Alex Zivkovic

Advisers: Margaret Cohen and Richard Meyer

What is the focus of your current research?

I am examining the scientific films of a marine biologist, Jean Painlevé, specifically focusing on his films from the 1920s and 30s. Much of the research on Painlevé situates him as a documentarian with oblique references to his contacts with the Parisian Surrealists. There is almost no scholarship performing visual analysis between his work and that of these artists, which I wish to rectify. Painlevé’s science embraces the strange and I will argue that he draws on stylistic conventions from Expressionist horror film and Surrealist photography in order to queer the underwater world. 

What drew you to this topic?

I first heard of Jean Painlevé in Margaret Cohen’s comparative literature course, "Imagining the Oceans." His films were intriguing since they focused on strange mating rituals of sea animals, but it took me a year to seriously consider writing my thesis on him. I was reading a feminist critique of the Surrealists and I saw how similar his images were to contemporaneous Surrealist photography. When I juxtaposed a film still of an octopus with a nude portrait by Brassaï, I realized I needed to write about this comparison since it was too rich and bizarre to ignore.

How are you conducting your research?

My research operates at the intersection of several different fields of study, so I’ve been reading about the history of scientific representation, nature documentaries, the close-up in film, queer theory, and 1920s Surrealist journals. Over time, I’ve found more and more images I wish to compare and have been building my argument through these previously undiscovered comparisons.

What would people be surprised to learn about the topic you are working on?

First off, they may be shocked by how weird the underwater world is. I use the word “queer” in my thesis because these animals are incredibly strange but also non-normative. Many of the animals he records have kinky, violent sex or reversed gender roles (for instance, male sea horses are the ones that give birth). The fact that this is all real is shocking. But more interestingly, Painlevé manages to engage with “surrealism” not through fiction, but by showing off what really exists out there, under the sea.

In your view, why is it valuable to study this topic?

While this thesis will focus primarily on one scientist, his work speaks to the ways in which science and art are compatible since he draws on art photography discourse to create his scientific images. Painlevé preserves a sense of wonder and intimacy in his scientific approach since he truly gets to know these animals and conveys that love on film, particularly in his close-ups. This has implications for how science is conducted, written about, and filmed even today since he allows emotions to enter his objectivity without clouding facts.

How is your honors thesis work impacting you academically and/or personally?

Something I’ve been fascinated with is the concept of (plural) modernisms. For instance, the writings of Virginia Woolf and contemporaneous work from the Harlem Renaissance share a commitment for literary experimentation, but manifest different threads of literary modernisms. Similarly, this project shows me a plurality of surrealisms. For instance, there is Painlevé’s unique blend of science, reality, and wonder, but he gathers that from different thinkers and artists he knew. Some of his contemporaries rejected science outright and wanted to live in an inexplicable universe, while others thought science could not explain things completely, so wonder still could live on. I wish to continue pursuing how these different, yet parallel, philosophies manifest in science, art, and literature, and hope to do so in a doctoral program one day.