James Benning’s Environments

Nikolaj Lübecker is Professor of French and Film Studies at St John's College, University of Oxford. His publications focus on contemporary American and European cinema, French literature and critical theory. His most recent book, The Feel-Bad Film (Edinburgh UP, 2015), investigates logics of unpleasure in films by directors such as Claire Denis, Lars von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Bruno Dumont and Harmony Korine.

'James Benning's film and video works are not just powerful and entrancing interventions in contemporary art. They are in most instances complex statements about the nature of the world, questions about how we know it, and challenges to the political responsibilities we have for both the world and our ways of knowing. Nikolaj Lübecker and Daniele Rugo have curated some of the best contemporary art theorists, ecocritics, film philosophers and Benning specialists to create a startling and provocative account of a body of work of immense importance to how we interpret and act in the Anthropocene.'Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of LondonFor more than forty years, the experimental filmmaker James Benning has been engaged in a systematic investigation of the relations between man, landscape and the filmic medium, and during the last decade it has become increasingly clear how much these investigations have to offer to contemporary debates about ecology, the age of the Anthropocene and the potentialities of new digital technologies.In James Benning's Environments a range of international scholars highlight the thematic and formal coherence of Benning's practice, whilst providing readers with an artistic and historical context to understand his experimental film work. The volume offers a number of interpretative frameworks drawing on film theory, environmental humanities, visual culture and philosophy, explaining why Benning has emerged as one of today's essential filmmakers.Nikolaj Lübecker is Professor of French and Film Studies at St John's College, University of Oxford. Daniele Rugo is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arts & Humanities at Brunel University, London.Cover image: James Benning, El Valley Centro, 1999. Courtesy of the artist and neugerriemschneider, BerlinCover design:[EUP logo]edinburghuniversitypress.comISBN 978-1-4744-1794-5Barcode

Introduction, Nikolaj Lübecker & Daniele Rugo Intellectual EnvironmentsSurveying James Benning, Scott MacDonaldUtah and the Times: Governing Temporality in Deseret, John BeckViolence and Landscape in the Films of James Benning, Nikolaj Lübecker