{"id":1246,"date":"2010-04-18T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-18T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/18\/the-event-or-%e2%80%98nature-at-its-finest%e2%80%99\/"},"modified":"2010-04-18T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-18T21:00:00","slug":"the-event-or-%e2%80%98nature-at-its-finest%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/18\/the-event-or-%e2%80%98nature-at-its-finest%e2%80%99\/","title":{"rendered":"the Event<\/strike> (or, \u2018nature at its finest\u2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Volcanic eruption films aren’t plentiful enough to make their own genre. Most of them fall into the disaster<\/a> genre or the straight documentary video<\/a>. Werner Herzog’s 1977 film La Soufri\u00e8re<\/a>, about the anticipated eruption in 1976 of an active volcano on the island of Guadeloupe, is different. Like his quasi-science-fictional films — Fata Morgana, Lessons of Darkness, Wild Blue Yonder<\/a><\/em> — the film has a tone of tender and lyrical, apocalyptic beauty, a resignation in the face of what appears to be humanity’s passing. Like Aguirre, Heart of Glass, Grizzly Man<\/em>, and several of his other films, it is also about the human encounter with an indifferent but powerful (capital-n) Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The same elements that later appear in Lessons of Darkness<\/a> (about the burning oil fields of Iraq), and in different permutations in several of his other films — moving vehicle and helicopter shots of a landscape emptied of humans, classical music including the Prelude to Act I of Wagner’s Parsifal<\/a>, and the feeling of a waiting<\/em>, as if something momentous is about to occur, or has already occurred, or both — is already present here, though without the cinematographic intensity of Lessons of Darkness<\/em>. At times the film is like an archaeological dig through an abandoned city, or a devastated one (the town of Saint-Pierre in Martinique). At others it is about sheer contact — between the camera and the world — and about its embarrassed failure, the “inevitable catastrophe that did not take place.” This is the failure that, Herzog seems to be suggesting, haunts the cinema verit\u00e9 desire to be there when It, whatever It may be, happens.<\/p>\n

Like most of Herzog’s films, La Soufri\u00e8re<\/em> blurs several sets of lines: between documentary and fiction (a line that Herzog prides himself on dissolving, though here he hews closer to the first pole than he usually does), between observation and performative enactment (meaning that his own persona is ever-present, which in this case includes taking his crew up to the caldera to poke their camera inside the steaming volcano, as if to dare nature to scald them with some smoke and ash), and between the hilarious and the deadly serious. The film highlights the barbed existential irony that when, in 1902, the inhabitants of neighboring Martinique were preparing to leave before an anticipated volcanic eruption, their governor persuaded them to stay; 30,000 died. Now, seventy-five years later, the inhabitants left (except for the few that Herzog’s crew finds and interviews, and of course, Herzog himself, attracted to the volcano like a moth to the flame). And the volcano… balked.<\/p>\n


\nAll of Herzog’s films, one might say, are about the Event, an Event we witness only through its “before” and its “after,” its ominous, rumbling premonitions and its decisive, if perplexing, aftermath. Unlike Badiou’s Event<\/a> (or Christianity’s), however, it is not a historical one, not a lightning streak that marks history with the shadow of its exposure — May ’68, or the Revolution (Russian, French, or American), or for that matter Jesus’s Passion and Resurrection. The Event is one before which humanity pales into insignificance, even if our creative capacity to reach out to that Event is worth celebrating (which is something that practically every Herzog film does). The Event is really something closer to a non-Event, an Event sous rature<\/em>, an Event<\/strike>, and Herzog, sublime ironist that he is, takes this Derridean absence to be part of the evental structure.<\/p>\n

What better name for an event<\/strike> than Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull? As one<\/a> tourist site puts it, under the emphatic title “No reason for travelers to worry”<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

