that in either case their substructure offered long galleries which,
when the gardens were no longer kept up and the whole building
was abandoned to itself, were readily turned into burial places.[39]
The palace and temple mounds did not offer the same facilities.
They were solid, and graves would have had to be cut in them
before a corpse could be buried in their substance. The Kasr was a
ready-made catacomb into which any number of coffins could be
thrust with the smallest expenditure of trouble.
 Excavations in the Kasr and at Tell-Amran might bring many
precious objects to light, but we can hardly think that any room or
other part of a building in such good preservation as many of those
in the Assyrian palaces would be recovered. To the latter, then, we
shall have again to turn to complete our study of the civil architecture
of Mesopotamia.
If we have placed the edifices from which the English explorers
have drawn so many precious monuments in the second line, it is
not only because their exploration is incomplete, but also because
they do not lend themselves to our purpose quite so readily as that
cleared by MM. Botta and Place. At Khorsabad there have never
been any buildings but those of Sargon; city and palace were built at
a single operation, and those who undertake their study do not run
any risk of confusion between the work of different generations. The
plan we have discussed so minutely is really that elaborated by the
Assyrian architect to whom Sargon committed the direction of the
work. We can hardly say the same of the ruins explored by Mr.
Layard and his successors. The mounds of Nimroud and Kouyundjik
saw one royal dwelling succeed another, and the architects who
were employed upon them hardly had their hands free. They had, to
a certain extent, to reckon with buildings already in existence. These
may sometimes have prevented them from extending their works as
far as they wished in one direction or another, or even compelled
them now and then to vary the levels of their floors; so that it is not
always easy for a modern explorer to know exactly how he stands
among the ruins of their creations, or to clearly distinguish the work
of one date from that of another.[40]
It was at Nimroud that this perplexity was chiefly felt, until the
decipherment of the inscriptions came to enable different periods
and princes to be easily distinguished. This name of Nimroud,
handed down by the ancient traditions collected in Genesis, has
been given to a mound which rises about six leagues to the south of
Mossoul, on the left bank of the Tigris, and both by its form and
elevation attracts the attention of every traveller that descends the
stream. The river is now at some distance from the ruins, but as our
map shows (Fig. 1), it is easy to trace its ancient bed, which was
close to the foot of the mound. The latter is an elongated
parallelogram, about 1,300 yards in one direction, and 750 in the
other (see Vol. I., Fig. 145). Above its weather-beaten sides, and the
flat expanse at their summit, stood, before the excavations began,
the apex of the conical mound in which Layard found the lower
stories of a staged tower (Fig. 13). Calah seems to have been the
first capital of the Assyrian Empire and even to have preserved some
considerable importance after the Sargonids had transported the
seat of government to Nineveh, and built their most sumptuous
buildings in the latter city. Nearly every king of any importance, down
to the very last years of the monarchy, left the mark of his hand upon
Nimroud.[41]
Of all the royal buildings at Calah that which has been most
methodically and thoroughly cleared is the oldest of all, the north-
western palace, or palace of Assurnazirpal (885–860). It has not
been entirely laid open, but the most richly decorated parts,
corresponding to the seraglio at Khorsabad, have been cleared. The
adjoining plan (Fig. 14) shows arrangements quite similar to those of
Sargon’s palace. A large court is surrounded on three sides by as
many rectangular groups of apartments, each group forming a
separate suite, with its own entrances to the court.
 Fig. 13.—General view of Nimroud; from Layard.
The chief entrance faces the north. Two great doorways flanked
by winged and human-headed lions, give access to a long gallery (4
on plan). At the western end of this gallery there is a small platform
or daïs raised several steps above the rest of the floor. Upon this, no
doubt, the king’s throne was placed on those reception days when
subjects and vassals crowded to his feet. Some idea of what such a
reception must have been may be gained from an Indian Durbar, or
from the Sultan of Turkey’s annual review of all his great
functionaries of state at the feast of Courban-Baïram. I witnessed the
latter ceremony in the Old Seraglio in 1857, and when those great
officers, like the mollahs and sheiks of the dervishes, who had
preserved the turban and floating robes of the East, bent to the feet
of Abd-al-Medjid, I was irresistibly reminded of the pompous
ceremonials sculptured on the walls of Nineveh and Persepolis.
