Topics in Film/Video/Audio Production (379-0-21)

Topic

Activating Media: Archival Research, Creation & Ar

Instructors

Michael Metzger

Meeting Info

Louis Hall 118: Fri 10:00AM - 12:50PM

Overview of class

This class will introduce students to three modes of interacting with archival media: research-based inquiry, public curation, and creative practice. The course will begin with an introduction to major audiovisual media formats and the challenges of preserving, accessing, exhibiting, and creatively manipulating them. Throughout the quarter, students will gain familiarity with a range of archival institutions and collections in the region, from long-standing private organizations such as Media Burn, Chicago Filmmakers, and the Chicago Film Archive, to university-supported initiatives such as the South Side Home Movie Project and Indiana University's Black Film Center/Archive. Students will learn how to conceptualize research topics, navigate collections, approach archivists, and arrange visits to media collections. Guest speakers will offer personal perspectives on how to write about, program, and creatively reuse archival media, whether working with home movies and personal archives or licensing from major commercial and educational repositories. A series of case studies will examine the social, historical, and political realities that condition how media objects are stored and circulated: what happens, for instance, to the state film archive of Yugoslavia when the nation no longer exists, and how have artists intervened to make this situation visible? What tools - technical, intellectual, aesthetic - do they use to bring these stories back to light? By the end of the class, students will have gained exposure to a range of theories and practical methods of archival activation, and will have an opportunity to complete a research project, propose a public program, or present a work of creative reuse for their final assignment.

Class Attributes

SoC Additional Distro

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Students must have completed RTVF 190-0 in order to register for this course (concurrent registration is not allowed) or be a student in Writing: MFA or Documentary Media: MFA programs