Cihat Arinc is a writer and academic researcher based in London. After receiving his B.A. in Media and Film Studies at Istanbul University (2003), he proceeded to his M.A. degree in Philosophy at University of Bosphorus, Istanbul, and wrote a master thesis entitled, “Against Historicism and Aestheticism: Walter Benjamin’s Critical Philosophy of Film” (2008). He was a board member at the Center for Fine Arts, Foundation for Sciences and Arts, Istanbul (2006-2008), where he conducted seminars on philosophical aesthetics and screen cultures. He is now a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Arinc is also a member of the advisory board of Hayal Perdesi: A Journal of Cinema (www.hayalperdesi.net). Published in art magazines and also contributed to panels, workshops, international conferences, exhibitions, and collective performances including at Goldsmiths College (UK), University of Warwick (UK), University of Birmingham (UK), Serpentine Gallery, Centre for Possible Studies, London (UK), The Showroom Gallery, London (UK), University of California, Santa Cruz (USA), Hackney Wicked Art Festival 2010, London (UK). He is currently writing his PhD thesis, “The Ghostly Screen: Derviş Zaim’s Politics of Memory in New Turkish Cinema,” focusing on a myriad of themes and issues ranging from the spectral chronotope of film and testimonial strategies of spectreship/spectatorship to cinematic geopolitics, cartographies of violence, divided landscapes, fragmented identities, haunted subjectivations, contested histories, traumatic memories and disinherited legacies.

Interests: Continental philosophy of film and contemporary film theory; Hauntology, archive and critical inheritance; Politics of remembering/forgetting; Cinematic transposition of time, history and memory (esp. Benjamin, Derrida, Deleuze); Documentary, essay film and performative cinema; Video oral history; Film curating; Contemporary aesthetics and art practices; Middle Eastern visual cultures.