Migrational aesthetics: On experience in the cinema and the museum

The migration of cinematic forms and content from the movie theatre to the gallery is often analysed as a passage between two institutions and modes of experience, while the influence of other media and practices tends to be neglected. This article discusses three constellations in which the relation between cinema and the museum is complicated by other types of experience: Stan VanDerBeek’s immersive ‘movie-drome’, Jean Baudrillard’s polemic analysis of the Centre Pompidou as a paradigmatic scene of distraction and commodification and Dominique Païni’s evocation of the Benjaminian flâneur as the prototypical model of the ambulating museum visitor. In highlighting these three facets, the article proposes to recognize distraction and attention as key terms for conceptualizing the encounters between cinema and the exhibition space.