This is brilliant and timely, including and especially your linkage to Reynolds's painting and its historical transformations as a guiding metaphor.
Are you familiar with the work of Jeffrey Kripal? From his post as chair of the religious studies department at Rice University, he has stood at the forefront of the rehabilitation of forthrightly supernatural and paranormal considerations in mainstream academia for a decade and a half. One of his central points is that this aspect of religion was abandoned, ignored, and/or suppressed over the past couple of centuries by the academic study of the subject, and that such a development is deeply ironic since experiences and encounters that people have traditionally taken to be what we would label today as paranormal or supernatural have always been one of the things that religion as a cultural category is specifically about. I heartily recommend any of his books, and also his TEDx talk.
Made me think of John Wilson and his comical, uncinematic, films about New York. His contemplative gaze is unenchanted and seems to use film in a way that (maybe?) restores some thingness to the bedevilled world of images. For my sins I am editing a documentary film right now with the
cinematic devil on one shoulder and Baudrillard on the other.
This is brilliant and timely, including and especially your linkage to Reynolds's painting and its historical transformations as a guiding metaphor.
Are you familiar with the work of Jeffrey Kripal? From his post as chair of the religious studies department at Rice University, he has stood at the forefront of the rehabilitation of forthrightly supernatural and paranormal considerations in mainstream academia for a decade and a half. One of his central points is that this aspect of religion was abandoned, ignored, and/or suppressed over the past couple of centuries by the academic study of the subject, and that such a development is deeply ironic since experiences and encounters that people have traditionally taken to be what we would label today as paranormal or supernatural have always been one of the things that religion as a cultural category is specifically about. I heartily recommend any of his books, and also his TEDx talk.
Footage of the final moments of a suicide drone in the Ukraine war has been posted on YouTube.
A soldier running to escape the drone.
The gaze of a soldier who has given up on fleeing and stares blankly at the drone’s camera.
The profile of a soldier who, unaware that the drone is approaching, meets his end.
Has there ever been footage that captured the moment of a human’s death in such graphic detail?
I call these drone videos “the eyes of the devil.”
What kind of changes will occur in the minds of those who have seen this footage?
And what changes have already taken place in the minds of those who feel no revulsion at watching such footage?
Made me think of John Wilson and his comical, uncinematic, films about New York. His contemplative gaze is unenchanted and seems to use film in a way that (maybe?) restores some thingness to the bedevilled world of images. For my sins I am editing a documentary film right now with the
cinematic devil on one shoulder and Baudrillard on the other.