“There are no reasons for travelers to worry about their trip to Iceland. This is a small volcano. Yet immensely beautiful and uniquely situated in stunning surroundings. The lava waterfalls tumbling down hundres of meters are a lifetime memory for all that can behold it! [. . .] It is difficult to predict how long the volcanic eruption will last. It could end tomorrow but it could also last for days, weeks or even months. All the more reason to COME NOW and see nature at its finest!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Come. See. Nature at its finest.<\/p>\n

\"eruption-at-eyjafjallajokull-23.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(For more links to Herzog’s films and articles about him, see Catherine Grant’s Film Studies for Free<\/a> page on him.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volcanic eruption films aren’t plentiful enough to make their own genre. Most of them fall into the disaster genre or the straight documentary video. Werner Herzog’s 1977 film La Soufri\u00e8re, about the anticipated eruption in 1976 of an active volcano on the island of Guadeloupe, is different. Like his quasi-science-fictional films — Fata Morgana, Lessons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688745,196,689701],"tags":[16835,16890,16891,16892,206,4469,4470,443],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema_zone","category-ecoculture","category-media_ecology","tag-dark-vitalism","tag-event","tag-eventology","tag-herzog","tag-iceland","tag-landscape","tag-nature","tag-volcanoes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-k6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/07\/23\/moving-environments-day-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":0},"title":"Moving Environments, Day 2","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are my notes from Day 2 of the Moving Environments workshop in Munich. The same caveats apply as yesterday: they're hastily typed up and reflect only my own interpretation of what transpired. If any of the participants would prefer not to have their ideas shared in this way, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1336,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/09\/11\/assemblages-species-genres-cinema\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":1},"title":"assemblages, species, genres, & cinema","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"(Warning: This is a long and involved post.) In reposting Steven Shaviro's critique of DeLanda's A New Philosophy of Society, Levi Bryant has reminded me of one of the impetuses (impeti?) that moved me to a Whiteheadian perspective. Steven's review is excellent, and it prefigured what eventually became his book\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6643,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/04\/19\/ecology-film-philosophy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":2},"title":"Ecology ~ Film ~ Philosophy","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's what I'm slated to teach this summer, for 3 weeks beginning May 20. Ecology - Film - Philosophy How have movies changed our perception of ourselves, the Earth, and the relationship between the two? How are they continuing to do that as we plunge into an era of digital\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Eco-Film-Phil-poster-2013-2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2013\/04\/Eco-Film-Phil-poster-2013-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4969,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/07\/11\/nature-vs-grace\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":3},"title":"Nature vs. Grace?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest issue of Precipitate: Journal of the New Environmental Imagination -- which looks like an excellent issue -- includes a review of Terrence Malick's \"The Tree of Life\" that reminds me how important it is to pay attention to the dialogical and heteroglossic texture of Malick's films, and how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/07\/jessica-chastain-tree-of-life-275x148.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5234,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/08\/30\/cinemas-of-the-not-yet\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":4},"title":"Cinemas of the Not-Yet","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Another remixed outtake\/spinoff from my Ecologies of the Moving Image book project has come out, this time in the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, in a special theme issue on \"Imagining Ecotopia.\" My piece is called \"Cinema of the Not-Yet: The Utopian Promise of Film as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6716,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/05\/28\/how-a-film-becomes-a-subject\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":5},"title":"How a film becomes a subject","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A key question for a process-relational account of a film is the question of how that film shows objects and subjects in the process of being made -- how it shows\u00a0subjectivation and objectivation arising together. Much of Ecologies of the Moving Image\u00a0is about this, but what remains more implicit throughout\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_eHKK4ilcZXg\/TH_q9en0GUI\/AAAAAAAAEc4\/QsoAoiG1i9o\/s1600\/up+the+yangtze+family.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_eHKK4ilcZXg\/TH_q9en0GUI\/AAAAAAAAEc4\/QsoAoiG1i9o\/s1600\/up%2Bthe%2Byangtze%2Bfamily.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}