On Posthumous Media and Climate Change (Seán Cubitt)
02. Dec
- 02.12. / 2 – 4 pm / C40.530 / Climate Futures Colloquium
- On Posthumous Media and Climate Change
- Talk by Seán Cubitt (University of Melbourne)
- Hosted by the Centre for Digital Cultures (CDC).
- Registration is not necessary. It is possible to join online
The 1997 discovery of a 50,000-year-old flute made from the femur of a cave bear, with its intimation of reanimating non-humans, and the 1977 launch of the Voyager spacecraft carrying an eclectic set of sound recordings intended to be heard in the distant future by non-human others: two media events that frame the possible meanings of ‘posthumous’. This lecture argues that Anthropocene aesthetics must confront the scenario of The End – of life, of humanity, of the planet – but that it cannot afford to abandon imagination. Drawing on paleoanthropology, indigenous knowledge, digital futures and ecocritical conceptions of commons, it will argue that media cultures enact a drama of melancholy and hope in the ecological continuity of body and world as they mourn the moment of their End.
Seán Cubitt is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He was previously Professor and head of the department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London (2011–2019), the University of Melbourne (2005–2010), the University of Waikato, NZ (2000–2005) and Liverpool John Moores University (1989-1999). An elected fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Academia Europe, he has held visiting posts at Chicago, Harvard, Oslo and Dundee. He has keynoted over 50 events on four continents, curated exhibitions in Istanbul, Lima, Liverpool and Melbourne, and is currently working on funded research pro-jects with colleagues in Australia, Austria, Norway, the UK, the USA and China. His research links film and media studies with ecocriticism, technological, aesthetic, economic and political history, and the media arts and aesthetics. He is series editor of Leonardo Books (MIT Press) and serves on the boards of the Media Art History network, Goldsmiths Press, Media Art 21 (CAFA Beijing / SFMOMA / He Foundation), Delocating Mountains (Austrian Science Fund) and a number of journal and books series including Screen, Cultural Politics, Visual Art Practice and the Journal of Environmental Media. His publications include The Cinema Effect, EcoMedia, The Practice of Light, Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies, Anecdotal Evidence and two volumes of a projected trilogy on aesthetic politics: Truth and Good. The third volume, Beauty advances ecocritical approaches to the history and philosophy of media and media arts.