Cinematic and aesthetic cartographies of subjective mutation.

This essay examines Franco Berardi's use of cinema as a minor, yet significant, aspect of his work. His most recent work has suggested a profound mutation of human subjectivity under the pressure of the imposition of a range of technical automatisms of which the digital is the latest and the one which has the most profound effects. What is less frequently remarked on in Bifo's work is that the diagnosis of these mutations of subjectivity are frequently carried out in relation to the artistic cartographies generated by both film and media art, with a tendency to favour the former. For example, there are frequent references in his work to Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977) and Gus van Sant's Elephant (2003), to give only two examples. This article will focus specifically on his use of cinematic cartographies, by which I mean the ways cinematic works provide spatio-temporal mappings of particular political, subjective and affective conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]