Elegy of Ephemera: Exploring Decay in Bill Morrison’s Cinema

The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object . . . which we do not suspect.1     – Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

Introduction

Renowned for his innovative use of archival footage and evocative imagery, Bill Morrison’s filmography defies the constraints of conventional storytelling. Through a collage-like approach that juxtaposes disparate elements from decaying archival footage, his films disrupt the linear progression of time, inviting viewers to contemplate the multiplicity of temporal perspectives and the interconnectedness of past, present, and future.

His cinematic oeuvre acts as a metacinematic narrative on the evolution of the filmic medium as well as a philosophical exploration of the nature of temporality. In this sense, we can trace a parallel between Morrison’s’ films and the 20th-century philosophical redefinition of the concept of time that challenged traditional Newtonian conceptions and laid the groundwork for a more nuanced understanding of temporal dynamics.

This essay explores the symbiotic relationship between Morrison’s innovative approach to filmmaking and the profound philosophical inquiries that have reshaped our understanding of time. Through a close examination of his seminal works, including Decasia and Dawson City: Frozen Time, we aim to elucidate the parallels between his aesthetic experimentation and the philosophical underpinnings that have propelled discourse on temporality throughout the 20th century. Thus, this exploration seeks not only to illuminate Morrison’s artistic contributions but also to engage in a broader dialogue on the nature of time and its profound implications for human experience.

Visual Ruins and the Sense of Time

Bill Morrison is a pioneering figure in experimental filmmaking. Celebrated for his innovative use of deteriorating archival footage, his filmmaking process involves extensive research to uncover a variety of archival sources, including newsreels, feature films, and sometimes amateur footage, followed by a meticulous synthesis of the discovered footage into a newly structured narrative of his own design.2 He typically collaborates with composers, lyricists, and archivists to develop and produce his films, which are frequently showcased during live performances.

The specific conceptual approach to the film composition and editing – based on the use of decaying celluloid reels – implies an underlying conceptual approach to cinematic storytelling, one that acts as a memento of temporal disruptions and metamorphoses. In this sense, Morrison’s filmography can be analyzed as a visual metaphor of the 20th century philosophical re-evaluation of concepts of time in light of its relativistic, subjective experience.

In the early decades of the century, many philosophers confronted a shifting paradigm regarding the nature of time, spurred by the confluence of multiple factors. The emergence of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity challenged longstanding Newtonian notions of time as an absolute, immutable entity. Instead, he posited time as a relative, malleable dimension, intricately intertwined with space. Concurrently, the catastrophic upheavals of the two world wars shattered humanity’s faith in linear progress and stability, inducing a profound existential crisis.

Grappling with the complexities of temporality in an increasingly modernized world, philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, and Gilles Deleuze posited alternative conceptions that emphasized the experiential and qualitative aspects of temporality.

Husserl elaborated the idea that time is not merely an external framework but an intrinsic aspect of conscious experience. He rejected the notion of time as a linear succession of discrete moments, instead viewing the present, past, and future as modes of appearance through which we engage with the world. For Husserl, time is not a container for events but a dynamic flow that shapes our perceptions and interpretations of reality.3

Bergson’s notion of “duration” challenged the mechanistic view of time prevalent in scientific discourse, advocating for a holistic understanding of temporal experiences as a dynamic, indivisible flow.4

Some decades later, Deleuze further developed some of these concepts, theorizing how time is not a fixed, pre-existing framework but rather an immanent field of potentiality, constantly in flux and ceaselessly unfolding.5 He conceptualizes time as a series of “virtual” or “intensive” multiplicities, wherein past, present, and future coalesce into a dynamic continuum of becoming. In this view, the past is not a static repository of events but a reservoir of virtualities that continuously inform and shape the present moment. Similarly, the future is not predetermined but emerges as a realm of possibilities that are actualized through processes of becoming.

