Screens, Thinking, Worlds – serie

The Natural History of Film Form argues that, more than simply ingredients in film stock, gelatin, silver and celluloid helped shape early film aesthetics. Drawing on fan and industry periodicals, as well as the testimony of pioneering filmmakers and film manufacturers, the book reveals that the politico-material properties of these geo- and bio-physical materials influenced a range of aesthetic regimes from the turn-of-the century trick film, to developments in popular science cinema, to early studio-era fantasies of the silver screen. In the process, the book offers a fresh perspective on the interplay between nature and culture in film history.

The Natural History of Film Form argues that, more than simply ingredients in film stock, gelatin, silver and celluloid helped shape early film aesthetics. Drawing on fan and industry periodicals, as well as the testimony of pioneering filmmakers and film manufacturers, the book reveals that the politico-material properties of these geo- and bio-physical materials influenced a range of aesthetic regimes from the turn-of-the century trick film, to developments in popular science cinema, to early studio-era fantasies of the silver screen. In the process, the book offers a fresh perspective on the interplay between nature and culture in film history.

Brown and Fleming employ the twin discourses of critical race theory and posthumanism in order to expose how multinational platforms like Netflix play a role in both problematising and perpetuating deeply entrenched violences lurking within the intersections of racism, capitalism, and technology. The authors dive into the racialised world-building of shows like Stranger Things, Watchmen, Lovecraft Country, Sense8, The Twilight Zone, The O.A., Ad Vitam and DEVS, and through their groundbreaking media philosophy diagnose and confront the oppressive and racialising nature of streaming media at the end of the world, in the so-called Chthulucene (or 'Chthulustream'). As Brown and Fleming demonstrate, streaming media can, at their best, liberate thought to confront overlapping infinite ontologies (?O) that themselves offer a timely panacea and corrective to Object-Oriented-Ontology (OOO).