Selected Writing

Klossowski, Pasolini, Gurrola: A Genealogy of Late Surrealist Film Theory (EUP, 2026).

“Robarte el arte: Juan José Gurrola, Guerra Fría y neovanguardia mexicana,” in Los setenta mexicanos: una historia intelectual en fragmentos, ed. Luciano Concheiro San Vicente y Ana Sofía Rodríguez Everaert (México: UNAM, 2025).

The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky (Refocus Series, EUP, 2023).

“Escasez cum valor: de cómo J. J. Gurrola robó la idea del arte contemporáneo” in Colección editorial del Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil. México: INBAL, 2023.

Juan José Gurrola. Todo está perdido. México: INBAL, 2023

“Invisible Architecture, Radical Ethnography: Juan Downey and the Sound of Laughter” in Music, Sound, and Documentary Film in the Global South, ed. Christopher Ballengee (Lexington Books, 2022).

“Inspiration for a Libidinal Cinema: Klossowski, Lyotard, and the Tableau Vivant,” in Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 44, no. 2, 2021. ISSN: 0252-8169.

“‘All Consciousness is Something’: Bergson, Deleuze, & Carrel on the Problems of a Scientific Application of Cinema” in Mediascape, Fall 2017. ISSN: 1558478X

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“Theorizing the Accidental Readymade: Locating ‘Contemporary Art’ in Luis Barragán’s Desecrated Remains” (2021) (Password Required).

“Alejandro Jodorowsky and the Question of the Father” (2021) (Password Required).

“Juan Jose Gurrola and the Anti-Kinetic Film” (2018) (Password Required).

“JJ Gurrola and the Duchampian Readymade” (2018) (Password Required).

“Invisible Architectures, Radical Ethnographies: Auto-Ethnography and Experimentation in Juan Downey’s Video Trans Americas, 1973-1979″ (2017) (Password Required).

“Klossowski, Bataille, & the Sovereign Artist” (2017) (Password Required).

“The First Experimental Film Contest, Mexico City, 1964” (2017) (Password Required).

“Beacon (1998) – Landscape, Sovereignty, Power” (2016) (Password Required).

“In the Shadow of the Figural: Genet/Klossowski/Lyotard” (2015) (Password Required).

“Laughter of the Gods: Nietzsche’s Concept of Polytheism” (2014) (Password Required).

“Sola Scriptura: Raúl Ruiz’s La vocation suspendue (1978)” (2014) (Password Required).

“‘Who’s Afraid of the Multitude?’: Brecht’s Vision for Hangmen Also Die!” (2013).

“Kracauer’s ‘Curious Realism’: Reading Siegfried Kracauer’s Theory of Film” (2012).

African Spir, “Studies on Critical Philosophy” [excerpt of translation] (2010).

Michael Newell Witte is an art historian, translator, and theorist. His research explores neo-avant-garde art and theory, dissident and ethnographic surrealism, and global contemporary art and film. He is the author of Klossowski, Pasolini, Gurrola: A Genealogy of Late Surrealist Film Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2026) and The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky (Refocus Series, Edinburgh University Press, 2023).