"The Cinema of Multi-Species Encounters," 4:00 pm, HIB 135
What new languages of multispecies co-existence can the moving image offer? Why is film so frequently overlooked by eco-philosophers as a serious mode of ecological expression? This talk opens up some possible avenues for approaching film as a form of ecological thinking, using the radical aesthetics of experimental cinema as a starting point.
Lecture followed by film screening at 7:00 pm, McCormick Theater
In his essay ‘Why Look at Animals?’ John Berger argues that with industrialisation in the 19th-century, images of animals could be seen to proliferate at precisely the moment that they withdrew from our daily lives, appearing in zoos, children’s books or as toys and, later, cinematic representations. The animal is frequently presented as an object to be observed; it amazes and entertains with its majestic power and exotic otherness. Cinema has largely struggled to shake off these habits, but it has the means to construct alternative understandings of the complex entanglements between human and non-human animals. The films presented here offer a range of perspectives on multispecies co-existence and co-dependency. They raise difficult questions about how bodies come together through very different forms of relationality, including both control and care. What does it mean to look at animals?
Kim Knowles is Senior Lecturer in Alternative and Experimental Film at Aberystwyth University in Wales. She is the author A Cinematic Artist: The Films of Man Ray (2012) and Experimental Film and Photochemical Practices (2020), as well as numerous articles on experimental film theory and aesthetics. She has curated screenings at festivals and venues worldwide and was Experimental Film Programmer at the Edinburgh International Film Festival between 2008 and 2022.
Co-sponsored by European Languages and Studies, Environmental Humanities Research Center, Critical Theory, Film and Media Studies, Art History, and Visual Studies.