Taking Measures

Usages of Formats in Film and Video Art

The international video symposium fosters a dialog between art and research. Filmmakers, artists, researchers and scholars enter into creative and experimental conversation with each other about the usages and understandings of formats in film and video art.

The focus is placed on artistic media and practices in which the technologies and ideologies of measurement, their many validity claims and areas of application are addressed. The title of the symposium—“Taking Measures”—should be understood in its double meaning: as a reference to the practices of measurement related to the use of artistic media as well as to the political potential of power and resistance that results from these practices.

“Taking Measures” should be understood in its double meaning: as a reference to the practices of measurement as well as to the political potential of power and resistance that results from these practices.

Artistic media are subject to various practices of measurement. They are described and evaluated according to their size and proportions, depth and width, length and duration, rhythm and timing, etc. These categories are aesthetic, but they are also effective in a social and political sense, as they subject the use of artistic media to certain conditions of production and distribution. It is here that format as a decisive category comes into play.

The designation of film formats such as 35mm, 16mm, or 8mm, for example, is determined by the width of the filmstrip, which in turn corresponds to the size and aspect ratio of the single frames, as well as the duration of the film projection at a given frame rate. Magnetic video tape formats such as U-matic, Betamax, and VHS, or digital media formats such as floppy disc, CD-ROM and DVD are differentiated according to their image resolution, running time and storage capacity. As units or ensembles of technical specifications, formats are the result of historic processes of industrial standardization that are subject to the laws of uniformity and profitability. Format standards guarantee technical compatibility as well as economic competitiveness on the global image market. They determine not only the technical conditions under which media operate, but also where and by whom they are seen, the speed at which they circulate, the channels through which they are disseminated, and how visible and effective they are. Thus, formats determine the conditions under which images come to be publicly accessible and valued in a social and political regard in the first place.

Formats determine the conditions under which images come to be publicly accessible and valued in a social and political regard.

In view of its significance for artistic and curatorial practices, the format as a theoretical concept has recently become the focus of increased attention. Despite the significant differences between the approaches of David Summers, David Joselit, Jonathan Sterne, Haidee Wasson, Benoît Turquety and others, they share a common objective, namely to address the contexts of the use of formats in specific historical situations. The focus lies on artistic practice “after art,” on the multiple dependencies of artistic production, its technologies, and methods on political and economic interests. In this regard, David Joselit speaks about format as a structure or a “connective tissue,” wherein the worldly entanglements of images—the techniques of their production, the efforts associated with their creation, the mode of their circulation, the historical conditions of their making, etc.—become visible.

Film and video have served as measuring instruments for scientific and analytical purposes in a variety of fields. In acknowledging these dependencies also lies the opportunity for art to test its own effectiveness in the public arena and to uncover potential for resistance in artistic action.

The techniques of measuring time and space that have accompanied film and video throughout their history to the present day are subject to various processes of negotiation in the interest of science and politics, industry and commerce. Consequently, film and video have themselves served as measuring instruments for scientific and analytical purposes, whereby they are employed beyond exhibition spaces and movie theaters in a variety of fields such as anthropometry, criminology, biometrics, forensics, statistics, robotics, operations research, and tactical analysis in sports and military intelligence, respectively. In these fields, they contributed to the acquisition of knowledge, to research and investigation to the same extent as they were involved in the “politics of large numbers” (Alain Desrosières) and the history of the “mismeasure of man” (Stephen Jay Gould)—in the governmentally and ideologically motivated production of evidence through the collection and management of useful data. However, in acknowledging these dependencies, in view of which art jeopardizes its autonomy, also lies the opportunity for art to test its own effectiveness in the public arena and to uncover potential for resistance in artistic action. Formats indeed regulate the use of artistic media, in so far as they are scripts that contain guidelines for action through which historical knowledge and experience are accessed and distributed. At the same time, however, they are a showplace for negotiating, verifying, or dismissing the knowledge and experience they make available in standardized form.

Formats are scripts that contain guidelines for action through which historical knowledge and experience are accessed and distributed. At the same time, they are a showplace for negotiating, verifying, or dismissing the knowledge and experience they make available in standardized form.

