In praise of intermission

Abstract

The “intermission” become unnoticed, it is considered a waste, a subordinate moment. A passageway which might be necessary but not particularly worthy of attention, precisely because, it is a place where attention falls or commitment is loosed. Its status makes it an interesting place to investigate. A place where something happens that changes a continuum. Something unexpected or something hidden, something that raises changes without a modifier subject. The intermission is present in numerous physiological phenomena that we don’t really notice (from blinking to breathing). Sometimes, however, we adopt it as a conscious strategy to improve a condition, a process. We have always used it to give shape to stories in images, from polyptychs, comics, photographs, to video installations. In the history of Studio Az-zurro, for example, the intermission has changed over time with the development of the forms of staging and with the technological mutations. At the beginning of the twentieth century, some authors as Aby Warburg, Dziga Vertov… have delved into the concept of intermission becoming one of the centrepiece for their own work and research practices and for their reflections about images.