Vitalization and spectacle in Thanassis Rentzis’s Bio-Graphia and Corpus

Thanassis Rentzis’s work offers an investigation into the nature of the cinematic medium and the constellations of industry, spectacle and subjectivity, most explicitly demonstrated in two films he made in the 1970s, Bio-Graphia (1975) and Corpus (1979). Largely influenced by collage and pre-cinematic techniques, these are the most essayistic of Rentzis’s films and they set out to trace human sensibilities that were central to the rise of audio-visual culture. Their main themes concern the fragmentation of representation in modernity, and correspondingly, a mutual constitution of the audio-visual with interactions throughout social life. The article will argue that the films do not insist on spectacle as a negation of life, but on a vitalist approach of audio-visuality whereby the dissemination of images relies on physiological and perceptual modes of spectatorship.