IAS Turbulence: Screen Media and Theory Workshop - Uncertainty, Turbulence and Moving Image Archives

This workshop will explore how experimental film and other screen media practices have engaged with concepts of uncertainty and turbulence through their use of found and mixed footage and other archival material from the mid-twentieth century to the present day.

Uncertainty and turbulence are two of the defining experiences of late modernity. Despite the technological changes of the digital revolution making increasingly vast amounts of knowledge available, new possibilities for data manipulation and anxieties about a post-truth era are combining to produce a historical moment more knowledgeable and yet more uncertain than ever before. Given this context, the dubious place of the archive as authoritative store of knowledge has seemingly reached its lowest point, and yet screen media practices have continued to turn to archives of different kinds in order to grapple with uncertainties and turbulence in their aesthetic forms. At this workshop, we will reflect on contemporary phenomena of uncertainty and turbulence from a range of formal and theoretical perspectives, conceptualising these terms in relation to issues such as postproduction, post-representation, the attention economy and shifting ideas about data, the crowd and the commons. In so doing, we will place particular emphasis on how screen media work produces novel pathways into thinking about and refashioning notions of uncertainty and turbulence, and ideas about the archive in the contemporary era. The talks by academics and artists and a theoretical discussion session with pre-circulated readings will address the use of moving image archives in new screen media, including postcinema, art film and web-based narratives, as well as looking back to lost footage from resistant filmmaking projects and the use of the moving image in recent alt-right media practices.

The workshop will include presentations by academic speakers working in film and screen studies, German, Latin American studies, media archaeology, philosophy, critical and cultural theory. There will also be artist talks by Rose Butler and Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeldt and a keynote by Austrian artist, activist and theorist Manu Luksch. All participants will be invited to join in a theory workshop focussed on pre-circulated readings and so contribute to collective reflection on topics of uncertainty, turbulence, the archive and screen media practices.

• Research assistance by Laura Lux (King’s College London)
• Artist keynote by Manu Luksch
• Artists talks by Rose Butler and Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeldt
• Other confirmed speakers:
• Dr Daniela Agostinho (University of Copenhagen)
• Dr Erika Balsom (King’s College London)
• Prof Erica Carter (King’s College London)
• Dr Jenny Chamarette (Queen Mary University of London)
• Dr Rafael Dernbach (Futurium, Berlin)
• Ece Elbeyi (University of Copenhagen)
• Prof Lee Grieveson (University College London)
• Dr Rhiannon Harries (University of Nottingham)
• Dr Pepita Hesselberth (Leiden University)
• Dr Ekaterina Kalinina (Södertörn University)
• Dr Leila Mukhida (University of Cambridge)
• Dr Maria Poulaki (University of Surrey)
• Dr Vid Simoniti (University of Liverpool)
• Dr Kristin Veel (University of Copenhagen)

The event is a collaboration between University College London School of European Languages, Cultures and Societies, the DAAD-funded Circulating Cinema Research Project, part of the German Screen Studies Network, the Uncertain Archives Research Collective and University College London Institute of Advanced Studies Turbulence Project. It is generously funded by University College London Global Engagement Funds, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), University College London Institute of Advanced Studies and Uncertain Archives.

Registration: Registration is free of charge; please register by 1 June 2019 to secure a place and receive pre-circulated readings.

Programme: The events on 11th June will run from noon, and include a theory workshop with pre-circulated readings and an evening keynote and screening by artist Manu Luksch. The events on 12th June, from 9am-5.45pm will include a series of talks by academics and artists and discussion. Full programme to follow. Numbers are limited for the daytime sessions on 11th and 12th June. Please register early to secure your place. Image: Schnittstelle/Interface (1995), Harun Farocki. Courtesy of Harun Farocki GbR.

Please download a report of this workshop here.