Books by Teresa Castro
Même si les végétaux ont longtemps été considérés comme des êtres moins vivants que les animaux, ... more Même si les végétaux ont longtemps été considérés comme des êtres moins vivants que les animaux, leur capacité à produire des formes complexes et des couleurs variées en fait des objets privilégiés d'admiration et d'expérimentation. De nombreuses sociétés mettent d'ailleurs en scène, souvent dans des contextes rituels, des processus vitaux tels que la croissance et la floraison des plantes ou la longévité des arbres. Dans le prolongement de ce désir d'exposer des qualités visuelles et morphologiques, la photographie et le cinéma, par les effets de magnification et d'accélération qu'ils rendent possibles, aident les humains à mieux voir, concevoir et imaginer la vitalité à l'œuvre dans le monde végétal.
Fruit d'un dialogue pluridisciplinaire engagé entre des anthropologues, des philosophes et des spécialistes en études visuelles et cinématographiques, cet ouvrage explore la capacité des images à découvrir l'animation qui parcourt les végétaux et à faire apparaître de nouvelles formes d'animisme dans les sociétés modernes.
Re-Imagining African Independence. Film, Visual Arts and the Fall of the Portuguese Empire., 2017
The fortieth anniversary of the independence of the African countries colonized by Portugal prese... more The fortieth anniversary of the independence of the African countries colonized by Portugal presents a valuable opportunity to reassess how colonialism has been «imagined» through the medium of the moving image. The essays collected in this volume investigate Portuguese colonialism and its filmic and audio-visual imaginaries both during and after the Estado Novo regime, examining political propaganda films shot during the liberation wars and exploring the questions and debates these generate. The book also highlights common aspects in the emergence of a national cinema in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. By reanimating (and decolonizing) the archive, it represents an important contribution to Portuguese colonial history, as well as to the history of cinema and the visual arts
Edited Journals (introductions to) by Teresa Castro
Necsus. European Journal of Media Studies., 2018
Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, 2017
Em 1924, o teórico do cinema Béla Balázs (de seu nome Herbert Bauer) publicava na Alemanha uma re... more Em 1924, o teórico do cinema Béla Balázs (de seu nome Herbert Bauer) publicava na Alemanha uma recolha de textos seus, sob o título de O Homem visível (Der Sichtbare Mensch). No primeiro dos seus capítulos, Balázs sugere que a invenção do cinema conduzirá a cultura conceptual da palavra em direção a uma cultura visual [visuelle Kultur]. Na verdade, esta última teria sido dominante até à invenção da imprensa, o cinema ajudando «a humanidade inteira [..] a aprender a linguagem desaprendida das mímicas e dos gestos» (Balázs, 2017). No então domínio emergente da teoria cinematográfica, o argumento do autor húngaro não é totalmente original. Na verdade, em 1915, no seu livro pioneiro The Art of the Moving Picture, também o poeta e cinéfilo americano Vachel Lindsay afirmava que o cinema constitui uma nova forma de imprensa e que «Edison é novo Gutenberg» (Lindsay, 1915, p. 224), as imagens silenciosas do cinema assemelhando-se aos antigos hieróglifos egípcios. Anos mais tarde (1946-1949), também Jean Epstein se refere ao cinema como «um instrumento de ressurreição do velho pensamento visual, pré-lógico, de carácter mais ou menos onírico, que se viu sufocado pelo desenvolvimento brutal do pensamento verbal, abstracto, lógico» (Epstein, 1974, p. 173). Segundo a narrativa convencional (de origem anglo-saxónica) sobre os estudos de cultura visual, as primeiras ocorrências desta expressão remontam aos anos 1970/1980 e aos trabalhos de Michael Baxandall (Painting and Experience in Fifteenth century Italy, 1972) e de Svetlana Alpers (The Art of Describing. Dutch Art in the Seventeenth century, 1983). Indubitavelmente, ambos estes livros testemunham duma abertura significativa relativamente às imagens «não artísticas» e às dimensões cultural e historicamente variáveis das formas de olhar e das experiências visuais. Neste âmbito, os trabalhos de Alpers e de Baxandall anunciam, de facto, uma reorientação que conduzirá, essencialmente a partir dos anos 1990, à constituição de um campo inter ou transdisciplinar que procura contribuir para uma história alargada das imagens e das experiências visuais e onde os
Book Introductions by Teresa Castro
Au-delà du plaisir visuel. Féminisme, énigmes, cinéphilie, 2017
Le Film qui me reste en mémoire , 2019
Publié originellement en 2004, Le Film qui me reste en mémoire apparaît aujourd'hui à la lectrice... more Publié originellement en 2004, Le Film qui me reste en mémoire apparaît aujourd'hui à la lectrice et au lecteur francophones qui le découvrent pour la première fois comme une réflexion profondément originale sur les rapports que les sujets-spectateurs que nous sommes entretiennent avec les films de cinéma. Il s'agit dans cet ouvrage, qui constitue alors la somme logique de différentes préoccupations traversant la vaste production théorique de Victor Burgin - le souvenir et la mémoire, l'articulation entre psychanalyse et idéologie, le questionne-ment de l'opposition entre image fixe et image en mouvement, etc.-, d'interroger la façon dont les films investissent sous forme de fragments non seulement notre environnement visuel, mais aussi notre espace psychique.
