Daniel Mann’s talk, titled Healing and Killing in the Underground, features a screening of an episode from Eitan Efrat’s and Mann’s film The Magic Mountain (2020). Thinking the surface of the Earth against its volume is tracing the very limits of representation. Underneath the ground, human bodies become surfaces upon which the land leaves its mark, imprinted directly into the cells and tissue. While the landscapes outside are captured and mediated in the form of postcards, paintings, snapshots and films that appeal to the naked eye, a rare energy leaks through the crevices in the stone below, before it is inhaled into the lungs, absorbed and consumed through the skin. Underground the body is the postcard of the subsoil.

Daniel Mann is a London-based filmmaker and writer. Mann explores the role of image production and circulation in shaping collective perceptions of armed conflict, colonisation and climate emergency. His 2017 film Salarium, co-directed with Sasha Litvintseva, was presented at the Sonic Acts Academy in 2018. His writing has appeared in journals such as Media, Culture & Society and World Records and his films have screened internationally at festivals including Berlinale (Forum). Mann holds a PhD from Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. As a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Film Studies Department, King’s College London, he is developing a new project on the role of Middle Eastern desert environments in cinematic depictions of war, conflict and future annihilation.

Photo Pieter Kers