call me humanist deadweight, but if you think it is an objectively logical and effective argument to equate how the humanities and sciences have, for centuries, shared a mission within the university with the 2000 AOL/Time Warner merger, you might need remedial humanities training, not "unyoking"

Discourse 46.3 is live! It features an absolutely essential piece reflecting on fascist times by Georges Didi-Huberman: "Why Obey?," skillfully translated by Heath Valentine from the short book Pour Quoi Obéir. Every piece in this issue is fantastic.

shout out to The Cinema of Extractions in this review of work I wish I could get to Trondheim to see www.frieze.com/article/liv-...

Imperfect, but I would take one Jia film for every ten of the films on The NY Times’s Jia-less list

Have we also been trained—and trained our grads—that we only have time to read books’ introductions, which are often available online? Why buy the book if you only “need” to read the first 25 pgs? We need a culture of deeper reading practices, but that seems antithetical to the academic horse race

Okay LA... @bleudeciel.bsky.social is bringing the gang back together. Join us at Cal Tech on June 5-6 if you can, I'll be speaking on the 5th about Perut and Osnovikoff's Los Reyes, how to lie (down) like a dog, and the grundwerk of the great derangement of the senses.

LA-area folks, please join us next week, June 5-6, at Caltech, for a meeting of the Anthropocene Media Working Group with 2 days of talks and conversation. Details and registration here: www.hss.caltech.edu/news-and-eve...

One of our terrific undergrads turned Super Mario Brothers into a critique of American healthcare and published it in @invisibleculture.bsky.social magazine.caltech.edu/post/the-pri...

Coming up on May 29 at Caltech Visual Culture, I will be speaking with our current artist in residence, Jessica Segall about art, energy, and extraction www.caltech.edu/campus-life-...

The deadline for the special section of Leonardo about Art and Electric Light I am co-editing is coming up on June 2. Note that the submission word count is short: 2,500-5,000. Happy to answer questions. leonardo.info/opportunity/...

In an excellent interview w/ @thr.com, Brian Jacobson (@bleudeciel.bsky.social) talks about Hollywood's longstanding relationship to the oil industry and his new book, THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus... @columbiaup.bsky.social

Very excited to host @emmywaldman.bsky.social at Caltech Visual Culture next week

For The Hollywood Reporter's new Sustainability issue, I talked to @degenpener.bsky.social about The Cinema of Extractions @columbiaup.bsky.social @thr.com

For The Hollywood Reporter's new Sustainability issue, I talked to @degenpener.bsky.social about The Cinema of Extractions @columbiaup.bsky.social @thr.com

iamhist.net/journal/ 👀

"American cinema’s relationship to the climate crisis that threatens Hollywood ... w/ nearly annual bouts of dangerous wildfire is both deeply material and as old as film itself." -- Brian Jacobson (@bleudeciel.bsky.social), author of THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS bit.ly/4ioli5I @columbiaup.bsky.social

JOB POSTING: Prints and Drawings Curator, Getty Research Institute An exciting opportunity to work with and shape a dynamic collection in a research-focused arts environment in the city of Los Angeles. Please consider applying + amplify and circulate widely! jobs-getty.icims.com/jobs/4581/cu...

In good company

Please come by the @columbiaup.bsky.social table at #SCMS2025 for books by @hennefem.bsky.social, @bleudeciel.bsky.social, Alison Griffiths, Rob King, and many more. bit.ly/3Eg8NLh

Next week at Caltech Visual Culture

For Earth Month at the @columbiaup.bsky.social Blog, I wrote about the climate crisis in Los Angeles and cinema’s historical connections to extractive industries #scms25

A big thanks to the amazing @lightindustry.bsky.social for hosting two great events for @columbiaup.bsky.social books over the last few weeks: MAN OF TASTE, by Rob King and THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS, by Brian Jacobson (@bleudeciel.bsky.social). rb.gy/zgz4c1

June 5-6 at Caltech w/ James Cahill @jamesleocahill.bsky.social Katerina Korola @katerinakorola.bsky.social Debashree Mukherjee @debashree.bsky.social Sasha Crawford-Holland @sashach.bsky.social Jennifer Fay Thomas Patrick Pringle Carolina Sá Carvalho Mehak Sawhney Anna Stielau Tinghao Zhou

CFP for a special section of Leonardo I am editing with Maggie Bell about Art + Electric Light - deadline June 2, 2025 - please circulate leonardo.info/opportunity/...