And finally, formats represent a particular challenge in the conservation and curation of collections. On the one hand, in addition to the works of media art that exist in obsolete formats, the technological systems and devices on which they can be played must also be preserved and kept in working order. On the other hand, the question arises as to the conditions under which these works should be converted into current digital formats to ensure that they can be exhibited in the future and possibly to retain a work’s original artistic concept—or even to realize this concept for the first time in situations in which it was impossible under the prevailing historical technological conditions. Conversely, conscious artistic recourse to “retrograde technicity” (Gabriele Jutz) can also be considered an act of undercutting technological standards, which is associated with subversive modes of format usage. Formats can circulate between the areas of normative and alternative usage or can be recontextualized through acts of appropriation and translation. At the same time, along with the artistic decision in favor of a certain format, the institutional practices that decide whether films and videos can be exhibited in the different contexts of museums and movie theaters as well as on television and the internet also come into focus.

Out of these considerations, a variety of questions arise that are addressed in the contributions to this video symposium:

How can technologies of measurement and data analysis in art be used politically and made operative for the public sector (Forensic Architecture, “The Murder of Halit Yozgat,” 2017; Omer Fast, “A Place Which Is Ripe” and “Karla,” 2020; etc.)? In what way do they engage in the negotiation, in the rejection or defense of such categories as knowledge, truth or faith (James N. Kienitz Wilkins, “This Action Lies,” 2018; Warren Neidich, “Pizzagate: From Rumor to Delusion,” 2016–2019; etc.)? How can they subversively interact with the history of the “mismeasure of man” by repeating historical strategies of the legitimization of racist and colonialist views in compliance with media technological standards (Dani Gal, “White City,” 2018; etc.)? In which non-artistic practices of measurement, of the production of knowledge and evidence in the interest of useful research, is the use of formats involved (Thomas Julier, “Chameleon Eyes,” 2020; etc.)? In what way can artistic practice be used not only to make these involvements visible but to challenge and test them (Harun Farocki, “Images of the World and Inscription of War,” 1988; Clemens von Wedemeyer, “Transformation Scenario,” 2018; etc.)?

How can technologies of measurement and data analysis in art be used politically and made operative for the public sector? In which non-artistic practices of measurement, of the production of knowledge and evidence in the interest of useful research, is the use of formats involved? How can formats themselves, as the measures of art, be exhibited?

How can formats themselves, as the measures of art, be exhibited? In which sense can they become the “connective tissue” that relates spaces, bodies, experiences and memories (Alexandra Navratil, “Under Saturn (Act 1–3),” 2018; Alexandra Gelis, “Doing and Undoing: Poems from Within,” 2019; etc.)? How can they be put in relation to the exhibition spaces of museums and movie theaters in an institutionally critical way, and how can this relationship be assessed (Philipp Fleischmann, from “Main Hall,” 2013, to “Austrian Pavilion,” 2019; Jean-Luc Godard, “Le Livre d’image,” 2018–; etc.)? What challenges and possibilities arise regarding the historical change of formats and the practices of reformatting in artistic and curatorial practice (Marijke van Warmerdam, “Passing,” 1992; Hannes Rickli, “Videogramme,” 2005/2009; etc.)? And what kind of power over formatting must be given to film and art institutions, to their respective infrastructures and mechanisms of valorization and publicity?

We would like to warmly thank all participants for their contributions to the symposium. The videos exhibited in this online gallery are not only explorations of the topic outlined here, but also documents of a creative exchange between people who, due to the pandemic, could not meet in person as originally planned. Out of this unfortunate situation, remarkable efforts to find alternative ways of individual and collaborative contribution have been made.

The video symposium is hosted by Fabienne Liptay, Laura Walde and Carla Gabrí (University of Zurich) in cooperation with Nurja Ritter and Nadia Schneider Willen (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst). It is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) as part of the project Exhibiting Film: Challenges of Format.

We hope you enjoy watching the videos.

Please send questions and comments to:
exhibitingfilm@fiwi.uzh.ch

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1992

Marijke van Warmerdam

In this short and beautiful piece, Marijke van Warmerdam shows three samples from the history of film formats. We see her taking selected works from her own archive and playing them for us as the images correspond with the changing formats: the rectangle that comes and goes, echoing the frames of the projected film strip in her 1992 black and white 16 mm film loop “Passing”; the turning of blank pages in a book as a beginning that is never filled in her 2005 digital film on DVD “Alpha”; and the raindrops in a canal that she is filming now, in 2020, with her mobile phone. The artist’s contribution, titled “1992,” is also a reflection on her own passage as an artist, having participated in the Prix de Rome as a young artist in 1992, when she was “unsure whether to go for film or video,” and looking back on her evolving body of work from today’s conviction that “everything can be a film.”

