Phenomenological Juxtaposition in the Experimental Cinema of Stan Brakhage and Manuela de Laborde

This article examines the physical and bodily aspects of superimposition in The Wonder Ring (Stan Brakhage, 1955) and As Without So Within (Manuela de Laborde, 2016). Creating a dialogue between Gene Youngblood’s concept of synesthetic cinema and Karen Barad’s idea of agential realism, I suggest doing a new materialist phenomenology to better grasp the ways the films experiment with more-than-human worlds. In particular, I identify superimposition as an intra-action through which grades of dissimilarity arise, vary and shape an entangled experience. My main argument is that in the decentered compositions of Brakhage’s and de Laborde’s works, the singularity of image, its temporal, spatial, corporeal and material dimensions vanish into an inescapable multiplicity. It is not just a pose, but a matter of juxtaposition in which there is no sense of superiority, perception lacks any predominant center, we are, together with nonhuman beings, in the midst of becomings, of continual metamorphoses.