What is a moving image, and how does it move us? In Thinking In Film, celebrated theoristMieke Bal engages in an exploration - part dialogue, part voyage - with thevideo installations of Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila to understand movementas artistic practice and as affect. Through fifteen years of Ahtila’s practice, including suchseminal works as The Annunciation, Where Is Where? and The House, Bal searches for the places where theoretical andartistic practices intersect, to create radical spaces in which genuinelydemocratic acts are performed. Bringing together different understandings of'figure’ from form to character, Bal examines the syntax of the exhibition andits ability to bring together installations, the work itself, the physical andontological thresholds of the installation space and the use of narrative andgenre. The double meaning of ‘movement’, in Bal’s unique thought, catalyses anunderstanding of video installation work as inherently plural, heterogenous andpossessed of revolutionary political potential. The video image as an art form illuminates the question ofwhat an image is, and the installation binds viewers to their own interactionswith the space. In this context Bal argues that the intersection betweenmovement and space creates an openness to difference and doubt. By ‘thinkingin’ art, we find ideas not illustrated by but actualized in artworks. Balpractices this theory in action to demonstrate how the video installation canmove us to think beyond ordinary boundaries and venture into new spaces. Thereis no act more radical than figuring a vision of the ‘other’ as film allows artto do. Thinking In Film is Mieke Bal ather incisive, innovative best as she opens up the miraculous politicalpotential of the condensed art of the moving image.