Starting from the premise that after modernism and postmodernism - in the Anthropocene - an artwork cannot rest upon its separation from the planet, this volume develops new ethical practice and thought with respect to art, philosophy and moving images. Practitioners and theorists examine how the relations between the ethical and the material figure in a context in which a dearth of ethical practice and thought has caused the materialities of the Anthropocene and the climate catastrophe. Ethics are generally regarded as constituted through immaterial relations guided by moral imperatives. By contrast, this volume argues that the singular ethicalities that are manifested in a work cannot be captured by abstract ethics. The explorations of the ethical here are not prescriptive, but creative. Through artistic and philosophical thought and practice, the contributions move beyond the division between an active practice of ethics and a contemplative theory of aesthetics. They ask what ethicalities and materialities are at play in the relations between the artist, the art, their worlds and the planet after new materialism and posthumanism. Rather than transcending the ethical through the material or the material through the ethical, the contributions articulate the singular relations between them and consider the inter- and intra-active ethical and material relations of art and images in biodiverse environments. They suggest that to bring out the ethical dimensions of the material and the material dimension of the ethical - without identifying one with the other -is a responsibility of art and images.

This volume develops new ethical thought and practice with respect to art, philosophy and moving images.

About the Author
Silke Panse is Reader in Film, Art and Philosophy, University for the Creative Arts, UK.

Reviews
This wonderfully diverse volume shows how the zone of ethics is always a zone of jagged, not flat, ontologies. It is a primer for what it means to take ethics-and the ethics of art-seriously. * Cary Wolfe, Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice University, USA, and author of What is Posthumanism? (2009) and Art and Posthumanism: Essays, Encounters, Conversations (2022) *
Applying Spinoza's ethics - to affect and be affected - to film and painting, this groundbreaking anthology deconstructs differences between the human and non-human, material and non-material to create new connections between ethical thought and practice. * Colin Gardner, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, and co-editor of Ecosophical Aesthetics: Art, Ethics and Ecology with Guattari (2018) and Deleuze and the Animal (2017) *
Are you curious how materialities and ethics relate to each other when it comes to art, audiovisual culture, bio- or media-diversity, and philosophy? Would you like to follow many materials and their mutable natures in the Anthropocene? Then this excellent book is for you! * Petra Lange-Berndt, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of Hamburg, Germany, and editor of Materiality (2015) *
A powerful and timely retort to the rejection of ethics in recent philosophy and art theory. With its lively range of perspectives and readings of art works, the book moves beyond reductive theoretical framings of matter and meaning to address some of the most pressing political and ethical questions in a time of mass extinction. * Ros Gray, Reader and Co-Director, Centre for Art and Ecology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK *



Book Information
ISBN 9781350427143
Author Dr Silke Panse
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC