Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish writer and philosopher whose influential work on art, history, modernity, and capitalism has become a protean and prophetic lens for our collective past, present and future. Although he wrote mainly about the ruins and emerging cultures of Paris and Berlin, the essence of his arguments about how we write and experience the historical present, how we experience art, and how we must engage with the relentless onslaught of capitalism are relevant to us living at a time defined by both ruin and perpetual states of emergence.

Key themes that animate Walter Benjamin’s well-known writings can be appreciated in Southeast Asian filmmaking. The Objectifs Film Club x Walter Benjamin Reading Group is a space for re-reading Benjamin’s work through Southeast Asian films about cultural memory, collective pasts and futures, post-colonialism legacies, and affect in an age of information overload.

In this session, participants will watch a screening of Kasiterit by Riar Rizaldi before engaging in a discussion of the film alongside the ideas and arguments crafted by Walter Benjamin in ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’. More information on Kasiterit can be found below. The session is led by Alicia Izharuddin, with Riar Rizaldi in attendance.