Tonight 7:30pm at @lightindustry.bsky.social

Coming up this Tuesday in Brooklyn, I’ll be talking about The Cinema of Extractions (@columbiaup.bsky.social) at @lightindustry.bsky.social www.lightindustry.org/jacobson

LA folks, hope to see you this afternoon for this great program and the conversation

"My book aims to change how we look at films...by starting first with all the extracted materials that filmmaking required and the industries that were required to make these materials available." -- Brian Jacobson on THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS shorturl.at/n09ln @bleudeciel.bsky.social

Next week at Light Industry

New York folks, see you next week

This March has two great events w/ @columbiaup.bsky.social authors at @lightindustry.bsky.social: March 11: Brian Jacobson (@bleudeciel.bsky.social), author of THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS MARCH 25: Rob King, author of MAN OF TASTE bit.ly/4iivaOw

"Reckoning with cinema’s material dependence on our endangered planet alters our understanding of the medium....Read this book. Teach it. See films anew with it." Priya Jaikumar on THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS, by Brian Jacobson. bit.ly/3XdV654 @columbiaup.bsky.social @bleudeciel.bsky.social

A great research article by Brian R. Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social about Hamaguchi's amazing EVIL DOES NOT EXIST online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-a...

"My book aims to change how we look at films ... by starting first with all the extracted materials that filmmaking required and the industries that were required..." Brian Jacobson discusses his new book THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS. bit.ly/4hK84Aa @bleudeciel.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social

Today at 3:00, Brian Jacobson will be at Dartmouth to talk about his new book THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS: FILM MATERIALS & THEIR FORMS. bit.ly/4hMPnMu @bleudeciel.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social

Congratulations to Brian Jacobson (@bleudeciel.bsky.social) on the official publication date of his amazing new book, THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS: FILM MATERIALS & THEIR FORMS. bit.ly/3XdV654 @columbiaup.bsky.social

Post-doc in planetary health humanities, to work with Andy Lakoff and colleagues at USC on their timely project on 'The city on life support: Los Angeles as a laboratory for planetary health'. Important topic... #STS #envhum #medanthro

It is publication day for THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS (@columbiaup.bsky.social), a book about the materials that make movies possible and how to read between the raw materials and the screen worlds they create.

The Cinema of Extractions A lecture by Brian R. Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 7:30pm Light Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn lightindustry.org/jacobson

Next week at Dartmouth, a talk about The Cinema of Extractions (@columbiaup.bsky.social)

I think I’ve come close enough this week already, merci

Two events in/around LA this weekend: first, on Saturday, I’ll be giving a short talk about oil/gas industry visualization technologies and photography at UC Riverside as part of “Operativity and Digital Capture: A Public Symposium” t.co/fPYicKPFKT

4 things I liked in 2024 - Claire Messud’s “This Strange Eventful History” - Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi) - “Lumen,” the Getty PST exhibition - “Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence” at the V&A

Some choice images from STORM CLOUD, the Huntington’s great PST exhibition, including Henry de la Beche’s wonderful images of prehistory and Walter Crane’s “The Capitalist,” along with a James Ward painting of Swansea, aka “Copperopolis”

4 new film books coming out in 2025 that i'm extremely excited to read!!!!!!! 😍🎞️📚 @oldfilmsflicker.bsky.social @bleudeciel.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847... cup.columbia.edu/series/film-...

I take every @pjmaciak.bsky.social suggestion, so I also re-read the @poniewozik.bsky.social “mid” piece and remembered how much I liked its other description—“smooth” tv, which so well captures a defining mix of aesthetics, economics, technology, and … what is it- Americans’ willingness to settle?

I re-read this article today—such an important account of how the industry got here, and driven not only by great reporting but also the critical work of academic media scholars

As a counterpoint to the AI + photography post, the last line of this interview with Fredric Jameson in the Paris Review: “reality itself is incomplete, and one should respect that”