Pasi Väliaho

Professor - History of Art
Image of Pasi Väliaho
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Phone +47 22845503
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Visiting address Blindernveien 31 Georg Morgenstiernes hus 0313 Oslo
Postal address Postboks 1020 Blindern 0315 Oslo

Academic interests

My research aligns the history of visual media with the histories of knowledge, capital and colonialism from the early modern period until today.

Projecting Spirits: Speculation, Providence, and Early Modern Optical Media (Stanford University Press, 2022) situates the two key optical apparatuses of the later seventeenth century – camera obscuras and magic lanterns – within the intellectual and economic transitions that took place during the period when finance superseded the divine as the main driver of human affairs. Projecting Spirits was the winner of 2023 Limina Award for the Best International Book in Film Studies.

My first book, Mapping the Moving Image: Gesture, Thought, and Cinema circa 1900 (Amsterdam University Press, 2010) plots a moment of change in scientific and philosophical configurations of the human mind and body at the turn of the nineteenth century when we started to think of ourselves "cinematically." Biopolitical Screens: Image, Power, and the Neoliberal Brain (MIT Press, 2014) – a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015 – studies how the brain-screen interfaces of video games and virtual reality applications are put to work in today's capitalist reality.

I am currently co-leader, with Aurora Hoel (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), of the research project "Visualizing the Deep Sea in the Age of Climate Change" funded by the Research Council of Norway (2023-2027). Within this project, I am doing research for a book tentatively entitled "Another New World: Conquests of the Deep Sea in Planetary Capitalism."

I am a member of the Visual Studies research group at IFIKK, as well as the Screen Cultures research initiative at the Faculty of Humanities.

Research fellows working with me at IFIKK:

Courses taught

KUN2235/4235 Archaeology of the Moving Image

KUN1003 Introduction to Visual Studies

KUN2232/4232 Philosophies of the Image

MEVIT4700 Screen Histories and Theories

Background

Before taking up my position at IFIKK, I was Reader in Film and Screen Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. I earned my doctorate from the University of Turku, Finland, where I am also a Docent in Media History and Theory.

Tags: Art History, Media Archaeology, Aesthetics, Screen Cultures

Publications

Books and Journal Issues

  • Projecting Spirits: Speculation, Providence, and Early Modern Optical Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022.

  • Biopolitical Screens: Image, Power, and the Neoliberal Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.

  • “Rhythm, Movement, Embodiment,” special issue of Body & Society 20:3-4, 2014 (ed. with Julian Henriques and Milla Tiainen).

  • Mapping the Moving Image: Gesture, Thought, and Cinema circa 1900. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010.

Articles

  • "The Brain's Labor: On Marxism and the Movies." In The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory, ed. Tom Conley and Hunter Vaughan, 13-32. London: Anthem Books, 2018.

  • "Animation and the Powers of Plasticity." animation: an interdisciplinary journal 12:3 (2017): 259-271.

  • "Shadows of Expectation: Robert Hooke's Picture Box and the Visual Economy of Projection." Grey Room 68 (Summer 2017): 6-31.

  • “Solitary Screens: On the Recurrence and Consumption of Images.” In Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-Sized Media, ed. Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki, 123-129. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

  • "Stills from a Film That Was Never Made: Gesture, Cinema, Memory." In Memory in Motion: Archives, Technology, and the Social, ed. Ina Blom, Trond Lundemo & Eiving Røssaak. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.

  • “Verkörperter Bildkasten: Projektive Bildschirme und visuelle Imperien um 1700.” In Bildwelten des Wissens: Kunsthistorisches Jahrbuch für Bildkritik, vol. 12: “Image Guidance: Bedingungen bildgeführter Operation”, ed. Kathrin Friedrich, Moritz Queisner, and Anna Roethe, 62-72. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.

  • “Marey’s Gun: Apparatuses of Capture and the Operational Image.” In Téchnē/Technology: Researching Cinema and Media Technologies – Their Development, Use, and Impact, ed. Annie van den Oever, 169-176. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014.

  • “Biopolitics of Gesture: Cinema and the Neurological Body.” In Cinema and Agamben: Ethics, Biopolitics and the Moving Image, ed. Asbjørn Grønstad & Henrik Gustafsson, 103-120. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

  • “The Light of God: Notes on the Visual Economy of Drones.” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Autumn 2014 (http://www.necsus-ejms.org/light-god-notes-visual-economy-drones/).

  • “Video Games and the Cerebral Subject: On Playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.Body & Society 20:3-4 (2014): 113-139.

  • “Spellbound: Early Cinema’s Transformational Spaces.” Space & Culture 16:2 (2013): 161-172.

  • “Affectivity, Biopolitics and the Virtual Reality of War.” Theory, Culture & Society 29:2 (2012): 63-83.

  • “Cinema’s Memoropolitics: Hypnotic Images, Contingent Pasts, Forgetting.” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 33:3 (2011): 322-341.

  • Väliaho, Pasi Petteri (2019). To Wrest Something Magical from the World. Mantis: A Journal of Poetry, Criticism and Translation. ISSN 1540-4544. p. 195–200.
  • Väliaho, Pasi Petteri (2018). The Brain’s Labor: On Marxism and the Movies. In Conley, Tom & Vaughan, Hunter (Ed.), The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory. Anthem Press. ISSN 9781783088232. p. 13–32. doi: 10.2307/j.ctv43vr5c.7.
  • Väliaho, Pasi Petteri (2018). In the Cutting Room of History. In Cavallotti, Diego; Dotto, Simone & Quaresima, Leonardo (Ed.), A History of Cinema Without Names/3. Mimesis International. ISSN 9788869771354. p. 263–268.
  • Väliaho, Pasi Petteri (2017). Animation and the Powers of Plasticity. Animation. ISSN 1746-8477. 12(3), p. 259–271. doi: 10.1177/1746847717740093. Full text in Research Archive
  • Väliaho, Pasi Petteri (2017). Shadows of Expectation: Robert Hooke's Picture Box and the Visual Economy of Projection. Grey Room. ISSN 1526-3819. p. 6–31. doi: 10.1162/GREY_a_00225. Full text in Research Archive

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  • Väliaho, Pasi (2022). Projecting Spirits: Speculation, Providence, and Early Modern Optical Media. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9781503630857. 252 p.

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Published June 23, 2017 3:56 PM - Last modified Mar. 13, 2024 11:45 AM

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