Actors & Extras

The publication Actors & Extras appears following the exhibition of the same name at argos. Five authors highlight the theme of characterisation from various angles. Georges Didi-Huberman’s contribution People exposed, People as Extras explores how cinema represents the masses. Sven Lütticken highlights the performance tradition in the visual arts in relation to the production of subjectivity. On the basis of the classic cinema, in Figures of the Extra, Paul Willemsen composes a typology of the extra and subsequently gives attention to the aberrant status of the extra in modern cinema and contemporary art. Thomas Trummer’s Volonté Générale. Extras in Film and Democracy questions the responsibility of the anonymous individual. With The Passing Actor: Sketch of a Renaissance, Jean-Louis Comolli analyses how the concept of acting in a documentary has a different interpretation than in a fiction film. The last part of the publication describes the selected works in the exhibition.

authors: Georges Didi-Huberman, Sven Lütticken, Paul Willemsen, Thomas Trummer, Jean-Louis Comolli
editors: Paul Willemsen & Thomas Trummer
publisher: argos editions (Brussels) & Simon Arts program
year: 2009
book: 16,8 x 23,4 cm, 168 pages, English
ISBN: 9789076855004
price: €15