Affective mediality and its aesthetic transformation in Christian Marclay’s The clock

This essay brings together a traditional philosophical theory of affect with mediaphilosophical considerations about the various non-anthropocentric roles that affects may play in aesthetics and especially in film-aesthetic regimes. In a first part it deals with the logics and functions of affect as they are made explicit by the philosopher William James. With this theoretical tool at hand the second part tries to overcome the anthropocentric implications of the introduced definitions of affect by confronting them with aesthetic transformations as they are technically evoked by filmic artworks. To be able to describe those transformations adequately, the philosophical conceptualization of ‘affect’ has to be critically complemented and enlarged in the light of mediaphilosophical reflections. In applying some aspects of James’ affect-theory to what is triggered, imposed and negotiated as affective effects by the film-installation The clock (2010 by Christian Marclay), different kinds of hybridizations of technical and organic elements can be identified. They lead to the introduction of the neologistic term and concept of ‘Anthropomediality’. The latter is supposed to figure as a new substitute concept for ‘the man’, while merging ‘anthropos’ and ‘mediality’. It describes a hybrid mode of existence that may be analysed as a nonreducible form of being in future endeavours within the (still young field of research) of Media Anthropology and Philosophy of Techniques

Aesthetics · Affect theory · Anthropocentrism · Conceptualization · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Linguistics · Sociology · Art, Aesthetics, and Perception · Computer Science · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · Digital Media and Philosophy · Philosophy

• Ii.—what Is an Emotion ?

  William James•Mind•1884

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