 Fig. 14.—-Plan of the north-western palace at Nimroud;
from Layard.
The walls of this saloon were entirely lined in their lower parts
with reliefs representing the king surrounded by his chief officers,
offering prayers to the god of his people and doing homage for the
destruction of his enemies and for successful hunts (Fig. 15). The
figures in these reliefs are larger than life. A doorway flanked by two
bulls leads into another saloon (2 on plan) rather shorter and
narrower than the first. In this the ornamentation is less varied. The
limestone slabs are carved with eagle-headed genii in pairs,
separated by the sacred tree (Vol. I., Fig. 8). The inner wall of this
saloon is pierced with a fine doorway leading into the central court
(1), while in one corner there is a narrower opening into a third long
hall (6), which runs along the eastern side of the court. It was in this
latter room that the finest sculptures, those that may perhaps be
considered the masterpieces of the Assyrian artists, were found.
Behind this saloon there was another, rather longer, but not quite so
wide (7); then five chambers, completing the palace on this side. To
the south of the great court there were two large halls (3 and 5)
similar in arrangement to those already mentioned but less richly
decorated, and several smaller rooms opening some into the halls,
others into the passages on the west of the court. As to whether the
latter was inclosed or not on the west by buildings like those on the
other three sides we cannot now be certain, as on that side the
mound has been much broken away by the floods of the Tigris,
which once bathed its foot. There is nothing to forbid the hypothesis
of a grand staircase on this side leading up from the river bank.[42]
In the central and south-western palaces, built by Shalmaneser II.
and his grandson Vulnirari III. the excavations have not been carried
far enough to allow the plans to be restored. The explorers have
been content to carry off inscriptions and fragments of sculpture in
stone, ivory, and metal.[43]
The south-western palace, or palace of Esarhaddon, has been
the scene of explorations sufficiently prolonged to give us some idea
of its general arrangements (Fig. 16). A curious circumstance was
noticed by the English explorers. While the works of Assurbanipal
bore the strongest marks of care and skill, those of Esarhaddon
showed signs of having been carried out with a haste that amounted
to precipitation, and his palace was never finished. Nearly all the
alabaster slabs were taken from older buildings.[44] Most of these
were fixed with their original carved surfaces against the wall, but a
few were turned the proper way. Doubtless, had time served, these
would have been smoothed down and reworked. Nothing was
finished, however, but the bulls and sphinxes at the doors (Vol. I. Fig.
85) and a few reliefs in their immediate neighbourhood.[45]
Esarhaddon died, no doubt, before the completion of the work, which
was never continued.
Fig. 15.—Assurnazirpal offering a libation to the gods after his victory over a wild
bull. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
And yet his architect was by no means lacking in ambition. Upon
the southern face of the building he intended to build the largest hall,
which, so far as we know, was ever attempted in an Assyrian palace.
This saloon would have been about 170 feet long by 63 feet wide. As
soon as the walls were raised he saw that he could not roof it in.
Neither barrel vault nor timber ceiling could have so great a span. He
determined to get over the difficulty by erecting a central wall down
the major axis of the room, upon which either timber beams or the
springers of a double vault could rest. This wall was pierced by
several openings, and was stopped some distance short of the two
end walls. It divided the saloon into four different rooms (marked 1,
2, 3, 4 on our plan) each of which was by no means small. Even with
this modification the magnificence of the original plan did not entirely
disappear. The two colossal lions opposite the door were very wide
apart, and all the openings between the various subdivisions were
large enough to allow the eye to range freely over the whole saloon,
and to grasp the first thought of the architect in its entirety.