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supports the optical printer, but the conscious-ness (imaginations, desires, beliefs) which, inpart, co-constitutes that apparatus.
Conclusion
e ways of viewing the moving image archive,particularly focusing on the notion of duplica-
tion through the apparatus o the optical print
-er, as posed by the initial concern of this paper,takes on a dierent character when viewedthrough the lens of discourse network theory.e optical printer, a seemingly benign instru-ment within the production and archiving of lm, can now be seen as a philosophical ap-paratus, an active inscribing agent, with whichthe lm work can also be seen as indexical. isbespoke instrument of the early lm studiosand the London Filmmaker’s Co-op can besituated within the contexts of both illusionistand non-illusionist cinema – forms that seemat odds, yet are linked materially in practice –and nds some resonance in the archival pro-cess. e optical printer can be seen as a partof a network that includes the optical toys andchanged ‘subject’ position that, according toboth Kittler (1999) and Crary (1992), occursin the nineteenth century. As such, the opticalprinter becomes imbued with the very notionsof ‘subjects’ that read the multiple as everyday,
particularly in relation to the conceptions o
time and space that underpin our sense of cau-sality and agency.It is in developing Crary’s notion of the changed’subject’ position, extending it through thethought experiment of von Uexkull to accountfor the further immaterial (metaphysical) di-mensions of human and non-human agents,that this paper attempts to overcome the bur-den of the indexical link when reading throughStructural Materialist practice. As such, it is nolonger a question of the illusionist or non-illu-sionist cinematic image; rather, thinking aboutthe process of duplication through its appa-ratus and processes opens up an (im)materialnetwork that accounts for both the materialapparatus and human creativity and imagina-tion as co-constituted within the archival prac-tice itself. Such recognition incites a theoreticalframework that moves from a material towards
an immaterial conception o the moving imagearchive.
