{"id":21,"date":"2014-09-10T08:10:15","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T08:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/?page_id=21"},"modified":"2014-09-15T10:38:52","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T10:38:52","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/frankfurt-papers\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"INTRODUCTION"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This section of the Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies<\/strong> proudly presents the collected papers and screening programme from the Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory International Workshop<\/strong>\u00a0presented by the Film, Media and Theatre Studies Department of Goethe University and the Deutsches filmmuseum, Frankfurt\u00a0in November 2013.\u00a0The event was organised\u00a0by\u00a0Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez and Adrian Martin, with advice and support from Vinzenz Hediger. Thanks to all the participants and film artists who have shared their work at\u00a0this event for this record of it, especially Cristina and Adrian. The conference programme<\/strong><\/a> is given, in English, below. All of the papers and the screening program are linked to from their entries.<\/p>\n

“There is a new development in film culture, cutting across academic studies and fan websites: it has variously been called the audiovisual essay<\/em>, videographic film\/moving image studies<\/em> or digital criticism<\/em>. In the simplest terms, all these terms refer to the use of images and sounds \u2013 sampled, re-edited, re-mixed \u2013 to help carry out the work of analysis, appreciation or critique of cinema and media texts \u2026 work that was once, traditionally, carried out mainly in written-word forms.<\/p>\n

The excited labour in this fast-burgeoning area \u2013 attested to by special issues of Frames<\/em><\/a> and Filmidee<\/em><\/a> on-line, as well as the ongoing work of the website Audiovisualcy<\/em><\/a> or Kevin B. Lee<\/a>\u2019s indefatigable production in the US \u2013 draws as much upon the style of YouTube video mash-ups, as on the protocols of university-type formal analysis, while standing a little aside from both groups. At the same time, this work, new for the academy, connects with a venerable tradition in experimental or avant-garde film\/video, known variously as found-footage, visual study, audiovisual collage \u2026 Standing between and amidst audiovisual poetry, fan tributes, and semiotic analysis, the speakers at this conference will outline the recent history of this new form, and probe the many critical-theoretical questions rapidly arising from it.” [Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez and Adrian Martin, Conference Organisers of the\u00a0The Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory\u00a0<\/strong>International Workshop, Deutsches filmmuseum, Schaumainkai 41, 60596 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, November 23 & 24. Presented by the Film, Media and Theatre Studies Department of Goethe University and the Deutsches filmmuseum, Frankfurt.]<\/p>\n

Speakers:<\/strong> Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez, Catherine Grant, Vinzenz Hediger, Carlos Losilla, Adrian Martin, Manu Y\u00e1nez Murillo<\/p>\n

The two languages of the conference [were] English and Spanish. Papers delivered in Spanish (by Carlos Losilla, Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez & Manu Y\u00e1nez) [were]\u00a0accompanied by English translation projected on-screen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0PROGRAM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saturday 23 Novembe<\/strong>r<\/p>\n

Session 1: 9am-10.30am<\/em><\/p>\n

Catherine Gran<\/em>t (Sussex University, UK):<\/p>\n

\u201cHow Long is a Piece of String? On the Practice, Scope and Value\u00a0of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Long after the advent of the digital era, the overwhelming majority of university-based film and moving image scholars still prefer to carry out and publish their research in conventional written formats. As digital publications continue to proliferate, however, more and more academics are\u00a0turning to multimedia forms of research like digital video essays. Such formats can inspire compelling work not only because, with their possibilities for direct citation, they can enhance the kinds of explanatory research that have always been carried out on films, but also because of their potential for more \u2018poetic\u2019, creative and performative critical approaches to our research. Should we be aiming to ‘translate’ written film studies into audiovisual ones, or should we embrace from the outset, the idea that we are creating ontologically\u00a0new<\/em>\u00a0scholarly forms?<\/p>\n

