Eric Coombs Esmail

Following the documentary impulse to the limits of observation.
2024 / 1987 
        

Critical   Media

Documentary & Philosophy









Half-full.

Critical   Media

Documentary & Pedagogy

Tomorrow

American Refuge (feature documentary)
For more information, find mimetic rants outside the academic center.
Contact for all inquiries.


American Refuge


        People flee to the upland forests to reinvent themselves after personal and social trauma, but they soon learn that the the American West is a site of eternal return, and the past is always present.

Feature documentary     forthcoming (co-directed with Christian Hammons)

Documentary Intersubjectivity


Read

        Documentary effectively navigates the slippage in idealism between solipsism and intersubjectivity.

Journal Article, Transformations issue 37     2024

Unearthed Objects

S3026 and Michael Marder’s object earth

Read

        Mirage, qanat, and vertical poeisis show how art itself can perform media archaeology. 

Journal Article, The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory     2024
(co-authored with Nima Bahrehmand and Laurids Andersen Sonne)

Documentary Media Poetics: a handbook for theory and practice

       Documentary Poetics are the study and practice of documentary arts as a method for building and transforming our world. They allow us to recognize the documentary impulse inherent in all art, an impulse that is driven by experience.

Open Education Resource and Course Handbook      2021
(co-authored with Laurids Andersen Sonne)