Palimpsest, porosity and subception: The heard and the unheard in Paul Winkler’s Bondi and Sydney Harbour Bridge

Abstract

Two 1970s films by the German-Australian experimental film-maker Paul Winkler visually capture a duo of significant Sydney icons, Sydney Harbour Bridge and Bondi Beach, the visuals in each film supported asynchronously with minimal soundtracks. In this article Michel Chion's (2009) notions of palimpsest (the idea of sound film as silent film overwritten with sound) and porosity (the connections between different structural layers of a film), are examined and used as the basis of an analysis of the deployment of sound in these two films. Dominique Nasta's focus on psychologically imagined sound (subception) is then explored, with various possible imagined sounds subjectively derived from the Winkler visuals presented. Finally, existing and imagined sounds are discussed in relation to what Alex Gerbaz refers to as Winkler's 'fragmented aesthetic'.