marijkevanwarmerdam.com/passage
marijkevanwarmerdam.com/alpha
migrosmuseum.ch/en/artists/marijke-van-warmerdam

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Artist Talk

Omer Fast Fabienne Liptay

In this Artist Talk hosted by the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Omer Fast discusses his newest works “A Place Which Is Ripe” (2020) and “Karla” (2020) in conversation with Fabienne Liptay. The works were commissioned for an exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich as an investigation of a 1917 self-portrait by Max Beckmann, in which the artist draws himself after the mental breakdown he suffered from his military service as a medic in the First World War. In response to this drawing, “A Place Which Is Ripe” and “Karla” are portraits of people that address the visual politics of violence. They show the disturbing effects that this visual politics has on the face as a site of identification and recognition. In both works, people speak about the images they have confronted at work, policing surveillance camera footage and video content on the Internet for traces of violence. But the images displayed are not the images they speak about. The events themselves, as traumatizing experiences, are hidden or lost in the gap between what we see and what we imagine them to have witnessed. Fast’s exhibition is an exploration or inhabitation of this gap, of the desire to see and the desire to know – and the confusion between the two.

Read the interview scripts for the videos

A Place Which Is Ripe

3 videos playing on mobile devices, 16:39 min, 2020

“A Place Which Is Ripe” is edited from conversations with two former Scotland Yard detectives who talk about their work with video surveillance and facial recognition. Their interviews were fed sentence by sentence to a Google image search, which yielded the images that accompany their words. The work is normally shown on three mobile devices which play synchronously inside an open drawer.

The work was commissioned by the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung / Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne for an exhibition in 2020.

Credits: Based on interviews with Mike Neville and Dale Nufert
Idea and Edit: Omer Fast
Performers: Bernhard Schütz, Stefan Kolosko
Camera: Frieder Schlaich
Production/Translation: Anna Bitter
Sound Post-Production: Jochen Jezussek

Karla

Holographic projection and HD video, 34:45 min, 2020

“Karla” is based on a conversation with a content moderator for the world’s largest online video sharing platform. The content moderator wished to remain anonymous and so his/her words were memorized by an actress, whose performance was then recorded using facial-capture technology. As the actress speaks, both her face and voice gradually shift into different characters, refusing to coalesce into a single identity, while delving deeper and deeper into one person’s nightmare of working in the gig economy. There are two parts to this work: A holographic projection and a small flatscreen monitor.

The work was commissioned by the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung / Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne for an exhibition in 2020.

Credits: Based on an interview with a person who wishes to remain anonymous
Idea and Edit: Omer Fast
Performer: Genia Maria Karasek
HD Camera and Sound: Frieder Schlaich Sound
Post-Production: Jochen Jezussek
Production/Translation: Anna Bitter
Full 3D Production: Mimic Productions, Berlin Hermione Mitford, David Bennett
Production Coordinator: Alexandria Frances Petrus
Motion Capture Director: Alexandre Donciu-Julin
Render Artist and Technician: Johannes Mittig
Animators: Yeji Min, Matilde Hansen-Walmsness, Angus McDonald
Holographic Technician: Robert Gabriel
AV Technician: Radek Pater

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Beyond Standards: The Hans-Rudolf Lutz Collection

Monika Dommann

The world of modern transport logistics is deeply rooted in formats and standards and is based on a visual language of signs. The Hans-Rudolf Lutz collection of imprints on cardboard packaging offers a journey into the varieties of standards. Collected between 1975 and 1990 from streets, street markets and garbage collection points in the US, Europe and Asia, it depicts design made by amateurs that is aimed at those who ship, pack and unpack goods. I’m interested in this collection because it tells stories of a lost world. A world before the shipping container revolution of the 1990s, still filled with cardboard boxes and dock workers’ hooks. It reminds us to think about the social meaning of varieties in standards.

lutz-verlag.ch/die-hieroglyphen-von-heute

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Chameleon Eyes

Thomas Julier

“Chameleon Eyes” is a robotic inhabitant in Heiligfeld Park and the surrounding residential area in Zurich-Albisrieden. The artwork centers around the movement of birds: the flight paths of resident and migratory birds are tracked and broadcast live on a double-sided LED display in the park, which is fed by data from two robotic thermal imaging cameras. “Chameleon Eyes” embeds itself in the dynamic habitat of a housing co-op and its surrounding park and extends the site by multiplying perspectives. Using technology traditionally employed for live streaming and surveillance in sports, security services or public space, the artwork makes visible a world of movement that usually escapes human perception. By tracing the tracks of migratory birds, for example, the animated thermal images serve as unique snapshots in time pointing to changes in seasons and climate. The live transmission on a display in the park also gives the pulsating data a tangible form, along with its governing algorithms, protocols, variables and parameters that permeate the flow of everyday life – whether we are looking, or not.

