Simon Harrison

David H. Fleming

This book dives into the mise-en-scène of contemporary China to explore the “becoming cinema” of Chinese cities, societies, and subjectivities. Set in the wake of China’s radical and rapid period of urbanization and infrastructural transformation, and situating itself in the processual city of Ningbo, the book combines empirical, ficto-critical, and philosophical methods to generate a dynamic account of everyday life as new forms of consumer culture bed in. Harnessing a Realist approach that allows for different scales of analysis, the book zooms in on five architectural assemblages including: surreal real estate showrooms; a fragmented history museum; China’s “first and best” Sino-foreign university; a new “Old town”; and weird gamified “any-now(here)-spaces.” Together these modern arrangements and machines for living cast light upon the broader picture sweeping up greater China.

Cinematicity, Society and Millennial China

Chinese Urban Shi-nema

William Brown

A philosophical study of cephalopods in cinema and contemporary media Offers up a 'posthuman' understanding of film and media, charting the historical relationships between cephalopods and cinema, especially in the digital age Draws on work by authors such as Vilém Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker Engages with contemporary discourses of speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, animal studies and the weird in order to chart the relationship between cinema and cephalopods Takes in examples from Europe, North America, South America and Asia, across a range of media, including cinema, literature, music videos, 4DX, advertising, websites, YouTube videos, artificial intelligence, VR and more Here be Kraken! The Squid Cinema From Hell draws upon writers like Vilém Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker to offer up a critical analysis of cephalopods and other tentacular creatures in contemporary media, while also speculating that digital media might themselves constitute a weird, intelligent alien. If this were not enough to shiver ye timbers, the book engages with contemporary discourses of posthumanism, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology and animal studies to suggest that humans are the products of media rather than media being the products of humans. Including case studies of films by Denis Villeneuve, Park Chan-wook and Céline Sciamma, The Squid Cinema From Hell also provides a daring engagement with various media beyond cinema, including literature, music videos, 4DX, advertising, websites, YouTube, Artificial Intelligence and more. Zounds! This unique and Lovecraftian book will change the way you think about, and with, our contemporary, media-saturated world. For as we contemplate the abyss, the abyss looks back at us - and chthulumedia, or media at the end of human times, begin to emerge.

Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Chthulumedia

The Squid Cinema from Hell

Unbecoming Cinema constitutes a welcome addition to texts that provide a film-philosophical perspective on films that otherwise take on and involve difficult subject matter, including in this case suicide, autistic worldviews, hallucinatory aesthetics and vomit-gore. The book in effect argues successfully and intelligently that even though hard to watch, many of these films can provide for viewers an opportunity to come to a renewed understanding of self and world. As a result, the author takes on difficult topics, but brings them to life in an exciting, philosophical fashion that also asks readers to rethink what it is that constitutes cinema.

David H. Fleming

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