Yesterday, TheStanford Daily ran an article by student reporter Joshua Kim about the book launch of Post-Cinematic Bodies, which you can find here. Interestingly, it seems that the article was immediately picked up, processed with AI (I can only assume), and (re)published in machinically modified form, complete with a listicle-like FAQs section, by a certain “Simon Smith,” on a website illustrated exclusively with AI-generated images. Welcome, as Matthew Kirschenbaum writes, to the Textpocalypse!
Book launch in the Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall, Nov. 6, 2023It was a packed house. Gave away 40 copies of my book!A long overdue gathering of friends and colleagues. My last book came out in the deepest Zoom time of the pandemic, so I had to make up for it!Discussing Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse series, which I write about in Chapter 5.Wonderful response from Annika Butler-Wall, focusing on the implications of my book for feminist studies of technology.Hank Gerba introducing Scott BukatmanScott Bukatman’s excellent response focused on the continuities in spirit, and changes in the world, from his Terminal Identity (1993) to my Post-Cinematic Bodies (2023)Bryan NortonTRONPavle LeviWith Sepp GumbrechtWith Grace HanCheers!
On November 6, 2023 at 5:30 pm in the Margaret Jacks HallTerrace Room (Building 460, Room 426), I will be presenting my new book Post-Cinematic Bodies (meson press, 2023), along with responses by Professor Scott Bukatman (Film & Media Studies, Stanford), and Dr. Annika Butler-Wall (Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Stanford MTL Ph.D. ’23).
Food and drinks will be provided. The first 40 attendees will receive a free copy of the book.
RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Please RSVP using the linked form by October 30th if you plan on attending.
About the book:
“How is human embodiment transformed in an age of algorithms? How do post-cinematic media technologies such as AI, VR, and robotics target and re-shape our bodies? Post-CinematicBodies grapples with these questions by attending both to mundane devices—such as smartphones, networked exercise machines, and smart watches and other wearables equipped with heartrate sensors—as well as to new media artworks that rework such equipment to reveal to us the ways that our fleshly existences are increasingly up for grabs. Through an equally philosophical and interpretive analysis, the book aims to develop a new aesthetics of embodied experience that is attuned to a new age of predictive technology and metabolic capitalism.”
Speaker and Respondents
Shane Denson is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Art & Art History and, by Courtesy, of German Studies in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages and of Communication in Stanford’s Department of Communication. He is currently the Director of the PhD Program in Modern Thought and Literature, as well as Director of Graduate Studies in Art History. His research and teaching interests span a variety of media and historical periods, including phenomenological and media-philosophical approaches to film, digital media, comics, games, and serialized popular forms.
Scott Bukatman is a cultural theorist and Professor of Film and Media Studies at Stanford University. His research explores how such popular media as film, comics, and animation mediate between new technologies and human perceptual and bodily experience. His books include Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction, one of the earliest book-length studies of cyberculture; a monograph on the film Blade Runner commissioned by the British Film Institute; and a collection of essays, Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century. The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit, celebrates play, plasmatic possibility, and the life of images in cartoons, comics, and cinema.
Dr. Annika Butler-Wall is a Lecturer in the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and teacher working at the intersections of gender studies, media studies, and science and technology studies (STS). Her current research project explores how digital platforms are restructuring forms of historically feminized labor by examining platforms such as TaskRabbit, Yelp, and LinkedIn Learning.
She holds a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature with a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Stanford University and a BA in American Studies and Economics from Wesleyan University. Her research has been supported by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and the Ric Weiland Graduate Research Fellowship among others.
This event is sponsored by The Program in Modern Thought & Literature and Intermediations.
An open-access version of the book can be downloaded for free from meson press (here), and a limited number of print copies are available for purchase at Hopscotch Reading Room in Berlin, where the book launch was held on July 3. Paperbacks will be more widely available soon; the book is currently listed on Amazon Germany, and it should be appearing for other regions in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
Here are some pictures from the book launch, where I was in conversation with Mark Hansen. Turnout was great, and it was lots of fun!
In conversation with Mark HansenTrying to answer one of Mark’s tough questions!Reading from the bookEnjoying a cool beverageHow many famous media theorists can you spot?Mark B. N. HansenFrancesco CasettiEylül İşcen and Karin DensonSelfie with friendsDinner afterwards: Karin Denson, Shane Denson, Mark Hansen, Francesco Casetti, Bernard Geoghegan, and Siddhartha Lokanandi
Please note: Due to factors outside of my control, the book launch event for Post-Cinematic Bodies, originally scheduled for this Thursday June 29, has been postponed to next Monday, July 3 at 7pm.
I am happy to announce that I will be in conversation with Mark B. N. Hansen!
Please also note the change of venue, to the Kurfürstenstraße location of Hopscotch Reading Room!
On Thursday, June 29, Hopscotch Reading Room (Gerichtstraße 43 in the Wedding district of Berlin) will be hosting a book launch event for my new book Post-Cinematic Bodies — which will be out both in print and open-access digital formats from meson press. There will be paperbacks available for purchase at the launch, and they’ll be more widely available soon afterwards. If you’re in town, come out around 7pm for a short reading, discussion, and drinks!
There are a couple of new reviews of Discorrelated Images, for which I am very grateful — one in the most recent issue of Film-Philosophy, by Christian de Moulipied Sancto, and another (in Italian) by Angela Maiello in Imago.
Sancto calls the book “virtuosic,” and writes: “For anyone concerned with digital media in particular and media theory in general, Discorrelated Images is essential reading.”
Maiello compares my project to that of Bernard Stiegler, writing: “The theoretical stakes of the book … are very high: it is neither a question of looking at these developments of the digital image as a mere aesthetic question of style, nor of remaining trapped in the problem of the technical infrastructure underlying these images. It is a question of understanding the transformative impact that new image technologies have in explaining experience, in the establishment of the subject-object relationship and therefore in the process of individuation, to return to Stiegler, both singular and collective.”
Finally, as a bonus, here is the (unedited) audio of the German book launch of Discorrelated Images, which took place on June 23, 2022 at Hopscotch Reading Room in Berlin. Thanks to Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan for organizing the event and for discussing the book with me!
Here is a short “book trailer” for the open-access collection Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film, edited by Shane Denson and Julia Leyda (REFRAME Books, 2016).
Also, don’t forget that we’ll be having a book launch party at Pro qm Books in Berlin this coming Friday, June 24. See here for more info and a flyer.
On June 24, 2016, Julia Leyda and I will be celebrating the launch of our co-edited book Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Filmat Pro qm Books in Berlin. Several contributors will be on hand as well for a short book presentation, Q&A, and wine!
See the flyer above for details, and come out if you’re in the neighborhood!
