“Getting Real About the Anthropocene,” a talk by E. Ann Kaplan (Stony Brook University)

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shelter

Please join us for COMMA’s next event of the Spring Quarter. We will continue our investigation of “The Desert of the Real” on April 15th at 1:00 in South Hall 2623 with a talk by E. Ann Kaplan.

Professor Kaplan is Distinguished Professor of English, and Cultural Analysis and Theory, at Stony Brook University. Her influential works on feminist film theory include Women & Film: Both Sides of the Camera (1990) and Motherhood and Representation (1992). Professor Kaplan’s work on trauma theory includes Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature (2005), and has led her to her current research considering the physic structures of human/environmental relations. In 2015, Rugters published her most recent monograph, Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction.

“’Getting Real About the Anthropocene’: Pretrauma and Cultural Politics in Futurist Dystopian Film (with Reference to Jeff Nicol’sTake Shelter)”

In this talk, taken from her 2015 monograph, Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction, E. Ann Kaplanexplores how cinema negotiates the catastrophe of climate change humans ignore at their peril. She first asks what affects and psychic processes prevent humans from coming together to save the planet. In turning to dystopian narratives to investigate such questions, Kaplan develops the concept of pre-traumatic stress (linked to the familiar Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome), and asks what impact results from viewers occupying a position of “virtual future humans” in climate disaster fictions. Here, Take Shelter will be discussed as a striking example of pre-traumatic stress. Second, Kaplan attends to the cultural politics in disaster scenarios commenting on meanings attached to race and gender; she introduces psychoanalysis to partially explain the evident sexism and racism.  Finally, Kaplan debates whether or not commercial climate disaster films provide an unhelpful sense of mastery, collude with corporate manipulation of fear, or function as a call to action. Film can be a powerful tool for changing consciousness and even policy. She concludes that if we can understand the psychic processes involved in climate denial, we have a chance to rupture the ideological structures that entrap people.

 

 

“Red Deserts: a Color Without Substance,” a talk by Professor Tarek Elhaik (UC Davis)

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tarek

Please join us for COMMA’s first event of the Winter Quarter. We will continue our investigation of “The Desert of the Real” on Friday, April 8th at 1:00 in South Hall 2623 with a talk by Tarek Elhaik. Professor Elhaik is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, where he also runs and curates AIL (the Anthropology of the Image Lab). He has published articles in various journals and anthologies, and is the author of The Incurable Image: Curating Post-Mexican Film & Media Arts (Edimburgh University Press, February 2016). As always, snacks and drinks will be provided.

This talk stems from a series of encounters with artists whose “Earth” is grounded in what Elhaik calls a “geo-curation.” Among these artists is Michelangelo Antonioni whose 1964 classic Technicolor filmRed Desert will as our point of departure. By combining anthropological theories of color (Taussig, 2009; Levi-Strauss, 1964) and Deleuze’s meditation on Antonioni’s “geophysics,” the talk remediates and reconfigures Earth as an enduring form and “incurable-image” (Elhaik, 2016) of the so-called Anthropocene. By assembling images from Red Desert alongside those of Robert Smithson’s earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) and Tareq Teguia’s film Inland (2008) Antonioni’s geo-curation emerges as a human practice that inhabits the world as a desert without a substance.

Suggested readings for the talk include:

Deleuze, Gilles. “On The Time-Image” in Negotiations (New York: Columbia U. Press) p. 57-61.

Elhaik, Tarek. “Rome-Algiers-Bahia: A Bloc of Sensation In Lieu of Geography” in in Sweet Sixties: Specters and Spirits of a Parallel Avant-garde. Georg Schöllhammer & Ruben Arevshatyan eds.  Sternberg Press (2014): 217-228. (Attached)

Taussig, Michael. What Color is the Sacred? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 3-12

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970 [1964]), p. 18-20

Film Screening of Nacer Khemir’s “Wanderers of the Desert” (1984)

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wanderers

Please join COMMA as we continue our 2015-16 series, “In The Desert of the Real” with a screening of the first film in Nacer Khemir’s “Desert Trilogy.” Set in a small town on the edge of an immense desert, Wanderers of the Desert (1984) interweaves myth and dream in order to explore tensions between modern and traditional values. The screening will be held on Friday, Feb. 12th at 1:00 in SH 2635 and, as always, the will be followed by discussion, and pizza will be provided.

Film Screening of Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Timbuktu” (2014)

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Please join us on Friday, Feb. 26th at 1:00 in SH 2635 as COMMA continues the 2015-16 series, “In the Desert of the Real” with a screening of Abderrahmane Sissako’s award winning film, Timbuktu (2014). Inspired by a public execution, Sissako’s film offers a gritty exploration of cultural conflict resulting from the occupation of Timbuktu by a jihadist faction. As always, we will reserve time after the film for discussion and pizza will be provided.

Film Screening of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Red Desert” (1964)

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joy

Please join us for the first event in COMMA‘s winter schedule on Friday, Jan. 15th at 1:00 in South Hall 2635. We will be screening Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964). Following the screening, Eileen Joy (UCSB) will join us to discuss the film and her article “Blue” from the important collection, Prismatic Ecologies (2013). Copies of “Blue” are available in the CRC. As always, refreshments will be provided.