Visual Culture:Cinema, Performance Studies & Multimedia (421-0-20)

Instructors

Domietta Torlasco
847/491-8269
1860 S. Campus Drive, Crowe Hall #2-131

Meeting Info

Meets in Non-General PurposeRm: Thurs 3:00PM - 5:50PM

Overview of class

This course will ask how audiovisual montage can function as a method of critique by fragments and juxtapositions and, at the same time, transform concepts of critique that have been primarily defined in the domain of verbal language. While adopting a transdisciplinary approach, we will turn to key moments in the history of 20th and 21st century montage: the films and writings of the Soviet avantgarde (S.M. Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov); the writings of Walter Benjamin; the so-called "montage interdit" (forbidden montage) stance of postwar film criticism (André Bazin); Jean-Luc Godard's radical experimentation from the 1960s to the 2010s; the multimedia works of John Akomfrah, the Black Audio Film Collective, Harun Farocki, and Hito Steyerl. In the course of our investigation, montage will emerge as a theoretical practice, an orientation toward thinking, a labor process, and a mode of differentiation of the sensible. What are the political implications of this heterogenous aesthetic practice? How does audiovisual montage reshape our experience? How does it redefine the relationship between subject and world? We will be asking these questions from the viewpoint of current changes in technology, devoting special attention to the role played by platform activities.

Teaching Method

Seminar

Evaluation Method

Class presentations; final paper or video essay

Class Materials (Required)

All materials will be available through Canvas.