ASCA Film and Philosophy Seminar 2021-2022

Aesthetics of Contingency

Organizers: Monique Roelofs, Sudeep Dasgupta and Patricia Pisters

ASCA’s PhD seminar Film and Philosophy will restart this academic year with four sessions in which we will read both classic and new texts on what could be labeled as ‘aesthetics of contingency’.  We will investigate the relation of aesthetics broadly, including media practices and objects, to different perspectives on contingency.  These include ongoing dynamics of coloniality and racial and anti-migrant violence; changing climate conditions; the pressures and surprises of the Covid pandemic; a growing distrust in government, healthcare, journalism and science; questions of futurity. We will focus our readings each session around four themes: lightness, uncertainty, opacity and contamination. Readings will be selected from scholars such as Anne Anlin Cheng, Angela Y. Davis, Gilles Deleuze, Jennifer Faye, and Édouard Glissant.

If you want to join the seminar, please mail:  asca.filmphilosophy@gmail.com