Alain Badiou: Cinema (2010–)

“For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that lies at the heart of Badiou’s account of cinema.

He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the experience of viewing, the movement of thought that constitutes the film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing its times, the other arts, and people – a major art precisely because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age novel and the operetta were in their respective eras.”

First published in French as Cinéma, Nova Editions, 2010

Texts selected and introduced by Antoine de Baecque
Translated by Susan Spitzer
Publisher Polity, 2013
ISBN 10074565567X, 9780745655673
269 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-7-5)

Friedrich Kittler: Draculas Vermächtnis: Technische Schriften (1993) [German]

A collection of essays by Friedrich Kittler, including his famous reading of Dracula.

Essays zu den „Effekten der Sprengung des Schriftmonopols“, zu den Analogmedien Schallplatte, Film und Radio sowie „technische Schriften, die numerisch oder algebraisch verfasst sind“.

Publisher Reclam, Leipzig, 1993
ISBN 3379014761, 9783379014762
259 pages
via poshumano

Review (Geert Lovink, Mediamatic)

PDF
See also Kittler at Monoskop wiki

Friedrich Kittler: Optical Media: Berlin Lectures 1999 (2002–)

“This major new book provides a concise history of optical media from Renaissance linear perspective to late twentieth-century computer graphics. Kittler begins by looking at European painting since the Renaissance in order to discern the principles according to which modern optical perception was organized. He also discusses the development of various mechanical devices, such as the camera obscura and the laterna magica, which were closely connected to the printing press and which played a pivotal role in the media war between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

After examining this history, Kittler then addresses the ways in which images were first stored and made to move, through the development of photography and film. He discusses the competitive relationship between photography and painting as well as between film and theater, as innovations like the Baroque proscenium or “picture-frame” stage evolved from elements that would later constitute cinema. The central question, however, is the impact of film on the ancient monopoly of writing, as it not only provoked new forms of competition for novelists but also fundamentally altered the status of books. In the final section, Kittler examines the development of electrical telecommunications and electronic image processing from television to computer simulations.

In short, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of image production that is indispensable for anyone wishing to understand the prevailing audiovisual conditions of contemporary culture.”

Publisher Merve, Berlin, 2002
Internationaler Merve Diskurs series, 250
ISBN 3883961833, 9783883961835
331 pages

English edition
Translated by Anthony Enns
With an introduction by John Durham Peters
Publisher Polity, 2009
ISBN 0745640915, 9780745640914
vi+250 pages

Reviews: Anthony Enns (Electronic Book Review 2004), Nicholas Gane and Hannes Hansen-Magnusson (Theory Culture Society 2006), Kiss (2006, HU), Bohár (HU), Jussi Parikka (2011).

Publisher (DE)
Publisher (EN)
Worldcat (DE)
Worldcat (EN)

Optische Medien. Berliner Vorlesung 1999 (German, 2002, added on 2016-8-13, removed on 2017-8-10 upon request from publisher – read first two chapters)
Optical Media: Berlin Lectures 1999 (English, trans. Anthony Enns, 2009)