Tests for philosophy on media

The audiovisual medium is one of the best tools when there is the need to deal with complex topics, and to communicate in a strong but not impenetrable way. The forms of the documentary and the so-called ‘video-essay’ are great choices for this endeavour. Still, one of the risks is to simplify too much the topics in the effort to make them ‘digestible’ (or, in design-related terms, ‘efficient’). Fortunately, there are many good examples out there. The key aspect, of course, is narration.

These projects are part of an ongoing artistic research regarding the possibility of doing philosophy through media and narration. Cinema is a valid tool to generate concepts, to let them unfold and talk as they were real characters. Moreover, any artistic practice can be seen as an act of world-building. Latour Litanies reflects on the practice of making lists of disparate things, made famous by the French anthropologist and philosopher Bruno Latour. The quintessential object draws from the meditation of German philosopher Martin Heidegger about a jug and its essence.