Throughout the century, avant-garde artists and experimental filmmakers embarked on a radical exploration of such a new sense of time, exploring new narrative forms and rejecting traditional linear structures in favor of fragmented approaches. To mention but a few, we could recall the works of filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein’s features; Man Ray’s “L’Étoile de mer” (1928); Fernand Léger’s “Ballet Mécanique” (1924); Germaine Dulac’s “La Coquille et le Clergyman” (1928); the works of Maya Deren; Chris Marker’s “La Jetée” (1962); and Stan Brakhage’s “Dog Star Man,” 1964.

It is in this context that we can situate Morrison’s film production. Through the use of decaying film footage, his films invite audiences to reconsider their relationship to time and narrative, reflecting a broader cultural zeitgeist characterized by a rupture with conventional modes of perception and representation. Cinematic time ceases to be a mere backdrop for narrative events and instead becomes a central focus of the filmic visual and conceptual exploration. Dreamlike imagery, nonlinear editing, and temporal loops express the existential uncertainty and temporal fluidity of the postwar world. The use of archival footage generates a super-cinematic intertextuality, a philosophical inquiry activating a multifaceted exploration of time, memory, and human consciousness.

The Poetics of Deterioration

One of Morrison’s early masterpiece is Decasia (2002), a collage of decaying archival footage from early cinema films, originally conceived as part of the multimedia theatricalization of Michael Gordon’s symphony, since its first performance in Switzerland in 2001. The film represents the epitome of the haunting allure and captivating beauty of decaying celluloid films, typical of cinematic works produced before 1950.

Prior to this date, cinematic production was based on nitrate film, also known as “celluloid.” This material possessed unparalleled advantages in terms of visual quality. Its unique properties facilitated exceptional brilliance and a wide range of grayscale tones unmatched by any other medium. However, nitrate film is highly flammable and decomposes fast if not stored under proper conditions, generating hues, haloes, and distortions of the film and of the images captured on its surface. For practical reasons, in the mid-20th century celluloid was replaced by acetate, and this meant that thousands of film reels began to decay and were eventually either lost, disposed of, or stored in dusty (often forgotten) archives.

In order to produce Decasia, the director spent many hours in the film archives of the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, and the George Eastman House, among others, searching for particularly evocative examples of decay. The chemical decomposition of the film generates visually mesmerizing effects. Some images seem to disintegrate; others transform into luminous effects that suggest solarization; others undergo mirror-like distortions or transform into animated inkblots, ready to become whatever the viewer chooses.6 Some images seem almost too beautiful to be true, like when a turn-of-the-century boxer trains with a decomposing nitrate stain that has erased the punching bag, or when explorers discover what appears to be a shapeless alien mass pulsating in a cave.

Conceived as a tribute to Disney’s Fantasia, Decasia is also structured in a series of movements. To unify the various sections, the director employs recurring images of a newsreel showing the birth of a film in an industrial laboratory, the moment it emerges from the amniotic fluid of the developer, as well as the repetition of circular images, like a rotating dervish or an Indian weaver at the loom.

As the images gradually disintegrate before the viewers’ eyes, they evoke the metaphorical implications of deterioration with the passing of time, leading us to consider how the visual recording of events and individuals can be as tricky as memory itself. As Bernd Herzogenrath observes:

In Morrison’s matter-image, film is revealed as image-producing materiality, not as an illusion of reality, as in classic film. Since, for the audience of Decasia, the (re)entry of the material in the medial form appears as the very destruction of that form, the result is a paradoxical mise-en-scène of the simultaneity of appearance and disappearance, of destruction and construction. The filmic material is not (only) a transparent transmitter of images and meaning, but rather instrumental in its construction – the subject of “time” in Decasia is presented on the filmic material directly, by the material’s “treatment” by time itself.”7

Like Bergson’s conception of duration as a direct apprehension of the flow of consciousness, Morrison’s films elicit feelings of nostalgia, wonder, and contemplation, embodying a juxtaposition between the quantifiable chronology of material objects and the nebulous temporality of subjective memories. Just as Bergson argues that memory is not a mere reproduction of the past but an active reconfiguration of lived experience, the chemical distorted images of found film reels imbue within them new meaning and significance, recontextualizing the past in light of contemporary concerns and sensibilities.8

The materiality of the images impressed on the celluloid film mirrors the tangible life of people, events, and material objects. Visual fragments of the past transcend their numerical arrangement, assuming a deeper significance as they intertwine with the subjective perception of viewers.

