Loops of desire. Gilles Deleuze, David Lynch and the cinematic imagination

Lecture doc. Michaela Fišerová will introduce the philosophical concept of "loops of desire" in the film imagination of director David Lynch. In his masterpieces, such as Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, Lynch creates montages of images of negative desire, such as jealousy, envy, guilt and shame, and weaves them into a multiplicity of affective returns that simultaneously reveal and conceal the imaginary event of "crime". As I will show in this talk, Lynch's cinematic imagination cannot be approached directly because it is built rhizomatically, through affective loops. I therefore propose to trace these loops of desire through a reading of Gilles Deleuze's theory of cinematic imagination, which offers useful philosophical concepts for this purpose, such as image-crystal, becoming, intensity, montage and assemblage. A comparison of Deleuze's and Lynch's conceptions of the cinematic imaginary will show parallels in their portraiture in philosophy and film, which purposefully generate portraits of the mind as simulacra.