“We are living in the apocalypse. The first moment of life was the first moment of the apocalypse and death. Please, don’t fear the apocalypse.”
–László Krasznahorkai
“We’re all the contemplatives of an ongoing apocalypse. “ –Etel Adnan
“All stories are stories of disintegration.” –Karrer, Damnation (dir. Béla Tarr)
Course Description:
The apocalypse, though often seen as a large event, in some ways becomes an anticipatory state. How might the apocalypse be related to time as a vantage point from which we observe and anticipate and how might this anticipation highlight human tragedy and hope? That we go on, is the heroic gesture, is the gesture of hope. The apocalypse is about failure and devastation, but also about relief and hope. It is about the modification of reality, the ability to see the world from a pair of eyes not just one’s own. It is about disintegration and ruin, yes, but also about empathy and the relationships between human beings. It is about the acceptance of uncertainty over clarity and an abandonment into the beauty of reality. It is about the plateau, the daily struggle, not the end. Students will explore various ideas on the apocalypse as a concept and as a landscape through various works of fiction, poetry, and film, including texts by Cormac McCarthy, László Krasznahorkai, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Nicole Broussard, Mariko Nagai, Blake Butler, Maurice Blanchot, and Lucy Corin, and films by Béla Tarr, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Werner Herzog.
Readings/Films:
Week 1
– La Jetée dir. Chris Marker
– #finalpoems
– The Werckmeister Harmonies dir. Béla Tarr (opening scene)
Week 2
– The Book of Revelation (Concentrate on Revelation 1-3, 20-22), Ezekiel 7, The New Testament
– Lessons of Darkness dir. Werner Herzog
– The Writing of the Disaster by Maurice Blanchot (excerpt)
– Baa by David Macaulay
– One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses by Lucy Corin (excerpt)
Week 3
– The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Week 4
– Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler (excerpt)
– Ice by Anna Kavan
Week 5
– No Comet, That Serpent in the Sky Means Noise by Sueyeun Juliette Lee (excerpt)
– “Light Is a Complex Medium” by Sueyeun Juliette Lee (Poetry Foundation)
– “Make Like A Tree and Get Outta Here” by Rebecca Boyle
– The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan (excerpt)
– “Jebu” by Etel Adnan
– “Beruit 1982” by Etel Adnan
Week 6
– The Turin Horse dir. Béla Tarr
– Satantango by László Krasznahorkai
Week 7
– Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard
Week 8
– Stalker dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
– “GENESIS” by Sara Eliza Johnson (Diagram)
– “Why Stalker Is the Film We Need Now” by Josephine Livingstone (New Republic)
– “Notes on the Speculative Present” by Madeline Lane-McKinley (Blind Field)
Week 9
– Irradiated Cities by Mariko Nagai (Les Figues Press)
– “I Have No Choice but to Keep Looking” by Jennifer Percy (NY Times)
