Ayisha Abraham’s Straight 8

At stake in this article is the very act of writing on expanded cinema. Provoked by Gene Youngblood’s canonical offering of fluid state of media as it moved out of the exclusive domain of celluloid to a range of practices that include video, computer and so on, I look at practices in India that exhibit a similar movement out of the movie theatre. It is one matter to identify the practice of expanded cinema but it is quite a different matter, perhaps more challenging, to translate those practices intro a form that is attentive to the works. This article draws on Ayisha Abraham’s Straight 8 (2005). How to approach a film, when to leave a video, and how to meander through a gallery space are some of the pathways adopted in this article, modes of exploration that return to the act of writing.