Markus Gabriel: Hitchcock, Skepticism and the Bird's Eye View

The Real of Reality | International Conference on Philosophy and
Film


Wed, 02.11.2016 – Sun, 06.11.2016
ZKM_Media Theater, ZKM_Lecture Hall, ZKM_Media Lounge, ZKM_Cube


Markus Gabriel born 1980 studied philosophy, ancient philology,
German literature and philology in Hagen, Bonn and Heidelberg. In
Heidelberg he finished his Ph.D. under the supervision of Jens
Halfwassen and wrote a thesis on Schelling’s later philosophy. In
2005 he was a visiting scholar at the university of Lisbon. From
2006-2008 he worked as lecturer at the University of Heidelberg.
In 2008 he finished his habilitation with a work on scepticism
and idealism in ancient philosophy. From 2008-2009 he was
assistant professor at the department of philosophy of the New
School for Social Research, New York. Since 2009 Gabriel is a
full professor in epistemology, modern and contemporary
philosophy at the University of Bonn.

Gabriel is considered to be part of the contemporary
philosophical movement called “New Realism” or “speculative
Realism.” In his own approach Gabriel argues that there is no
all-encompassing totality: that the world, in the traditional
sense of a domain of all domains, cannot exist. Yet, he
convincingly shows that this does not entail ontological
nihilism. Rather, he argues that the non-existence of the world
entails an infinity of domains and shows that this motivates a
general realism. This ontology hinges on Gabriel's concept of
fields of sense, which shows that, fundamentally, he opposes the
idea that mathematics or the natural sciences could ever replace
a richer philosophical understanding of what there is and how we
know about it.


International Conference on Philosophy and Film
Photography and film in particular paved the way for complex
philosophical questions regarding the nature of reality and its
mechanical reproduction. What does film reproduce and how can we
grasp this element, which has the transactive ability to form
reality although originating in reality? This shaping takes palce
through a complex interaction of image, action and narration and
tends to permeate reality completely. It is an inconspicuous
process that already affects our everyday life profoundly and is
based on a revolution of the real. What does film show? Do we
have access to reality that is not based on images or narrations?
And what can film and its analysis contribute to philosophical
debates on the real?
These are questions we are asking to engage in a dialogue between
philosophy and film. For five days, one hundred and fifty
philosophers, media scholars and filmmakers will connect
philosophical theory with cinematic practice and open up new
ideas and concepts. To accompany the program, there will be film
screenings of documentaries of the invited filmmakers.
The participation at the conference is also possible without the
presentation of a paper.
The conference will be held in English.