The fleeting moments when the readable images of nitrate film slip into bizarre distortions caused by the physical decay of the medium lead us to contemplate the profound impact of time in the materiality of our daily lives, as within our inner selves. We are changed and distorted by time much in the same way as the film reels have been eroded and reshaped by the passing decades. As celluloid disintegrates and distorts, the images undergo a metamorphosis, acting as a visual representation of the passage of time, mirroring the gradual erosion of memory.

The Transformative Power of Cinematic Recollection

Decayed film footage confronts viewers with the fragility of existence, inviting them to gaze on images imbued with the scars of time. The very materiality of the film itself becomes a testament to the transience of all things. As Hanjo Berressem observes:

Movies are sometimes called celluloid dreams in the sense that they project, by way of the silver screen, a culture’s collective beliefs, hopes, and aspirations into that culture’s communal imaginary. In the expression “celluloid dreams,” however, one can also read “dreams” as a verb rather than a noun. The celluloid – the material carrier medium of the movie – dreams in the sense that while it sleeps, something surfaces that might be called its “optical unconscious.”9

The decaying celluloid becomes a metaphorical window into the subconscious of the medium itself, unveiling a realm of forgotten memories, lost histories, and fragmented narratives that lies dormant within the film reels.

In The Great Flood (2013), Morrison uses archival footage to explore the devastating impact of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, one of the most destructive river floods in American history. During that spring, the river breached its earthen embankments in 145 locations, inundating over 27,000 square miles of land. One enduring consequence of this catastrophe was the forced displacement of sharecroppers to Northern cities, where they confronted the challenges of adapting to an industrial society. The cultural impact of this mass migration reverberated deeply, particularly in the realm of music. It catalyzed the evolution of acoustic blues into electrified blues bands, which flourished in urban centers like Memphis, Detroit, and Chicago, shaping the musical landscape of the twentieth century.

It’s not by chance that the film emerges as a collaborative endeavor between Bill Morrison and guitarist and composer Bill Frisell. In 2011, the creative duo embarked on a journey from New Orleans to Chicago traveling along the Mississippi River and retracing the path of the flood’s devastation.

Morrison meticulously curated archival footage sourced from repositories such as the Fox Movietone Newsfilm Library and the National Archives, reconstructing the devastation wrought by the flood through a combination of historical imagery and contemporary interviews. Some scenes depict submerged landscapes, where the tops of trees punctuate the gleaming gray expanse of water; others capture a bedraggled dog clinging to a floating piece of tin, a couple waving from the roof of their car moments before it succumbs to the water current, and tent cities emerging on isolated hills. The mass migration of blacks from the South to the North is featured by clips showing their departure and arrival, culminating in a finale featuring black musicians’ resilient spirit and creative expression in the face of adversity.

At some point Morrison interjects a rapid succession of pages from a 1927 Sears & Roebuck catalog, offering a glimpse into the Roaring Twenties, a time of economic prosperity, cultural dynamism, and social change that occurred in North America, Western Europe, and other parts of the world. This striking interlude offers a poignant reflection on the socioeconomic disparities of the time.

Each section of the film, delineated by chapter headings and punctuated by fades-to-black, gradually succumbs to the deterioration of the pellicule, with distortion and striations mirroring the erosion and devastation undergone by cities and countrysides.

Archival footage serves as a repository of temporal fragments, each laden with its own unique resonance and significance. In this sense, we can find a parallel between the decaying aesthetic features of the celluloid film reels and Bergson’s analysis of time, according to which every temporal moment is inherently dynamic, perpetually in flux and transitioning.

Unlike space, which can maintain constancy through the simultaneity of coexisting points, time is marked by its ephemeral nature: each passing moment swiftly yields to the next, in an unending succession. Our perception of time is shaped by our consciousness and the continuous flow of our inner experience.

