Attention for Distraction: Modernity, Modernism and Perception

Particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century sensorial experiences changed at breakneck speed. Social and technological developments of modernity like the industrial revolution, rapid urban expansion, the advance of capitalism and the invention of new technologies transformed the field of the senses. Instead of attentiveness, distraction became prevalent. It is not only Baudelaire who addressed these transformations in his poems, but they can also be recognized in the works of novelist Gustave Flaubert and painter Edward Munch. By means of the work of William James, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer and Georg Simmel, the repercussions of this crisis of the senses for subjectivity will be discussed

Ernst Van Alphen in Conversation with Valérie Morisson

Ernst Van Alphen is a professor of Literary Studies at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. His research focuses on modern and post-modern literature and its relation to visual arts; his approach of the arts, painting, sculpture and photography, puts affects to the fore. In his outstanding volume Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media (Reaktion Book, 2014), Ernst Van Alphen investigated archival artworks and how such works broaden the scope of artist..

Time-sculptures of Terrifying Ambiguity: Staging Inner Space and Migrating Realities in Analogue's Living Film Set

This article examines Analogue’s Living Film Set, an interactive theatre piece which uses miniature film sets, multi-touch surface technology and live video feeds to reframe my semi-remembered memories from the mid-1980s as a collective participatory experience. Drawing on new wave novelist J. G. Ballard’s notion of childhood memory as ‘time-sculptures of terrifying ambiguity’ [Ballard, J. G. 1963. “Time, Memory and Inner Space.” J. G. Ballard website (originally published in The Woman Journalist Magazine). Accessed August 6, 2015. http://www.jgballard.ca/non_fiction/jgb_time_memory_innerspace.html], I will demonstrate how my childhood town of Shepperton has been overwritten in both Ballardian literary fiction and the incursion of cinematic artifice from the neighbouring activities of Shepperton Film Studios. I argue that the ambiguity of my recollections and the contamination of my lived history with ‘prosthetic memories’ [Landsberg, Alison. 2004. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York, NY: Columbia UP, 20–21.] has provided a creative space to re-enact the blended hyperreality of my early childhood through the work’s intermedial form. I will conclude by examining how the shifting reality status of the media used within the performance intersects with the notion of ‘time-sculptures’ and problematises what Carol Martin [(2013). Theatre of the Real. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.] has identified as ‘theatre of the real’

Electrification of vehicles – policy drivers and impacts in two scenarios

This paper will examine policy drivers of EV, and what potential role policy can play in enhancing the innovation and market development of EV, and the anticipated impacts on energy use and carbon emissions at the Nordic and EU scale. We will start with a policy review of key targets in the Nordic countries and the EU, up to 2030, and discuss to what extent they are consistent with industry and expert estimates of how the systems can grow. On the basis of this, the second part elaborates two simple scenarios of EV development in the EU, one rapid EV expansion scenario and one more modest expansion scenario. The third part examines what policy drivers might be needed to enable the two scenarios, using a technological innovation systems (TIS) perspective to describe the needed processes, drivers and developments in policy and technology at different levels (local, national, EU, global) that would lead to the scenarios. The fourth part analyses the energy and climate impacts of the two scenarios, given different assumptions relating to e.g. energy supply systems as well as driving behaviour

Archive of Darkness:William Kentridge's Black Box/Chambre Noire

Situating itself in histories of cinema and installation art, William Kentridge's Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005) raises questions about screens, exhibition space, site-specificity and spectatorship. Through his timely intervention in a debate on Germany’s colonial past, Kentridge’s postcolonial art has contributed to the recognition and remembrance of a forgotten, colonial genocide. This article argues that, by transposing his signature technique of drawings for projection onto a new set of media, Kentridge explores how and what we can know through cinematic projection in the white cube. In particular, his metaphor of the illuminated shadow enables him to animate archival fragments as shadows and silhouettes. By creating a multi-directional archive, Black Box enables an affective engagement with the spectres of colonialism and provides a forum for the calibration of moral questions around reparation, reconciliation and forgiveness

Artificial cell research as a field that connects chemical, biological and philosophical questions

This review article discusses the interdisciplinary nature and implications of artificial cell research. It starts from two historical theories: Gánti's chemoton model and the autopoiesis theory by Maturana and Varela. They both explain the transition from chemical molecules to biological cells. These models exemplify two different ways in which disciplines of chemistry, biology and philosophy can profit from each other. In the chemoton model, conclusions from one disciplinary approach are relevant for the other disciplines. In contrast, the autopoiesis model itself (rather than its conclusions) is transferred from one discipline to the other. The article closes by underpinning the relevance of artificial cell research for philosophy with reference to the on-going philosophical debates on emergence, biological functions and biocentrism

O možnosti in nemožnosti modernistične kinematografije: Lastna smrt Pétra Forgácsa

Whereas Modernism is a productive notion in literary studies and art history for the understanding of twentieth century cultural practices, in cinema studies it is hardly viable. The unique position of cinema is not only caused by a different history, but also by its medium specificity. But it is not clear at all how the medium specificity of Cinema can be imagined or defined. If it is the “task” of 20th century Modernism to purify media of eve- rything that is not specific to the medium, it implies that cinema cannot be considered an art medium. To counter this notion of Modernism in terms of medium the idea will be defended that the specificity of cinema resides in its synthetic nature, that is, in its impurity. Next, I explore a Modernist attempt in cinema, adopting a device that is usually seen as specific for the literary text, in the sense that only in textual form the device is really possible and effective. I will examine Own Death, made in 2007 by Hungarian artist and filmmaker Péter Forgács, based upon the 2002 novella of the same name by Hungarian author Péter Nádas. The Modernist device that is consistently used in Nadas’ novella device is the one of consistent character-bound focalization. The story told is from begin- ning to end presented through the eyes and experience of one focalizing subject: a mid- dle aged man in Budapest, who does not feel well and who seems to get a heart attack. I call the device “radical perspectivism,” and it concerns a radical, that is, systematic, consistent adaptation of one point of view, or better, one focalizing position.Medtem ko je modernizem produktiven pojem v literaranih vedah in umetnostni zgodovini za razumevanje kulturnih praks dvajsetega stoletja, je v filmskih študijih komajda sposoben življenja. Posebnen položaj kinematografije ni povzročila le drugačna zgodo- vina, pač pa tudi posebnost njegovega medija. Vendar pa nikakor ni jasno kako sploh si lahko zamislimo ali definiramo specifični medij filma. Če je »naloga« modernizma 20. stoletja, da očisti medije vsega, kar ni specifično za medij, potem to nakazuje, da filma ne moremo imeti za medij. Da bi nasprotovali temu pojmu modernizma v izrazih medija, bomo zagovarjali zamisel, da se specifičnost filma nahaja v njegovi sintetični naravi, to je, v njegovi nečistosti. Nadalje raziskujem modernistični poskus v filmu ter se pri tem poslužujem pripomočka, ki ga običajno vidimo kot specifičnega za književno besedilo, v pomenu, da je pripomoček resnično zmožen in učinkovit le v tekstovni obliki. Modernistični pripomoček, ki je dosledno uporabljen v novelah Nadasa, je dosledna fokalizacija usmerjena na osebe. Povedana zgodba je od začetka do konca predstavljena skozi oči in izkustvo enega fokalizirajočega subjekta: moškega srednjih let v Budimpešti, ki se ne počuti dobro in za katerega se zdi, da bo imel srčni napad. »Pripomoček« imenujem »skrajni perspektivizem« ter zadeva skrajni, tj, sistematičen, dosleden privzem enega gledišča, ali bolje, enega fokalizirajočega položaja