Film, landscape and political aesthetics: Deseret

Abstract

Irrevocably historical, landscape is already denatured before it is represented, a repository of history which becomes, in representation, a record of history’s erasure under the banner of natural beauty. Questioning key aesthetic concepts of human freedom and the autonomy of art in dialogue with Theodor Adorno and James Benning, this essay argues the significance of eco-critique for film (and by implication electronic media) studies as exemplary of a political aesthetics adequate to contemporary historical conditions of landscape: neoliberal crisis, environmental degradation, and renewed colonialism.