Here’s a preview in section headings of the book I’m currently writing. It presents a way of thinking about images, what they’ve done for people, and how all of that figures into the contemporary world of digital media. It then applies that way of thinking to three sets of images: about humans as the stars […]
Archive for the ‘ImageNation’ Category
Scenes in the image-world
Posted in ImageNation, tagged Anthropocene, Anthroposcene, books, image ecologies, image regimes, image-world, media ecologies, media studies, The New Lives of Images, visual culture, visual studies on June 26, 2020 | 2 Comments »
We are all tuteishi (or, on not being posthuman)
Posted in ImageNation, tagged alternative humanism, bioregionalism, border identities, borderlands, Bruno Latour, cultural identity, earthbound, ethnicity, Gaia, Galician, global cultural studies, humanism, identity, mestizo, nationality, Origins of the Slavic Nations, place, placelessness, posthuman, posthumanism, posthumanities, postmodern, premodern, Russian, Rusyn, Serhii Plokhy, Slavic, tuteishi, tuteishyi, Ukrainian, Zomia on June 17, 2020 | Leave a Comment »
A social media conversation prompted me to dig up something I had written in my notebook years ago after reading Serhii Plokhy’s masterful book on “premodern identities” in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Which in turn prompted me to realize that coronavirus provides an answer to the question I had just finished writing an article about […]
Planet of Some Humans
Posted in EcoCulture, ImageNation, tagged apocalypticism, becoming human, Bil McKibben, biocentrism, climate change communication, climate change politics, Deep Adaptation, deep ecology, degrowth, diversity, doomism, ecodocumentaries, ecopolitics, energy politics, films, green energy, Green New Deal, Malthusianism, Michael Moore, Planet of the Humans, post-human, Vermont on May 1, 2020 | 5 Comments »
This past week has seen a firestorm of reaction among environmentalists and climate and energy scientists to the online release of the film Planet of the Humans. Written, directed, and produced by first-time director Jeff Gibbs, but — much more importantly — executive-produced and actively promoted by Michael Moore, the film is incendiary and intentionally […]
R.I.P. Cassini
Posted in ImageNation, tagged Blade Runner, Cassini, images, moving image, seeing, visuality on September 16, 2017 | 4 Comments »
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…” 62 moons orbiting in and around the grooved rings of Saturn. Winter and spring, hurricanes, jet streams, and auroras. Rivers and deltas pelted by methane rains on Titan. Hydrothermal vented oceans, and geysers shooting plumes of water that fall back as snow on Enceladus. Moons forming spiral waves cresting […]
Loznitsa’s ethical witnessing
Posted in ImageNation, MediaSpace, tagged Auschwitz, Austerlitz, concentration camps, death camps, documentary, eco-trauma, ethical witnessing, Holocaust, Holocaust tourism, Serhii Loznitsa, tourism, Ukrainian cinema, W. G. Sebald on October 25, 2016 | 3 Comments »
I’ve written about ethical witnessing before — both in the eco-trauma chapter of Ecologies of the Moving Image and in my reflections on Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing. Seeing Serhii Loznitsa‘s latest film, Austerlitz, at Kyiv’s Molodist Film Festival a few days ago, prompted me to think some more about how a seemingly neutral camera, […]
Fort McMurray as fictive image
Posted in AnthropoScene, ImageNation, tagged Anthropocene, climate change, climate denialism, climate science, environmental communication, fact, Latour, mediation, rhetoric, science studies on May 9, 2016 | 7 Comments »
With reality like this, who needs fiction? It’s from Fort McMurray, last week. Harrowing. While the impact of such images is undeniable, the debate over whether and how they are related to climate change is a debate the rest of us should not shy away from.
How to die in the Anthropocene
Posted in ImageNation, tagged Bowie on January 11, 2016 | 4 Comments »
He left us with this to mull over. (Thanks to Roy Scranton for the title idea.)
Apocalypse mashup
Posted in ImageNation, MediaSpace, tagged apocalypse, eco-images, global warming on September 18, 2014 | 1 Comment »
This week’s theme in my “Environmental Literature, Arts, & Media” class is apocalyptic rhetoric. (I’m loosely following Greg Garrard’s list of tropes in Ecocriticism, but adding, amplifying, and amending to be more artistically inclusive.) Because it’s a fun topic (and deadly serious, too), I thought I’d post a few of the videos we’ve been watching […]
Anthropocene aesthetics
Posted in AnthropoScene, EcoCulture, ImageNation, tagged aesthetics, Anthropocene, coral reefs on April 10, 2014 | 1 Comment »
Cross-posting this piece by Emil from A(s)cene. Taylor’s coral reef art is beautiful. See also the discussion of Donna Haraway’s “String Figures” lecture and Bruno Latour’s 11 theses on capitalism.