Articles (selection) by Teresa Castro
Philosophies
This article explores the connections between film and ruderal plants: plants that grow spontaneo... more This article explores the connections between film and ruderal plants: plants that grow spontaneously in anthropized environments and that we often call “weeds”. Thriving across damaged lands, ruderals are not only exceptional companions for thinking with at a time of ecological rupture, but also a way of engaging with less anthropocentric histories. As argued in this paper, such histories also pertain to film. Despite its timid representational interest in ruderals and “weeds”, cinema is concerned with the stories of collaborative survival, companionship and contaminated diversity raised by such turbulent creatures. Framed by a reflection on our ruderal condition, a discussion around some recent artists’ films allows us to explore some of these problems, while putting an accent on the idea of affective ecologies and involutionary modes of perception.
Mulheres Mágicas. Reinvenções das bruxas no cinema., 2022
Antennae. The Journal of Art and Nature, 2020
In the early 1970s, a general plant craze caught on in visual and popular culture alike. Against ... more In the early 1970s, a general plant craze caught on in visual and popular culture alike. Against the background of New Age spirituality and the flourishing of ecological thinking, the 1970s plant mania came as an eccentric blow to the belief that sentience and intelligence are a human prerogative. It also relied massively on the cybernetic paradigm: envisaged as self-regulating biological systems, plants were recognized as communication systems in themselves. In this essay, I sketch a brief portrait of this complex cultural moment, as visual culture, and in particular film, came to be permeated by references to plant communication, plant sentience and plant intelligence.
Cuando comenzó el aislamiento social obligatorio, nos encontrábamos curando una extensa exposició... more Cuando comenzó el aislamiento social obligatorio, nos encontrábamos curando una extensa exposición en la que artistas argentinos contemporáneos investigan de diversas maneras las transformaciones de las relaciones entre los seres humanos y los seres no humanos (animales, plantas, piedras, microorganismos, pero también cosas, máquinas, sus propios cuerpos). Aunque la fecha de apertura se ha pospuesto, seguimos trabajando. Para compartir nuestro proceso, publicamos esta serie de textos que componen nuestros marcos teóricos y que no se han traducido al español o publicado hasta ahora. Elegimos en el título la palabra "emergencia" por su doble alusión a una situación de alerta frente a un peligro, pero también al surgimiento de algo nuevo: quizás un planeta más solidario, más generoso, más frugal y equilibrado, más imaginativo. Más rico, entendiendo que tenemos la oportunidad de volver a preguntarnos qué es la riqueza.
Frames Cinema Journal , 2019
Gazing at witches is a dangerous thing, as Medusa’s myth reminds us: didn’t the mere sight of the... more Gazing at witches is a dangerous thing, as Medusa’s myth reminds us: didn’t the mere sight of the snake-haired Gorgon turn men into stone? Don’t witches have hurtful eyes, bewitching people and animals with their malevolent glances? Weren’t they carried into courts backwards, so as not to cast spells on wary judges with their cunning eyes? There is power in looking, as witchcraft, psychoanalysis and critical theory all argue, and looking is (or can be) a power exercise, as the onlooker turns the subject into the object of his look. Nowhere is this more evident than in film, where the gaze is always at stake. What about the way film has gazed at the witch? Not simply the way in which it has imagined the witch, but gazed at it, i.e. confined it to ideological power structures that are as much about cultural stereotypes and sexual politics as they are about narrative and formal devices? This is the general question I would like to ask, in order to explore the multifaceted politics of female witches on screen. I will focus on one political potentiality of the female witch: the way in which she hinges upon the gendered reason/nature dualism at the heart of modernity and western patriarchal culture.
