Out of Joint. Audiovisual Media as Technologies of the Time

In this paper, I raise the question of whether audiovisual media, notably cinema, can be considered as technologies of the time and if so, by what means and dynamics they operate on, in and with time1. The first two sections adopt a top-down approach. In section 2 I examine what forms time takes on in modernity, while I dedicate section 3 to the role played by cinema in this context. The second part, in turn, takes a bottom-up approach: in section 4 I take into consideration the processes of constitution of subjective temporal experience as they emerge from contemporary cognitive neuroscience; section 5, in turn, focuses on a couple of theories on the transition from the subjective to the social experience of time. Finally, in the last section, I propose a hypothesis about the specific role of cinema in the transition from the subjective to the social dimension of temporality.