In Bergsonian terms, the multiplicity of perspectives and points of view offered by archival footage transcends the numerical quantification of time, presenting instead a kaleidoscopic array of qualitative variations and subjective impressions. Through the co-penetration of images, sounds, and emotions, archival material facilitates a deeper engagement with the complexities of temporal existence. Duration, therefore, understood as lived human experience, can manifest itself not through an intellective act (the extensional dimension of the temporalization of time), but in virtue of an intuition (in this case, the intentional dimension of the visualization of time through the decaying film celluloid).10

Bergson emphasizes the interconnectedness of past, present, and future within the continuum of duration, challenging a linear and static conception of time. The intellect apprehends reality through analysis and conceptualization, while intuition grasps reality directly and holistically. According to this point of view, intuition is the faculty that enables us to apprehend the qualitative depth of duration, transcending the limitations of conceptual thought. Through intuition, we access the vital, creative impulse that animates the universe and gives rise to novelty and change.

The distinction between intellect and intuition finds resonance in Morrison’s approach to filmmaking, since decaying film footage presents the recorded images of past events as new images that bypass rational thought and tap into the subconscious realms of memory and emotion. Fragmented and distorted images evoke an intuitive understanding of the passage of time, eliciting visceral reactions that transcend logical interpretation. Such a visual recording and inscription of memory, far from being ethereal or eternal, is firmly rooted in materiality and subject to the ravages of decay.

Memory and Materiality

In Dawson City: Frozen Time, Morrison uncovers the forgotten history of Dawson City, a remote Canadian town once the thriving center of the American Gold Rush that started in 1848. The film begins with the discovery in 1978 of 533 reels of nitrate film buried beneath the permafrost of a decommissioned swimming pool located in Dawson City. These excavated reels offer a vivid portrayal of the rise and fall of the city: from the ancestral lands of the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin people to a bustling frontier town and eventually an entertainment epicenter. However, the euphoria of prosperity was short-lived, as the encroachment of industrial monopolies and the depletion of natural resources ushered in an era of decline and poverty.

In the early 1920s, as silent cinema flourished artistically, the town became the final destination in a distribution network controlled by film companies. Films would premiere in major urban centers before gradually making their way to smaller, more remote towns, ultimately concluding their journey, typically within two years, in Dawson City. Since distributors opted not to retrieve the film prints on completion of their circulation, it fell on the townspeople to handle their disposal. Several film reels were tossed into the Yukon River, others were incinerated, and others were used as filler material for a municipal swimming pool undergoing conversion into an ice-skating rink. It was during a construction venture in 1978 that hundreds of these films were unearthed.

Through meticulous archival research, Morrison pieces together the story of Dawson City, interweaving archival footage with contemporary interviews and commentary. Throughout Dawson City: Frozen Time we can observe glimpses of the cinematic portrayal of American history such as the 1914 Ludlow Massacre – wherein striking miners, employed by a Rockefeller-owned company, were fatally confronted by Colorado National Guardsmen, inciting widespread labor unrest across the nation – and footage of the 1919 World Series, for which the Dawson City Collection contains indispensable footage. This linkage is underscored by the presence of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a prominent anti-labor jurist who aided governmental and corporate efforts to suppress radicalism and labor activism, subsequently assuming the role of baseball commissioner in the aftermath of the scandal. The ruins and haloes impressed on the film reels activate an almost tactile relationship with the moving images and – as a consequence – with the stories they depict. In a way it seems we can almost touch the past.

This interaction between the viewers and the cinematic image unfolds through various sensory modalities: haptically, as viewers experience the textured surface of the screen, feeling the gentle light of shimmering nitrate and the gritty abrasion of dust and fiber on celluloid; kinaesthetically, as they navigate the spatial dynamics of both on- and off-screen environments, discerning the contours of bodies that inhabit or traverse these spaces; and viscerally, as the film rushes through the projector’s gate and the lenses “breathe,” imparting a palpable sense of presence and immediacy. As Jennifer Barker observes:

To say that we are touched by cinema indicates that it has significance for us, that it comes close to us, and that it literally occupies our sphere. We share things with it: texture, spatial orientation, comportment, rhythm, and vitality.11

Within an individual’s temporal existence, this perpetual movement of survival through transformation encompasses the continuous flux from one moment to another. We can find a parallel with Husserl’s analysis of how the present, past, and future are not ontological categories but rather modes of appearance, through which we apprehend events and phenomena. In this view, the past is not a static container housing specific events; rather, it is the manner in which such events manifest within our consciousness.

