Phenomenology and Ecology: Art, Cities, and Cinema in the Pandemic
Matthew Crippen
(Alice Andrea Cortés as first author) Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 61 (2021): 27-41
Abstract
COVID-19 infects cities, here grasped as quasi-living functioning systems, and the changes inflicted can poetically open us to certain things. Drawing on ecological psychology, we maintain that this brings people into contact with different realities depending on their overall wellbeing, arguing that the aesthetic experience of cities accordingly varies. We then consider iterations of these ideas in dystopian cinema, which portrays global threats altering human relations with technology, art, and the world.