Séminaire: “Imaging (Against) the End: How Pictures Can Reinforce or Counteract the Collapse of Our Worlds”,  February 2nd,  3 :30pm

Seminar in Film Studies, Concordia Univ/ ENS LL, Feb 2nd : Sophie Lécole Solnychkine & Aline Wiame 

Joint Seminar in Film Studies, ENS Louis-Lumière & Concordia University: Aline Wiame et de Sophie Solnychkine.

February 2^nd,  3 :30pm: online seminar : https://concordia-ca.zoom.us/j/89174810426

In this joint session, we will inquire into the various ways cinema figures the end of the world (be it through global nuclear annihilation in American cinema of the 1950s or through climate anxiety in contemporary [post]apocalyptic fictions), wagering that questioning the bewildering effects of apocalyptic pictures through the singular lens of the aesthetics of cinema allows for a more nuanced and (re)generative account of what pictures can do and which affects they can produce. We will focus both on the transhistorical character of the end of the world in cinematographic iconology and on the aesthetical questions it raises about the very essence of the medium, eventually arguing for a typology of images according to their abilities to knit together or else destroy worlds.

Sophie Lécole Solnychkine is Associate Professor with HDR in Aesthetics at the Université de Toulouse – Jean Jaurès. She teaches philosophy of art, general aesthetics and aesthetics of cinema. She is also Head of the Département d’arts plastiques et de design. Her two last published books are Æsthetica antarctica. The Thing de John Carpenter (Rouge Profond, 2019), and Dans la boue des images (Mimesis, 2023).

Aline Wiame is Associate Professor of Arts and Philosophy at the Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Her main research areas are contemporary French philosophy, American pragmatism, and ecological humanities. She has published one monograph in French (Scènes de la défiguration, Les Presses du réel, 2016) and numerous articles in French and English. Her new monograph, Revenir d’entre les morts. Deleuze et la croyance en ce monde au cinéma et dans les séries, is forthcoming at Les Presses du réel.