Just as the present moment is constantly shifting in our subjective experience, so too can the past be recontextualized and reinterpreted through the lens of memory and imagination. Archival footage transcends mere documentation of historical events; it becomes a vehicle for exploring the subjective dimensions of time. Decaying film reels, with their ability to evoke forgotten memories and provoke new insights, serve as a catalyst for this dynamic interplay between past, present, and future. They bear witness to the past while visually transforming it into something else, a faded image of what once was, or a surreal superimposition of new images that act like our memory when we think about the past, distorting it with personal impressions and sensations.

A temporal being, by its very nature, is characterized by constant transformation, perpetuating itself by leaving traces of the past for the future. These traces, however, are marked by the absence of what once was, bound by the inevitability of finitude. It is in the very nature of film itself to act as a time capsule that by its own existence tries to defy the ravages of time while succombing to it.

Memory Palaces: Constructing Temporal Realities

Morrison’s use of fragmented narratives and his emphasis on the materiality of the image can be further explored through Deleuze’s philosophy, with its focus on the multiplicities and flows of becoming in time. The French philosopher notoriously developed a taxonomy of cinema opposing the action-image to the time-image. The action-image predominates in Classical Hollywood cinema with its focus on plot-driven narratives and clear cause-and-effect relationships. This type of cinematic representation is characterized by its emphasis on movement and action. The time represented on screen is linear, homogeneous, and objective, it is subordinate to movement, and narrative progression is driven by causal relationships between events.12

On the other hand, the time-image represents a departure from traditional cinematic narrative conventions. It disrupts linear storytelling by juxtaposing past and present, creating a sense of temporal dislocation and ambiguity. Through faded and distorted images we perceive how the passage of time is not merely a linear progression but a multidimensional continuum, where past, present, and future intersect and blur.

According to this philosophical analysis, a moment that is indivisible and self-present cannot undergo change, and thus cannot lead to the emergence of a new moment. Time’s progression necessitates not only the succession of moments, but also their continual self-negation. Each moment must inherently negate itself and fade away within its own event. Without this self-negation, time would not exist; there would only be a perpetual state of unchanging presence. In Morrison’s oeuvre, distorted and decaying celluloid film teeters between recognition and differentiation, revealing its distinct characteristics before succumbing to the cyclical rhythm of alteration. The ephemeral process of visual disintegration and decline reveals the essence of the subject.

Decaying film footage elucidates and scrutinizes the modes of appearance of the world, suspending the habitual, practical mindset that typically binds us to the factualities of everyday life. This cinematic quality presents new perspectives for seeing and understanding the world we inhabit. Moving from Przemyslaw Bursztyka’s description, we could say that:

By suspending the sharp distinction between the sphere of facts and fiction, (film) reveals the ontical characteristic of every individual fact, that is, its being “located” within the open horizon of still unactualized possibilities. In this way, imagination distinguishes what is contingent from what is essential but also reveals the phenomenological sense of reality which is constituted to the same extent by both facts and fictions, actuality and possibility.13

The subjects of films captured on celluloid can never be fully self-contained entities; rather, they exist in a perpetual state of non-coincidence with themselves. This non-coincidence is not indicative of a loss or an aspiration to attain an idealized state of being-in-itself. Rather, it is the very condition that allows them to exist as distinct entities within the temporal fabric of reality. Much like Proust’s madeleine dipped in tea triggers a flood of memories, the decaying celluloid reels serve as catalysts for reflection and introspection.

Contemplating distorted and faded filmic images from bygone eras, what we perceive is the film’s own process of expression, which, while enabled by human intervention, unfolds uniquely in space and time. Similar to how we recognize others through mutual gaze and shared physical existence, the film’s body engages with us through various modes of visual perception. Such a visual and haptic quality of the cinematic medium is linked to the chemical and physical properties of the film’s surface and materiality.