Catherine Grant, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies\/University of Sussex, is author of [by September 2014, around ninety]\u00a0film-studies videos many of which have been screened internationally at academic conferences and at film festivals and industry events She has curated hundreds of videographic studies at her websites Film Studies For Free<\/em>, Filmanalytical <\/em>and Audiovisualcy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Short break 10.30am-11am<\/em><\/p>\n

Session 2: 11am-12.30am<\/em><\/p>\n

Manu Y\u00e1\u00f1ez Murillo (critic & teacher, Spain):<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThought, Action and Imagination \/ Pensamiento, acci\u00f3n e imaginaci\u00f3n\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

To what extent does the audiovisual essay feed the imaginative<\/em> potential of film criticism? Where does it stand in the battle between consciousness and unconsciousness? Or in the dichotomy of thought and action? What is the relation established between the critic-essayist and the images that s\/he manipulates? These are the various questions that point to a fundamental issue: is there a point at which the audiovisual essay ceases to be a work of film criticism?<\/p>\n

Manu Y\u00e1nez, film critic for the magazine Fotogramas<\/em>, the newspaper ARA<\/em> (Barcelona) and the website Otros Cines<\/em> (Argentina), is the editor of the anthology La mirada americana: 50 a\u00f1os de <\/em>Film Comment (he also writes for this American magazine).<\/p>\n

LUNCH 12.30am-2pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Session 3: 2pm-3.30pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Carlos Losilla (Pompeu Fabra University, Spain):<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Absent Image, The Invisible Narrative\u201d \/ \u201cLa imagen ausente, el relato invisible\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

There are images that films do not give us to see, but which, at the same time, can become what we most desire. To the point of manifesting themselves in our thinking about cinema, so that we might elaborate narratives (personal, critical, analytical \u2026) around what never actually existed. Is cinema an evocation of phantoms, to the point of wanting to capture spectres of the invisible? This reflection seeks to demonstrate the materiality of what I have referred to as \u2018unspeakable images\u2019 (see a preliminary text on this theme in LOLA<\/em>, no, 4, September\/October 2013, www.lolajournal.com<\/a>) \u2013 and their critical relationship to the new culture of the audiovisual essay.<\/p>\n

Carlos Losilla teaches film at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He has edited many collections and contributed to magazines including Caiman<\/em>, Nosferatu<\/em> and Transit<\/em>. His latest book is\u00a0La invenci\u00f3n de la modernidad o c\u00f3mo acabar de una vez por todas con la historia del cine <\/em>(2012).<\/p>\n

Short break 3.30pm-4pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Session 4: 4pm-5.30pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe University, Germany):<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Makes an Excerpt? The Video Essay as an Experiment Performed on the Work of Art\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

There is no doubt that the video essay challenges established genres and academic divisions of labour, in the same way that Adorno attributed to the written essay. The question is what exactly we mean when we talk about \u2018criticism\u2019 (Kritik) in relation to the new forms of digital criticism. To answer this question, my contribution takes a clue from the notion of criticism developed by the German Romantics. Criticism in the sense of the Romantics, writes Walter Benjamin, \u201cis a kind of experiment performed on the work of art which awakens the art work\u2019s inherent potential for reflection, through which the work acquires a consciousness of itself\u201d. If we define film as a medium of reflection, i.e., as a medium that always already contains\u00a0 its own critique, we can describe the video essay precisely as the \u201cexperiment performed on the work of art\u201d that Benjamin describes. In order to substantiate this claim, this contribution focuses on what may be described as the material of the essay, the excerpt<\/em>, and asks what exactly an excerpt does.<\/p>\n

Vinzenz Hediger is Professor of Film Studies at Goethe Universit\u00e4t Frankfurt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SCREENING 1, 6-7.30pm pm \u201cFrom Found Footage Film to the Audiovisual Essay, Part 1\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

1) Rose Hobart<\/em> \u2013 Joseph Cornell, 1936 (20 min)<\/p>\n

2) Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy<\/em> \u2013 Martin Arnold, 1998 (15 min)<\/p>\n