El regreso del animismo" es quizás un título intrigante que recuerdan los orígenes de este términ... more El regreso del animismo" es quizás un título intrigante que recuerdan los orígenes de este término durante muchos años escrupulosamente evitado por la antropología: la discusión, por el intelectual inglés Edward B. Tylor, de las creencias de los "pueblos primitivos" en su libro de 1871 La cultura primitiva 2. El animismo designaba entonces la creencia de que un gran número de entidades no humanas poseen un alma. De acuerdo con el contexto evolucionista que dominaba la antropología cultural, el animismo sería la primera etapa de la religión, antes del politeísmo y el monoteísmo, y caracteriza a los pueblos clasificándolos como "salvajes" o " poco civilizados". Las teorías de Tylor encontraron un enorme éxito, dominando durante casi medio siglo las investigaciones de antropólogos, sociólogos e historiadores de las religiones e influyendo en dominios como la psicología y el psicoanálisis. El propio Freud (gran lector de Tylor) discutió el animismo del niño y del neurótico, naturalizando la oposición entre lo arcaico y lo civilizado, que en el campo de la psicología se convierte en el enfrentamiento entre lo patológico y lo normal 3. A principios del siglo XX, la asimilación entre el loco, el primitivo y el niño conoce un desarrollo importante: todos encarnan figuras de la alteridad que desafían la "razón lógica". Sin embargo, a mediano plazo, la asociación entre el animismo y el evolucionismo llevó a la condena de este término. A partir de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y en el campo de la antropología, la noción de animismo se vuelve poco frecuente. Durante varios años el animismo ha estado regresando. La noción reapareció, ante todo, en el campo de la antropología gracias a las obras-en sí misma muy distintas-de diferentes antropólogos: el francés Philippe Descola, el brasileño Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, el británico Tim Ingold y el estadounidense de origen ecuatoriano Eduardo Kohn, por citar sólo cuatro nombres cuyos aportes están reconfigurando radicalmente la antropología contemporánea. Según la definición sintética de Descola, el animismo consiste en la "imputación por parte de los humanos a los no
Gradhiva. Revue d'Anthropologie et d'histoire des arts. , 2018
Publié en 1930 dans la collection « Images du monde », que Florent Fels dirige chez Firmin-Didot,... more Publié en 1930 dans la collection « Images du monde », que Florent Fels dirige chez Firmin-Didot, l’ouvrage Races du géographe Jean Brunhes constitue ce qu’on pourrait appeler un atlas de vulgarisation. Illustré par un matériel photographique hétérogène (clichés du xixe siècle, images d’agences photographiques, photographies de tournage de films hollywoodiens, etc.), le livre est le support d’un discours paradoxal sur la diversité humaine. Cet objet, fruit d’une culture visuelle à cheval entre deux disciplines (la géographie humaine et l’anthropologie) et deux sphères d’activité (la vulgarisation scientifique et l’édition artistique), produit un discours que nous analyserons ici en l’inscrivant dans le paysage scientifique et éditorial de l’époque. Une attention particulière est accordée aux liens entre Races et un autre projet auquel le géographe fut intimement lié : la collection d’images des Archives de la Planète (1912-1931) d’Albert Kahn.
Circa 1900, at the time when a number of photographic and
cinematographic collections were starti... more Circa 1900, at the time when a number of photographic and
cinematographic collections were starting to take shape, the
terms “atlas” and “archive” were continually crossing paths,
attesting to a conceptual interaction between two distinct
forms of organising knowledges. In reference to two case
studies — the Archives of Speech (1912-1924) and the Archives
of the Planet (1912-1931) — the author supports the
hypothesis that the progressive prevalence of the paradigm
of the archive on collections bringing together photographic
images, animated images, and sound recordings is simultaneously
connected to the consolidation of a particular regime
of historicity — relying on a shared sense of an acceleration
of the present and on the typically modern belief
in progress — and on the development of new techniques
of recording and mechanical reproduction (the phonograph,
photography, and film).
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Books by Teresa Castro
Fruit d'un dialogue pluridisciplinaire engagé entre des anthropologues, des philosophes et des spécialistes en études visuelles et cinématographiques, cet ouvrage explore la capacité des images à découvrir l'animation qui parcourt les végétaux et à faire apparaître de nouvelles formes d'animisme dans les sociétés modernes.