Film ages, burns, melts, delaminates, and rots, metamorphosing from a pliable substance to a hardened mass. This transformation, reminiscent of the passage from vitality to decrepitude, culminates in spontaneous combustion and even explosive disintegration of the celluloid surface – a spectacle of destruction that echoes the fragility of mortal existence. As a special type of embodiment of tactile engagement in the cinematic experience, decaying footage becomes a trigger eliciting an almost physical understanding of history and memory, inviting audiences to engage not only intellectually but also corporeally with the cinematic medium.

Borrowing from Laura Marks the concept of “tactile epistemologies,” we could say film emphasizes the integral role of corporeal sensations, generating a cinematic encounter that transcends mere intellectual comprehension. Knowledge is transmitted not solely through cognitive processes but also through a dialectical interplay facilitated by the physical interaction between the viewer and the images projected on the cinematic screen.14

In this sense, Morrison’s exploration of memory and temporality invites viewers to reflect on the interplay between personal and collective histories in shaping our understanding of the present moment. The film skin becomes an extension of our own human flesh, and the fading filmic substance becomes the quintessential metaphor of the action of time. Borrowing from Jennifer Barker, we can say:

Cinematic tactility, then, is a general attitude toward the cinema that the human body enacts in particular ways: haptically, at the tender surface of the body; kinaesthetically and muscularly, in the middle dimension of muscles, tendons, and bones that reach toward and through cinematic space; and viscerally, in the murky recesses of the body, where heart, lungs, pulsing fluids, and firing synapses receive, respond to, and reenact the rhythms of cinema.15

When we watch a film, we are not only observing the scenes projected on screen, but also witnessing the act of seeing, hearing, and feeling embedded within the film celluloid. The essence of filmic representation intertwines with the phenomenology of the human body. Just as the body serves as both subject and object in the tangible world, so too does it function within the realm of cinematic experience. We could say that the decaying film footage serves as the medium through which we perceive and comprehend lived human history. This relationship is not one of passive reception, but rather an active engagement in which the film contextualizes, interprets, and interacts with its history and environment. The dual nature of existence within a lived-body is inherent to both humans and films, as they continuously engage in the reciprocal dynamics of perception and expression.16

Conclusions

In the films of Bill Morrison, the sense of time past takes on a haunting presence, haunting not only for what it remembers but also for what it forgets. His images are imbued with the passage of time, the ebb and flow of memory and oblivion. They bear testimony about past individuals, stories, and events, yet they also dwell in the realm of abstraction, contemplating the very act of remembering itself.

Like dreams emerging from the depths of the unconscious mind during sleep, the imperfections and distortions inherent in decaying film footage reveal glimpses of forgotten moments and hidden truths that linger beneath the surface of cinematic representation. Instead of presenting a straightforward narrative, Morrison’s films invite viewers to immerse themselves in the ebb and flow of temporal flux, where past, present, and future converge in a seamless continuum.

In this sense, Morrison’s use of archival footage offers not merely a window into the past, but a profound meditation on the nature of time itself. It invites us to reconsider our relationship to history, to interrogate the ways in which we construct and interpret temporal narratives, and to recognize the inherent limitations of our intellective faculties in capturing the full breadth of human experience.

The past is not relegated to a static, fixed entity, but rather emerges as a dynamic force that shapes and informs the present. The decaying film footage reminds us that memory is not a static repository of facts, but rather a dynamic and subjective reconstruction of the past.

Through a cinematic recollection, lost memories are resurrected from the depths of oblivion and woven into the fabric of the collective consciousness, and the self emerges as a fluid and dynamic entity shaped by the vicissitudes of time.

It is in the depths of this nostalgia that one finds an insatiable longing without a clear object, a yearning for something ineffable yet deeply felt. Nostalgia clings to fragments of the past, but it remains elusive, evading precise definition. It is a yearning for a time that is irretrievably lost yet tantalizingly close, as if time itself were a fleeting mirage, forever slipping through one’s grasp.

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Unless otherwise noted, all images are screenshots from the filmmaker’s works.