From Ontology to Topology: A two-leg MethodologIcal Journey to Look At Contemporary Media Arts

The article elaborates on the concept of postcinema as an interim response to the debate around cinema medium’s specificity. Pushing it beyond the binary cinema/non-cinema, it advocates for a shift from ontology to topology. Whilst the former questions what moving images are, the latter is instead concerned with how moving images reconfigure themselves in a postdigital age and what relations link them together. Borrowing from Paul Sharits, Michel Serres and connecting them along the journey of an imaginary mariner, the text focusses on media arts as the site of contemporary media configurations and contends that fluidity, ongoingness and open-endedness are the main feature of the logic characterising topology.