Working Enigma: Antonioni’s Blow-Up
By Nikolas Kompridis
This influential and iconic film from the late 1960’s superficially resembles a whodunit, without a who who done it. While it is a superlative example of that era’s deliberately perplexing European art films, Blow-Up is not just an enigmatic film; it is a film about how to work with enigma, how to receive something as enigmatic and to respond to that enigmatic something differently. It is no accident that the film plays with the conventions of the whodunit, for this genre is itself a culturally definitive way to respond to enigma, where working with enigma means working to master it. Blow-Up denies us the possibility of mastery. It asks us to work with enigma in a way that does not aim, futilely, at mastery. Just what that other way might be is something I hope pleasurably to explore in discussion with the audience after the screening of the film.
NIKOLAS KOMPRIDIS is a philosopher and political theorist, and the author of Philosophical Romanticism (Routledge) and Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future (MIT), as well as numerous articles on a wide variety of topics from political philosophy to the philosophy of art, film, literature, and music. His articles have appeared in journals such as Political Theory and in edited volumes such as The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. A former musician, and founder of the contemporary music group, Sounder Pressure, Kompridis writes often about music and about film (and hopes to finish a book on each in the not too distant future). Having previously taught at universities in Canada and the UK, Kompridis has recently been appointed to the position of Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy, University of Western Sydney, in Sydney, Australia.
By Nikolas Kompridis
This influential and iconic film from the late 1960’s superficially resembles a whodunit, without a who who done it. While it is a superlative example of that era’s deliberately perplexing European art films, Blow-Up is not just an enigmatic film; it is a film about how to work with enigma, how to receive something as enigmatic and to respond to that enigmatic something differently. It is no accident that the film plays with the conventions of the whodunit, for this genre is itself a culturally definitive way to respond to enigma, where working with enigma means working to master it. Blow-Up denies us the possibility of mastery. It asks us to work with enigma in a way that does not aim, futilely, at mastery. Just what that other way might be is something I hope pleasurably to explore in discussion with the audience after the screening of the film.
NIKOLAS KOMPRIDIS is a philosopher and political theorist, and the author of Philosophical Romanticism (Routledge) and Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future (MIT), as well as numerous articles on a wide variety of topics from political philosophy to the philosophy of art, film, literature, and music. His articles have appeared in journals such as Political Theory and in edited volumes such as The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. A former musician, and founder of the contemporary music group, Sounder Pressure, Kompridis writes often about music and about film (and hopes to finish a book on each in the not too distant future). Having previously taught at universities in Canada and the UK, Kompridis has recently been appointed to the position of Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy, University of Western Sydney, in Sydney, Australia.