Elemental Intermedia

For the most part, intermedial approaches to the study of cinema concern themselves with a vast array of anthropogenic media and art forms, such as television, dance, painting, and literature. However, given recent scholarly explorations of media that exceed human origins and intentions, there is greater scope for considering now how nontechnical environmental phenomena such as eclipses and naturally occurring camera obscuras might also be considered as types of “cinema” in their own right. Taking its lead from John Durham Peters’s concept of “elemental media,” this chapter reckons with cinema as it manifests far beyond the theatrical dispositif and analyses how recent experimental films provide the basis for an intermedial reading of the noncinematic world.