3) Gravity<\/em> \u2013 Nicolas Provost, 2007 (6 min)<\/p>\n

4) Variation on the Sunbeam<\/em> \u2013 Aitor Gametxo, 2011 (10 min)<\/p>\n

5) Club Video<\/em> \u2013 Philip Brophy, 1985 (20 min)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sunday 24 November<\/strong><\/p>\n

Session 5: 10.30-12am<\/em><\/p>\n

Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez (critic & editor) & Adrian Martin (Goethe\/Monash):<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe One and the Many: Making Sense of Montage in the Audiovisual Essay \/ \u201cLas partes y el todo: Comprender el montaje en el ensayo audiovisual\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Whether we see the burgeoning audiovisual essay as tending more to the rhetorical, demonstrative form of the written argument, or towards the free-associative ways of poetry, one thing shared by both tendencies is definitely up for renewed scrutiny: the role of editing, in the strong sense of carefully deliberated montage. What happens when we mix and edit together edits and sounds from often wildly diverse, and differently material, film objects? Can we experience a \u2018bad match\u2019 (faux-raccord<\/em>) between two found-fragments? Can a bunch of heterogeneous images and sounds form a homogeneous, seamless whole? Should they? Is the kind of montage that Adorno imagined in Aesthetic Theory<\/em> possible: the formed, critical work that nonetheless displays the diversity of its parts?<\/p>\n

Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez is co-founder and Co-Editor of the Spanish online film journal Transit: Cine y otros desv\u00edos<\/em><\/a>. Her critical writing and audiovisual essays have appeared in MUBI<\/em>, Frames<\/em>, Contrapicado<\/em>, La Fuga<\/em>, LOLA <\/em>and De Filmkrant<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Adrian Martin is currently Professor of Film Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt, and formerly of Monash University, Melbourne. He is the author of six books, and Co-Editor of LOLA<\/em> and Screening the Past<\/em>.<\/p>\n

BREAK 12-12.30am<\/em><\/p>\n

Session 6: 12.30am-2.00pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Panel Discussion featuring all speakers: \u201cWhat is the Intervention in Film Culture and Film Studies of the Audiovisual Essay?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

2.00pm-5pm: LUNCH<\/em><\/p>\n

SCREENING 2<\/a>, 5pm-6.30pm<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Found Footage Film to the Audiovisual Essay, Part 2\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

1) Inflames<\/em> \u2013 Covadonga G. Lahera, 2009 (3min)<\/p>\n

2) Pass the Salt<\/em> \u2013 Christian Keathley, 2011(8 min)<\/p>\n

3) Beyond Fiction<\/em> \u2013 Johanna Vaude, 2011 (6min)<\/p>\n

4) Kristall<\/em> \u2013 Matthias M\u00fcller & Christoph Giradet, 2006 (15 min)<\/p>\n

5) Las variaciones Dielman \u2013 Fernando Franco, 2010 (12 mins)<\/p>\n

6) Dellamorte ellamorte dellamore<\/em> \u2013 David Matarasso, 2000 (2 min)<\/p>\n

7) What is Neorealism?<\/em> \u2013 Kogonada, 2013 (5 min)<\/p>\n

8) True Likeness: On <\/em>Peeping Tom and <\/em>Code Unknown \u2013 Catherine Grant, 2010 (5 min)<\/p>\n

9) Mogambo<\/em> \u2013 Tag Gallagher, 2010 (13 min)<\/p>\n

10) Ozu\/Passageways<\/em> \u2013 Kogonada, 2012 (2mins)<\/p>\n

11) Screen and Surface, Soft and Hard: Leos Carax<\/em> \u2013 Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez & Adrian Martin (20min)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conference Organisers: Adrian Martin and Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez<\/em><\/p>\n

Advice and Support: Vinzenz Hediger<\/em><\/p>\n

Flyer for Audiovisual Essay Workshop at the Frankfurt Filmmuseum (PDF German)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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