Aligned with the objectives of the ERC-Project Cinematic Atmospheres: Towards a New Ecology of the Moving Image (CATNEMI), this PhD research project pursues a political, material and affective expressivity of elemental media—e.g., water, air, clouds, fire—in film and contemporary art, in terms of an atmospheric interference, to outline a political ecology of elemental media. Inspired by recent work in media philosophy (De Luca, Kronberger, Somaini), atmosphere theory (Bruno, Hven/Yacavone) and ecological philosophy, including feminist perspectives (Alaimo, Barad, Bennett, Neimanis, Povinelli), the project argues that to think about media in ‘elemental’ terms requires a closer consideration of their relation to social-political constellations, since they are (re)framed in mediated environments. The focus lies on cinematic practices and their connection to expanded ‘cinematic’ and artistic practices in contemporary art (e.g., sculpture, installation), which are not tied to a specific “dispositif” (Buckley et al.).
These reflections lead to the main research questions of this PhD project: How do cinematic forms and operations (“modi operandi”) shape a political expressivity of elemental media between film and contemporary art? In which ways do cinematic and artistic practices create a political ecology of elemental media and to what extend can this be related to an aesthetic form of atmospheric interference? In this relation, how can the ‘elemental’ be defined in cinematic terms and which political, material and affective dimensions are implied? Furthermore, the PhD project engages with a situated ‘ecological thinking’ (Code) and with the political implications that are involved in the definition of elemental media and the onto-epistemology (Furuhata, Starosielski). To examine these connections, new modes of analysis are developed and complemented by the performative approach of the video essay.
At the current state, the analysis focuses on the entanglements between environment and questions of justice, historical responsibility and capitalism (power relation) as well as on the following relations, which are closely related to weather constellations, or forms of “weathering” (Neimanis/Walker): a) Connections between intersectional feminisms, weather and environment, as e.g., in April (Kulumbegaschwili, 2024), which lead to a feminist and political mode of the elemental in cinematic and artistic practices; b) Relations to contemporary artistic practices, as the sculptural installation Living Dog Among Dead Lions (Chachkhiani, 2017), and experimental cinematic practices, as Blue (Jarman, 1993), in which the political dimension is inscribed into the materiality of the elemental and the ‘cinematic’ operation of the elemental is unveiled, independently from the dispositive and technology.
Drawing from case studies, the PhD project explores a critical, interfering potential of the political dimension of elemental media in film and contemporary art (mainly related to the fictional), in which specific relations and contexts are included.
Artist Statement
Jamie Lee Moser received a Master of Arts in Film Studies in the Netzwerk Cinema program at the University of Zurich. She worked as a Student Assistant for the digital humanities project “Timeline of Historical Film Colors” by Barbara Flückiger at the Department of Film Studies of the University of Zurich. After her master's degree she worked in the field of cultural practice, most recently at interfilm Berlin and Berliner Festspiele. She held a graduate scholarship at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and started in November 2024 as an Academic Researcher and PhD Candidate in the ERC-StG project “Cinematic Atmospheres: Towards a New Ecology of the Moving Image (CATNEMI)” by Dr. Steffen Hven at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF.
Kontakt: j.moser(at)filmuniversitaet.de