Edited Journals (introductions to) by Teresa Castro
Book Introductions by Teresa Castro
Articles (selection) by Teresa Castro
cinematographic collections were starting to take shape, the
terms “atlas” and “archive” were continually crossing paths,
attesting to a conceptual interaction between two distinct
forms of organising knowledges. In reference to two case
studies — the Archives of Speech (1912-1924) and the Archives
of the Planet (1912-1931) — the author supports the
hypothesis that the progressive prevalence of the paradigm
of the archive on collections bringing together photographic
images, animated images, and sound recordings is simultaneously
connected to the consolidation of a particular regime
of historicity — relying on a shared sense of an acceleration
of the present and on the typically modern belief
in progress — and on the development of new techniques
of recording and mechanical reproduction (the phonograph,
photography, and film).
Fruit d'un dialogue pluridisciplinaire engagé entre des anthropologues, des philosophes et des spécialistes en études visuelles et cinématographiques, cet ouvrage explore la capacité des images à découvrir l'animation qui parcourt les végétaux et à faire apparaître de nouvelles formes d'animisme dans les sociétés modernes.
cinematographic collections were starting to take shape, the
terms “atlas” and “archive” were continually crossing paths,
attesting to a conceptual interaction between two distinct
forms of organising knowledges. In reference to two case
studies — the Archives of Speech (1912-1924) and the Archives
of the Planet (1912-1931) — the author supports the
hypothesis that the progressive prevalence of the paradigm
of the archive on collections bringing together photographic
images, animated images, and sound recordings is simultaneously
connected to the consolidation of a particular regime
of historicity — relying on a shared sense of an acceleration
of the present and on the typically modern belief
in progress — and on the development of new techniques
of recording and mechanical reproduction (the phonograph,
photography, and film).
The purpose of this paper is to think the application of colour to films in relation to the notion of ornament. In early films, hand-painted and stencilled colours literally constitute a supplement, an ornamental addition to the film’s surface. The ornament(ation) is here to be understood in several different ways: firstly, as a practice linked to an aesthetic and socio-economic debate in the turn-of-the-century European context; secondly, as a formal and discursive procedure; and, finally, as an aesthetics in itself. Our aim is to inscribe film and the moving image in the long and complex history of ornamentation and to go beyond a negative conception of the ornament.
If this is not the first time that aerial shots make an appearance in film, what this exceptional aerial travelling fully explores, most likely for the first time, are the unique possibilities allowed by the combination of the eye of the camera with the aerial motion of the airship. The striking documentary and archival value of aerial images goes hand in hand with a spectacular stirring of emotions. If the camera angle exposes the dimension of the devastation, the smoothness and fluidity of its aerial movement represent an unquestionable source of emotion: emotion attached to the sudden, voyeuristic, revelation of the territory as yet another injured body ; emotion linked to the visual pleasure of discovering the earth’s surface from a new and exciting angle of vision; and “e-motion”, finally, of being able to move freely in the space-time continuum. Attention should be drawn to two elements: firstly, the cinematographic specificity of these aerial images and their importance to film history; and secondly, the way they seem to embody a particular historical look.
Cet entretien avec le photographe Roberto Huarcaya a été réalisé en marge d’une exposition réunissant trois séries photographiques, Amazogrammes, Andinogrammes et Océanogrammes, présentées aux Rencontres d’Arles à l’été 2023. Figure de proue de la photographie péruvienne contemporaine, Roberto Huarcaya y conviait le public à une immersion sensible dans des formes parfois reconnaissables, souvent indistinctes, fixées sur des photogrammes de plusieurs mètres de long représentant la forêt amazonienne, l’océan, ou encore des danses. Dans cet entretien, il revient sur les limites de l’appareil photographique face au foisonnement du vivant, sur l’extrême diversité des regards possibles sur l’Amazonie, ou encore sur le rôle de l’image dans notre monde post-colonial.
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Decolonising Our Vision of Nature. Roberto Huarcaya, Teresa Castro, Estelle Sohier
This interview with photographer Roberto Huarcaya was conducted in conjunction with an exhibition that brought together three photographic series – Amazogrammes, Andinogrammes and Océanogrammes – presented at the Rencontres d’Arles in summer 2023. A key figure in contemporary Peruvian photography, Roberto Huarcaya gave the public the opportunity to immerse themselves in images of forms - sometimes recognisable and often indistinct–which were captured on photograms several metres long that depict the Amazon rainforest, the ocean, and even dances. In this interview, he discusses the limitations of the camera when faced with the profusion of Amazonian life, the extreme diversity of the ways to understand the region, and the role of the image in our post-colonial world.