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Metabolisms of moving image

Metabolisms of moving image
Metabolisms of moving image
My thesis is situated at the intersection of film and media archaeology, history and philosophy of science, and artist moving image. The project started with an idea that stemmed from my filmmaking practice: what if moving image media could be considered as a kind of metabolism, understood as a system that actively produces change, has cycles of regeneration and decay, and which occupies the thresholds between seemingly stable states such as life and death, human and nonhuman, subject and object. The central argument of my written thesis is that metabolism’s scientific, technological, and cultural evolution over the last two centuries serves as an engine for theorizing moving image media as they emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and have continued to evolve over time. Both metabolism and moving image are changing indexes of change. Both are systems that break down the incessant flux of all things into measured intervals in order to produce models of living things, which, in their altered reconstruction, appear to be objectively known. Yet both metabolism and moving image media in a sense betray their purposes of quantifying and regulating the world in flux, because they themselves are constantly changing. When media become outdated and die, they are thrust back into the world as material objects, no longer capable of accurately mediating the real. Techniques and concepts for studying metabolism a century ago likewise become historical objects of curiosity, incapable of producing working knowledge in metabolic science today. Seeking to produce data about change from outside change, metabolism and moving image can never actually extricate themselves from the world’s flux because they are ultimately part of the world they measure. Throughout the different themes addressed in each of the chapters, I argue that the articulation of this fact is essential to reclaiming unquantifiable agencies of change from the biopolitical stratification of life processes that both metabolism and moving image media have historically served to strengthen and regulate. Alongside the theoretical arguments outlined in the written chapters, I have produced a film (in collaboration with my long-term creative partner Sasha Litvintseva), titled My Want of You Partakes of Me. The film is a tapestry of narrative threads on the complexity of incorporation, consumption, and digestion as a physical, perceptual, and psychological foundation of being. The film emerges from a practice-driven methodology which transformed my historical and theoretical insights into metabolism through an artist moving image practice centered on processes of embodiment, chance, and transformation.
University of Southampton
Wagner, Benjamin Chajim
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Wagner, Benjamin Chajim
062eba08-3b04-4b1b-9e92-d35aa04251c0
Parikka, Jussi
cf75ecb3-3559-4e53-a03e-af511651e9ac
Tweed, Charlie
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Wagner, Benjamin Chajim (2024) Metabolisms of moving image. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis, 251pp.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

My thesis is situated at the intersection of film and media archaeology, history and philosophy of science, and artist moving image. The project started with an idea that stemmed from my filmmaking practice: what if moving image media could be considered as a kind of metabolism, understood as a system that actively produces change, has cycles of regeneration and decay, and which occupies the thresholds between seemingly stable states such as life and death, human and nonhuman, subject and object. The central argument of my written thesis is that metabolism’s scientific, technological, and cultural evolution over the last two centuries serves as an engine for theorizing moving image media as they emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and have continued to evolve over time. Both metabolism and moving image are changing indexes of change. Both are systems that break down the incessant flux of all things into measured intervals in order to produce models of living things, which, in their altered reconstruction, appear to be objectively known. Yet both metabolism and moving image media in a sense betray their purposes of quantifying and regulating the world in flux, because they themselves are constantly changing. When media become outdated and die, they are thrust back into the world as material objects, no longer capable of accurately mediating the real. Techniques and concepts for studying metabolism a century ago likewise become historical objects of curiosity, incapable of producing working knowledge in metabolic science today. Seeking to produce data about change from outside change, metabolism and moving image can never actually extricate themselves from the world’s flux because they are ultimately part of the world they measure. Throughout the different themes addressed in each of the chapters, I argue that the articulation of this fact is essential to reclaiming unquantifiable agencies of change from the biopolitical stratification of life processes that both metabolism and moving image media have historically served to strengthen and regulate. Alongside the theoretical arguments outlined in the written chapters, I have produced a film (in collaboration with my long-term creative partner Sasha Litvintseva), titled My Want of You Partakes of Me. The film is a tapestry of narrative threads on the complexity of incorporation, consumption, and digestion as a physical, perceptual, and psychological foundation of being. The film emerges from a practice-driven methodology which transformed my historical and theoretical insights into metabolism through an artist moving image practice centered on processes of embodiment, chance, and transformation.

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Benjamin_Wagner_PhD_Thesis_PDFA - Version of Record
Restricted to Repository staff only until 31 March 2028.
Available under License University of Southampton Thesis Licence.
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Final-thesis-submission-Examination-Mr-Benjamin-Wagner
Restricted to Repository staff only
Available under License University of Southampton Thesis Licence.

More information

Submitted date: December 2023
Published date: April 2024

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 488526
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/488526
PURE UUID: 248852f2-8687-46e5-901c-b62483035b1f
ORCID for Jussi Parikka: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2248-6377

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 26 Mar 2024 17:43
Last modified: 22 May 2024 01:43

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Contributors

Author: Benjamin Chajim Wagner
Thesis advisor: Jussi Parikka ORCID iD
Thesis advisor: Charlie Tweed

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