Narracje minimalne – narracje liminalne, czyli film w paradygmacie interfejsów

TikTokization has become not only a media fact, but – like everything related to the web – also a socio-cultural one. Being on TikTok has become a symbol of cultural energy of the web, conditioned by its exposed position within both the media themselves and mobile applications. Also within strictly film, offline (cinema and television) or streaming practices, one can now notice a trend towards telling stories in the manner inspired by the features TikTok is the epitome of: minimizing narratives in favor of small stories (micronarratives) or the aesthetics of palimpsest. Such narratives situated between different orders of visibility, in reference to Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener (inspired by the concepts of Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep), I define as liminal. It is a type of visibility in which – owing to the presence of screen messages of various electronic devices in the film diegesis (and thus also non-cinematic and non-TV dispositives: smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.) – the filmic “window on the world” is replaced by the Surface of another screen, into which the viewer enters through subsequent visual interfaces of the film. As a result of this type of screen change, the traditional filmic “window on the world” is replaced by the figure of terminal which film represents with all its apparatus or refers its content to the world of image, thus neutralizing the image contact that is not specific to the film and making it invisible as an area of transition. A number of visual orders, switches and apparatuses in the discussed films (Cam, Spree, Netflix series Emily in Paris) are constantly exchanged in the space of the viewer-observer drift – from overview to insight, creating an interface circuit of being in contact with screens. In this way, film creates an unstable position of the subject entangled in a network of quasi-social relations, being itself their fictitious representation.