It is said that in 1637, the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher asked to be taken into the crater of Mount Vesuvius in order to take a closer look at the volcano about to erupt. In his book of 1665, Mundus subterraneus, Kircher presents a comprehensive inventory of the geological knowledge of his age, interweaving considerations of underground water networks, petrifaction, and insect formations, even dedicating a chapter to fireworks. A phantasmagoria enthusiast who was among the first to codify the principle of the magic lantern, Kircher saw a relationship between the sight of the erupting volcano and these proto-cinematic projections of light.

With the rise of the digital film, whether shot on cell phones, distributed on You- Tube, or exhibited in art museums or galleries, cinema is currently undergoing a similarly eruptive metamorphosis. The medium seems to exceed its own boundaries; but is this medium still cinema? Has the art of cinema stayed the same through this digital transformation, or has it changed? For me, this question raises the issue of plasticity. Plasticity: the ability to bestow form on a substance, but also contradictorily, the resistance of the substance to this very transformation. Plasticity differs from elasticity, which holds the possibility of reverting to an original form without retaining the imprint of its transformation. Rather, plasticity designates the propensity of a material to undergo permanent deformation, the capacity to change in response to environmental demands as neurons and synapses change their internal parameters in response to their experiences, their memories. Is cinema plastic? Can it transform itself and/or resist deformation?

Contemporary visual art would seem to represent the limits of cinema's transformation and plasticity. As a filmmaker, my own work explores these limits. My films are situated midway between documentary and the installation film. I can shoot a film for a screening or a museum. Do these possibilities mean cinema has become a plastic art?

I will put two questions face to face. Is cinema a plastic art? And if so, what constitutes the plasticity of cinema? It was in the mid-twenties, during the prolific period of silent cinema, that the plasticity of cinema – the form bestowed upon its material basis but also the medium's resistance to its deformation – was most often called into question.