Ten skies, 13 lakes, 15 pools - structure, immanence and eco-aesthetics in 'The Swimmer' and James Benning's land films
Panse, Silke (2013) Ten skies, 13 lakes, 15 pools - structure, immanence and eco-aesthetics in 'The Swimmer' and James Benning's land films. In: Screening nature: cinema beyond the human. Berghahn, Oxford. ISBN 9781782382270
- Details
This chapter, and my interview with James Benning published in the same book, are part of my wider research project into new materialism, eco-aesthetics and documentary moving images. They develop the notion of eco-aesthetics with respect to moving images, and argue that the connections between the world and the image – including the land and the landscape – are what make the documentaries of the experimental filmmaker James Benning eco-aesthetic. My chapter argues that immanence is vital for an eco-aesthetics that links the plane of the world (ecology) with that of the image (aesthetics). In contrast to the readings of Benning as a filmmaker of the perceptible, this text proposes that his films bring out the imperceptible, and that eco-aesthetics are about what cannot be directly perceived.
This research project has been developed in a range of settings. I presented sections of the chapter as the paper ‘Land Film: Subjectivities and Structure, Ecology and Economy in James Benning's Documentaries' at the Third International Deleuze Studies Conference, Amsterdam, 13 July 2010 and at the Visible Evidence XVII conference, Bogazici University, Istanbul, 11 August 2010. Sections of the chapter also formed my paper 'Planes in the Plane of Immanence, or: Who or What Moves the Leaves' at the symposium and screenings event (which I co-organised) held to launch the AHRC-funded network Screening Nature: Flora, Fauna and the Moving Image in May 2013 at Queen Mary University and the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Themes from the research also informed my curation of two 'Fauna' screening programmes, 'Leaves in the Wind' and 'Water', at the same event. These themes have been developed further in my essay 'Fauna', in the brochure for the network’s launch, and form the basis for the development of a book proposal for a monograph for Duke University Press, titled Documentary Protagonists in Film, Television, Art and Life.
ISBN 9781782382263 print copy
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit View |