This manuscript introduces the reader to the unique case study of Algeria. Since 2019 the country has been undergoing a social and political revolution, similar to the Arab Springs of 2011, which seeks to overthrow a long lasting “fachade democracy” and authoritarian military currently in power via a coup d’etat. This military elite which, to the eyes of the Western powers is trying to establish a constitutional democracy, is in fact attempting to perpetuate itself in power via the control of: the web 2.0, 3.0, cellular networked technologies such as 3G and 4G, social media such as Facebook or Instagram, You Tube, Vimeo, the press and the mass media; imprisoning and in some cases murdering activists, lawyers and intellectuals which use these mediums as means to denounce basic violations of human rights. Through a number of video and audio interviews carried out in Algeria and the autonomous region of the Kabyle with key players of the revolution during the Ramadan of 2019, this manuscript will herald the hypothesis that Algeria is in fact a “Dictature 4.0”, a “plen air” prison supporting radical islamism, human rights violations to minorities such as the: Amazigh or the Mozabites Berber and their cultural heritage. A regime exercising an absolute control over networked technologies, which in fact and paradoxically are playing a vital role in connecting and informing those which resist this fundamental authoritarianism.

The paper theorizes the current shrinking of the distance between CCTV and POV regimes of visibility departing from the analysis of the tragic murdering of Alison Parker by Bryce Williams live on TV. From this example, the paper proposes a number of case studies that confirm this trend and clarify its political implication.

In the following article, I argue that Stiegler’s cinematographic consciousness finds its formal expression in the cinematic figure of point of view [POV] – or otherwise said, that this type of consciousness is structured according to the aesthetic and formal feature of cinematographic POV. As a consequence, I propose the notion of archi-POV as the bridge between cinematographic consciousness and archi-cinema. From this point of departure, the paper suggests we look at the cinematic technic of POV both as the secret cinematic engine and as the figure of a cinematic apocalypse. Nowadays, POV is proliferating and has become one of the most common technoaesthetic interfaces across multiple networked platforms, and, as such, one of the most contested political-aesthetic battlefields of our time (POV-opticon). The paper proposes to understand the capability of cinema and new technologies of vision to short-circuit (Stiegler, 2011) archi-cinema, via the re-invention of the figure of cinematic POV which short-circuit the archi-POV. Furthermore, it frames Stiegler’s notion of stereotypes and traumatypes produced by cinematic and postcinematic technologies via Guattari’s notion of refrain. Finally, the interest of both Stiegler and Guattari towards the notion of transitional object by psychoanalyst Winnicott is introduced to articulate a schizoanalytic therapy with the forms of stereotypic refrains produced by cinematic and post-cinematic technologies, a therapy that can be activated by the truly transversal (Genosko 2014: 49-87) nature of the figure of the (archi-)POV.

Artistic research can be faster than scientific research and can react much more directly to current social and technological developments.

Talk given within the panel "On the Fringe of Visual Perception: Abstract Cinema Under Influence (Hallucinations, Drugs, Experiments and Altered States), together with Enrico Camporesi, Marie Rebecchi, Eline Grignard 2017 NECS Conference on Sensibility and Senses, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, July 2017

Eisenstein reloaded: new directions for research This interdisciplinary panel explores the recent trends in the reappropriation of the legacy of revolutionary Russian filmmaker and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein as more of his texts come to light and become translated (his late magnum opus Method, Moscow 2002 and the recently translated Notes for a General History of Cinema, Amsterdam 2015) and as film theory raises new issues pertinent for the twenty first century. It offers an analysis of the mobilization of Eisenstein’s heritage by various approaches within film studies and neighboring disciplines and provides some examples of the emerging ‘readings’ of Eisenstein from the positions of psychology and neurosciences, physiognomy, graphology and chirognomy. The panel bridges historical perspective in film studies and current advances in what can be described as ‘psy’ disciplines - the disciplines that aim to both understand subjectivity and to form, mold or construct a subject, in which attention to the body and the senses become increasingly prominent. Reflecting on more than thirty years of experience as a leading Eisenstein scholar, Professor Ian Christie discusses the evolving graph of Eisenstein’s reputation – away from films and towards a closer engagement with his writings and graphics that allow a growing number of theoretical perspectives to claim his legacy. Drawing on her expertise in neurosciences, Anna Kolesnikova explores how Eisenstein’s treatment of expressive movement, embodiment of emotional theme and pathos anticipates embodied perspective in contemporary film studies. Cultural theorists Ada Ackerman and Olga Kataeva shed light on Eisenstein’s interest in graphology and chirognomy and his fascination with occultism – dimensions of his creative method which are much in need of further exploration and understanding. Film scholar and psychologist Julia Vassilieva revisits Eisenstein’s collaboration with cultural psychologist Lev Vygotsky and neuropsychologist Alexander Luria and analyses how it enabled Eisenstein to address Grundproblem, the main problem of art researched in Method. The physiognomy of lines: graphology and chirognomony as components of Eisensteinian creative method. Another axis of Eisenstein's research which can be related to the fields of neuroscience and psychology concerns handwriting in general and that of mentally affected persons in particular. While studying the works of graphologists belonging to opposing schools of graphology (French and German, according to W. Benjamin) Eisenstein analyzes and construes handwriting and drawing as various expressions of discharge of a psychosomatic conflict, a material he intends to articulate to his systematic and general attempt to define a creative method in arts and especially in cinematography. Being himself a patient of graphologists Schermann and Zuev-Insarov, acquiring an important amount of books on the topic, Eisenstein is interested in the physiognomy of lines, in the expression of an emotional tension which is translated into a graphic trace. This interest can be tracked down to his youth, when he discovers physionomony and is appealed by the classification of the world it proposes ; Eisenstein then is even involved in chirognomony and dedicates some of his youth material to the subject, in a conjunction of science and esotericism which deserves deep discussion. Relying on unpublished documents from Russian archives and from the Eisenstein apartment museum in Moscow, our lecture will propose an analysis of the “inexact” science of graphology as components of the Eisensteinian cinematographic method.