THE HERE AND NOW: How to Take Back Our Present

Supposing that every kind of engaged artistic practice defines itself in relation to the contemporary moment, the article tries to rethink this relation as evidenced by the cinematic practice of Travis Wilkerson, in particular by his feature film Who Killed Cock Robin?. If we conceive of this relation to the contemporary as a kind of ‘critical ontology of ourselves’, as Foucault articulates his contemporary reformulation of Kant’s critical project, Wilkerson’s films help us consider the fact that today such an ‘ethos of modernity’ might involve a certain kind of a critical betrayal of the modern project of Enlightenment itself. What becomes crucial here is the question of time: the way we tend to experience time today, as delineated by Wilkerson’s films, as well as the role of the film under consideration in opening up potentially different ways of relating to time.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!