Editor's Abstract
- While comparing cities to living things perhaps isn’t as novel in 2021 as it was when Organism was first released in 1975, the analogy has never been as dizzyingly inventive or convincingly rendered as in this experimental short by the US filmmaker Hilary Harris.
- Working primarily from time-lapse footage of New York City, Harris intersperses biological microscopy and voiceovers describing the structures and functions of the human body to meticulously assemble the metaphor – roads, bridges, tunnels and trains form a grand circulatory system; shipping, distribution and waste management networks mirror the digestive process.
- With the frantic yet orderly action set to a hypnotic score, the viewing experience is at once experiential and thought-provoking, hinting at broader reflections on emergence and the self.
Notes
- An interesting enough film, but a bit laboured, and it doesn't add much to the Editors' Abstract.
- There's rather too much of the cars / bloodstream analogy, which isn't even a very good one.
- Also, while there may be philosophical questions about super-organisms, it takes more than a film to explicate - let alone answer - them.
Comment:
- Sub-Title: "The city as an emergent life form, with architecture as the skeleton and roads as veins"
- For the full text see Aeon: Video - Organism.
- Aeon Video.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)