Haptics and (Eco)Trauma Experience in Contemporary Experimental Documentaries (Diss./Betreuung)

Dissertation

Autor*in

Borbála Máté

Ort, Datum

Universität für angewandte Kunst in Wien, Wien, Österreich, 25. September 2025

Schlagwörter

eco-trauma, haptics, new materialism, eco-cinema, Filmkunst

Text

This dissertation explores the concept of eco-trauma and haptics in relation to contemporary experimental documentaries. By employing the new materialist concept of diffraction (Barad 2007)—whose qualities remain largely underexplored in film studies—the film phenomenological notion of haptics (Marks 2000), as well as Indigenous and non-Western understandings of human-nature relationships, this thesis investigates both the nature of ecological trauma and its representational challenges, particularly in cinematic terms. Grounded in a cross-disciplinary framework of new materialism, decolonial thinking, and film phenomenology, this dissertation seeks to provide alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between culture and nature, our being in the world, identity and difference, and representationalism, all in the hope of approaching eco-trauma in new and fertile ways. Through case studies such as Tomonari Nishikawa’s sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars (2014), Ana Vaz’s Atomic Garden (2016), Malena Szlam’s ALTIPLANO (2018), Daïchi Saïto’s earthearthearth (2021), and Jacques Perconte’s Avant l’effondrement du Mont Blanc (2020), the thesis examines how these ecologically engaged experimental films challenge conventional representationalism as a mode of knowledge production. I argue that the films discussed here employ a diffractive mode of thinking, primarily operating through affect and haptics. Instead of relying on traditional representational strategies, they convey the experience of eco-trauma through their sensory and embodied qualities. (BM)

Sprache, Format, Material, Ausgabe/Auflage

Englisch

- Gabriele Jutz - Betreuung (akadem. Abschlussarbeit)
- Miguel Fernández-Rodriguez Labayen - Betreuung (akadem. Abschlussarbeit)
- Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien