Edited by Francesco Federici (Università Iuav di Venezia) / Elisa Mandelli (Link Campus University)

The pervasiveness of moving images in exhibition spaces is one of the most characteristic features of the contemporary artistic and media scene, and manifests itself in forms that are continually redefined in their use and in artistic research. Much has been written in an aesthetic perspective on the so-called cinema effect in contemporary art (Dubois 2006), on the relocation (Casetti 2012) of cinema in the museum, and on that set of phenomena that have been identified at different times as “cinéma d’exposition” (Royoux 1997, 2000), “other cinema” (Bellour 2000), “artist’s cinema” (Connolly 2009), and “othered cinema” (Balsom 2013). Furthermore, a growing amount of research recently has come to question the forms of penetration of moving images in everyday spaces, from urban scenarios to private contexts (De Rosa 2013, Ravesi 2011).

In this second area, which distances itself from an analysis of artistic phenomena in a strict sense, however, there are still many issues to be investigated. In particular, scholars have not yet taken adequately into consideration the role of moving images in the design of exhibition spaces, here understood not only as museum itineraries dedicated to cinema, from a historical, aesthetic or technological point of view (i.e. the exhibitions proposed by the Cinémathèque française or at the Turin Film Museum), but also permanent or temporary exhibitions of museums such as those of history, science and technology, archeology or ethnography (i.e. the museums curated by Studio Azzurro). There is a further absence regarding the exhibition forms of fairs and great exhibitions, as well as commercial presentations in shop windows and promotional spaces, which exploit moving images in various ways. In addition, there is a need for more widely researched projects that come out of the museum and enter the urban space, intersecting with a city’s architectural layout, as in the case of festivals (such as the Screen City Biennal or the Façade Festivals), in the directions of videomapping or hybridization with art, as in the case of Doug Aitken in New York with Sleepwalkers (2007) or in Rome with Frontier (2009).

The forms of writing of museographic paths are influenced by increasingly sophisticated exhibition design techniques, which can range from the use of video devices to new forms of augmented and virtual reality, as is usefully demonstrated by some museographic activities in different contexts. The writing of space as we intend to analyze it in this special issue is to be understood as the process of constructing a physical and cognitive path, which structures both the spatiality and the temporality of fruition.

How do moving images help to shape of the spaces in which they are installed? How are the forms of spectatorship structured? In which forms are exhibits integrated with each other and with moving images, to build a museographic itinerary? How were moving images used in the various types of exhibition and presentation spaces during the 20th Century? What kinds of supports are used and how can one trace their history? What is the role of the exhibition designer and how does s/he work with moving images? And what is the role of new technologies, and in particular of digital media, in these contexts and practices.