Fearful Symmetry

Book Chapter, 'Fearful Symmetry' on the film Ming of Harlem and living in the company of predatory companions, for a book Ethical Materialities in Art and Moving Images, which addresses the ethicality of relations between the art, the artist and their environment. It explores how ethics figure in the generation of art and images after modernism and postmodernism starting from the premise that in the Anthropocene the work cannot rest upon its separation from the world. From there, this volume develops new ethical thought that acknowledges art and film in their material and immaterial environment.

In drawing on new materialism and continental philosophy, Ethical Materialities in Art and Moving Images articulates the delicate entanglements between the ethical and the material. These ethics change in relation and cannot be taken out of one environment and be applied to the next. The contributions to this volume contemplate the singular entanglements of relations and non-relations before, during or after a work of art or film comes into being.