Sub(e)Merging: Poetics, Temporalities, Epistemologies

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.

Petra Löffler is a media and cultural studies scholar at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. Marie Sophie Beckmann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Art and Visual Culture at Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. She is the author of Films That Spill: Beyond the Cinema of Transgression.