Oscar Mealia
University of Birmingham, Film and Creative Writing, Department Member
- Goldsmiths, University of London, English and Comparative Literature, Graduate StudentUniversity of Warwick, Film and Television Studies, Department Memberadd
- Jean-François Lyotard, Film Theory, Theodor Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Walter Benjamin, Philosophy of Film, Black film, Friedrich Nietzsche, Literary Theory, Gilles Deleuze, and 8 moreContinental Philosophy and Aesthetics, Modernism, Audiovisual, Continental Philosophy, Film Studies, Documentary Film, Horror Cinema, and New Queer Cinemaedit
- I am an artist, filmmaker and researcher. In 2023 I completed an Phd in Film (audio-visual) at the University of Birmingham, England entitled ‘Inhuman, all too Inhuman: Lyotard, Nihilism and Film’. This research was an exploration of film vis-à-vis Jean-François Lyotard's notion of the inhuman, digital aesthetics and immaterial technologies crucially through the medium of film. Centred on investigations into Lyotard’s largely neglected notion of acinema and the constellation of anamnesis, the figural, immateriality, nihilism and te... moreI am an artist, filmmaker and researcher. In 2023 I completed an Phd in Film (audio-visual) at the University of Birmingham, England entitled ‘Inhuman, all too Inhuman: Lyotard, Nihilism and Film’. This research was an exploration of film vis-à-vis Jean-François Lyotard's notion of the inhuman, digital aesthetics and immaterial technologies crucially through the medium of film. Centred on investigations into Lyotard’s largely neglected notion of acinema and the constellation of anamnesis, the figural, immateriality, nihilism and technology, I seek to trace their implications and possibilities for film through theoretical and artistic enquires. In doing so I seek to question the limits of film in a digital age saturated with images and information, examining the viability of film as a site of resistance against what Lyotard terms the “inhuman”.
In 2015 I completed an M.A in Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths College, the University of London with a particular focus on the relationship between Literature, Art, Aesthetics and problematics of representation in the work of Adorno, Benjamin and Blanchot, culminating in my dissertation; 'Utopia in fragments: Art and Adorno's Negative Dialectics after Shoah'.
Outside of Academia, I am a published poet and exhibited multimedia artist. I also make post-classical, experimental and electronic music with Vinter which can be explored here: www.oscarvinter.comedit
This paper argues that Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetic project set in motion after the Holocaust is indissociable from thinking Utopia, with Adorno intuiting an emancipatory potential within the artwork. To do so, I explicate in detail... more
This paper argues that Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetic project set in motion after the Holocaust is indissociable from thinking Utopia, with Adorno intuiting an emancipatory potential within the artwork. To do so, I explicate in detail Adorno's "negative dialectics", a dialectic driven by impossibility which structures his thinking, from his "Categorical imperative", to his conceptions of the artwork and Utopia. Moreover, this paper elucidates the relation between Adorno's materialist Bilderverbot, "autonomous art" and Utopia, culminating in a critical engagement with the work of Anselm Kiefer and Andrei Tarkovsky.