Media Devices of Spatiality

Space as such does not exist independently of the cultural techniques of controlling, visualizing, and producing space. Studying the history of spatiality in its multiple declinations and articulations is therefore a way to question the medialities of the gaze at the heart of different ‘spatial revolutions.’ This line of research focuses on the workings of media and media devices, on the way they take root in space and shape it, by bringing together the German philosophical tradition (Kant, Cassirer, Schmitt) and studies that define cinema as the ‘eye of the twentieth century.’ If texts, monuments, images, maps, and films are clearly agents of the construction of space, then studying their technologies of production and the way they function, the position they assign to the observer and the operations and gestures they require or make possible, becomes crucial in shifting the inquiry from the object, namely the medium, to its functioning, namely mediation.
The project, newly conceived in 2024, was launched with a seminar and subsequent lecture with media theorist Francesco Casetti (Yale University).