Submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air: Atmospheric Thought in Jean Epstein's The Tempest and Helena Wittman's Drift

• Autores: Gattás Vargas, Maia
• Año de publicación: 2025
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: documento de conferencia
• Materia: Cinematografía; Cine; giro atmosférico; ecología; Cinematografía
• Institución: Universidad Nacional de Río Negro

Fil: Gattás Vargas, Maia. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. Instituto de Estudios en Ciencia, Tecnología, Cultura y Desarrollo. Río Negro; Argentina.
In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli demonstrated that air has weight and invented the barometer, an instrument for measuring atmospheric pressure. He was part of a great scientific debate that took place among the pioneers of barometric experiments. In a letter to Blaise Pascal he wrote: “We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of elementary air which, by undoubted experience, is known to weigh”. However, with the passage of time, modern Western science has turned air into an abstract and imperceptible being. In this framework, Eva Horn proposes: “To return to an almost forgotten attention and perception of air, an ability to feel, see, smell the air and its states, an awareness of being as ‘being in the air’” (Horn, 2023, 29). Air is generally imperceptible because it is everywhere. But if it were to disappear, we would instantly notice its absence....We ask ourselves: ¿how does cinema return to the tangible air, in the face of the complexity of abstraction?