Modernist Energies
2016-17
In the 2016-17, COMMA will investigate the technological, material, and artistic energies that animate the 20th century. The year-long programing will include film screenings, reading groups, and keynote addresses by Professor Imre Szeman (English and Film Studies, University of Alberta) and others.
Please check back for a full schedule of events will be posted in late October, 2016.
Reading Group
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, Jonathan Crary.
Film Series
Upstream Color (2013), dir. Shane Carruth.
How have modern energy infrastructures (oil, natural gas, nuclear) shaped political, artistic, and social potentialities? What is the relationship between material and political “power”? How does the reconceptualization of matter as energy relations inaugurate new perceptions of humans relationship to our environment, economy, and history? These are only a few of the questions that will guide our investigation of “Modernist Energies” in the 2016-17 academic year.