Yuriko Furuhata

Yuriko Furuhata is a Professor and a former William Dawson Scholar of Cinema and Media History (2015-2025) in the Department of East Asian Studies, and an associate member of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. She is the author of three monographs. Her first book, Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-Garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics (Duke University Press, 2013), won the Best First Book Award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. Her second book, Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control (Duke University Press, 2022), explores the geopolitical conditions underpinning environmental art, weather control, digital computing, and cybernetic architecture in Japan and the United States. Her third book, Archipelagic Archives of the Anthropocene: Visual Grammars of Deep Time (Duke University Press, 2026), explores the visualization of "deep time" and its underlying epistemic and political assumptions through geological maps, scientific photographs, films, and classifications of fossils, clouds, snow crystals, and coral reefs in relation to the territorial ambitions of Japan and the United States as archipelagic empires. Her work has appeared in a wide range of journals, including Grey Room, Media+Environment, Representation, e-flux, and more.

Activity

I am a member of an international D4 research collective for Research for Ethical Speculative Design, Environmental Media Lab, MIRL , The Platform Lab, and Global Emergent Media Lab.

Publications (selected)

Archives of the Anthropocene: Visual Grammars of Deep Time (Duke University Press, 2026).

“Weathering with You: Mythical Time and the Paradox of the Anthropocene,” Representations 157 (2022): 68-89.

“Spaceship Earth: Metabolist Capsules, Petro-Economy, and Geoengineering.” The Urbanism of Metabolism. Visions, Scenarios and Models for the Mutant City of Tomorrow, ed. Raffaele Pernice, 173-183. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.

“Compass.” Proof of Stake: Claims to Technology, eds. Timon Beyes, Robin Holt, and Claus Pias, 121-126. Milano: Lentz Press, 2023.

"Archipelagic Archives: Media Geology and the Deep Time of Japan's Settler Colonialism," Public Culture 33.3 (September 2021): 417-440.

“Of Dragons and Geoengineering: Rethinking Elemental Media,” Media+Environment 1.1 (2019).  https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.10797.

“The Fog Medium: Visualizing and Engineering the Atmosphere.” Screen Genealogies: From Optical Device to Environmental Medium, eds. Craig Buckly, Rüdiger Campe, and Francesco Casetti. Amsterdam University Press, 2019, 187-213.

 “Tange Lab and Biopolitics: From Geopolitics of the Sphere to the Nervous System of the Nation.” Beyond Imperial Aesthetics: Theories of Art and Politics in Japan, edited by Steve Choe and Mayumo Inoue. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2019, 219-242.

“Architecture as Atmospheric Media: Tange Lab and Cybernetics.” Media Theory in Japan. eds. Marc Steinberg and Alexander Zahlten. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, 52-79.

“Multimedia Environments and Security Operations: Expo’70 as a Laboratory of Governance,” Grey Room 54 (Winter 2014): 56-79.

For complete publications list, please visit: http://www.yurikofuruhata.com