Sub(e)merging: Experiences, Practices and Politics from Below

A cross-disciplinary perspective of the medial, aesthetic, and material aspects of submerging, as well as its methodological qualities as a resistant practice and figure of thought.

Whether it is the ocean, the ground, or soil, a metaphorical or symbolic underworld, or a political figure of thought, the subsurface intervenes in recent debates about ecological, social, and postcolonial conflicts and power inequalities in the humanities and beyond. However, turning to the unstable grounds of the subterranean always involves a conceptual or methodological movement and a practice of submersion, and thus a critical reflection on the conditions, technologies, aesthetics, and politics of knowledge production. 

It is precisely at this point that this volume picks up with approaches from the fields of artistic practice as well as media studies, art history, queer theory, and decolonial studies. From this transdisciplinary perspective, this anthology explores the medial, aesthetic, and material aspects of sub(e)merging, as well as its potential as a resistant practice and figure of thought: from submerging to emerging.
 

Marie Sophie Beckmann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Art and Visual Culture at Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. As a film and media scholar, she is interested in exploring contextual and historical perspectives on underground film and related cultural practices. She completed her PhD as part of the DFG Research Training Group Configurations of Film at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her texts have been published in Cinéma&Cie, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, montage AV, and several anthologies. Her monograph Films That Spill: Beyond the Cinema of Transgression is forthcoming with Rutgers University Press.

Petra Löffler is a media and cultural studies scholar and since 2020 professor for theory and history of contemporary media at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. She has held professorships at the University of Siegen, the Bauhaus University Weimar and the Humboldt University Berlin and was senior fellow at Bauhaus University Weimar and Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her research focuses on media ecology, contemporary media practices, decolonizing methodologies, and oceanic media. Recent publications: Bilder verteilen. Fotografische Praktiken in der digitalen Kultur (2018, co-authored with Winfried Gerling and Susanne Holschbach); Earth and Beyond in Tumultuous Times: A Critical Atlas of the Anthropocene (2021, co-authored with Réka Patrícia Gál); Records of Disaster. Media Infrastructures and Climate Change (2022, co-authored with Jakob Claus).