While seeking to capture birds passing, the cameras also scan clouds and fleeting meteorological phenomena. Much like a chameleon’s eyes, the two cameras can move independently of each other and spot their prey in the sky even at a considerable distance. Choreographed through algorithms, protocols and variables, “Chameleon Eyes” captures the vibrant activity of birds in their local habitat and visualizes their movement within the color scale of thermal imagery, thus revealing the expanded interrelations between non-human and human beings, technology, architecture and the environment.

“Chameleon Eyes” is a site-specific public artwork conceived by artist Thomas Julier, realized with a host of collaborators and jointly commissioned by the housing co-ops Siedlungsgenossenschaft Eigengrund and Stiftung Gemeinnütziger Wohnungsbau Letzigraben. For this video, the artist collaborated with his friend, the musician and artist Sebastian Eduardo. There is an extensive mediation program framing the artwork choreographed via chameleoneyes.info. This program is a collaboration with Meret Kaufmann and Marie-France Rafael.

Sound: Sebastian Eduardo

thomasjulier.info
chameleoneyes.info/en

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Exhibiting Jean-Luc Godard’s “Le Livre d’image” (2018–)

Fabrice Aragno Jacqueline Maurer

In this conversation with Jacqueline Maurer, filmmaker and Jean-Luc Godard’s longtime collaborator Fabrice Aragno offers insight into “Le Livre d’image” (2018–) and its variable installations. Since 2018, Godard’s ongoing project “Le Livre d’image” (created with Fabrice Aragno, Nicole Brenez and Jean-Paul Battaggia) has appeared in many form(at)s, travels and transformations. Installations recreate the cinematographic space in places other than the classic movie theater. Thereby the specific spatial characteristics and the history of each venue become an essential part within the creation of an individual, intimate cinematic experience. Starting from the film (trailer), the conversation focuses on the first so called ‘accueil’ (reception) by Godard and Aragno at the Théâtre de Vidy in Lausanne (2018), and then travels to Aragno’s exhibition “sentiments, signes, passions – à propos du livre d’image” at the Château de Nyon (2020).

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Forensis as Critical Practice

Ursula Frohne Eyal Weizman

In this conversation, art historian Ursula Frohne speaks with Eyal Weizman, founding director of Forensic Architecture, about the meaning of the term “forensis,” the production of facts and spatial navigational viewing. Departing with an explanation of the programmatic term “forensis,” the conversation centers around the investigative work of the international collective of experts. Weizman describes its specific approach to the production of evidence in distinction to the problematic historical resonances of forensic methods. Defining it as a kind of counter-forensis, it works as critical practice in relation to contested political and juridical issues, including, for example, the unresolved murder of the 21-year-old Halit Yozgat at the desk of his family-run internet café in the city of Kassel by the National Socialist Underground (NSU) movement on April 6, 2006. To determine the circumstances, Forensic Architecture recreated the internet café in its original size, while in parallel, it applied exact measurements to digitally simulate the spread of gunpowder smells in the rooms, the sound of the shooting and other details of the factual occurrence. With the available scientifically generated data, it was possible to draw a clear conclusion of the actual sequence of events, which were further manifested by close readings of the material language of the reconstructed constellations as evidence. The visualized research of Forensic Architecture also contributed to the formation of an alliance of civil society organizations known as “Unraveling the NSU Complex,” which commissioned Forensic Architecture to investigate the agents’ testimony a decade after the murder, in 2016.

Frohne and Weizman discuss the way Forensic Architecture works at the institutional intersection of art, courts and architecture to establish new ways of truth production based on collaborative, open-source methods. By showing additional excerpts from investigations on “Sea Watch vs. the Libyan Coastguard” (2018) and “The Beirut Port Explosion” (2020), this talk is a reflection on how Forensic Architecture points to not only what happened in the past but to what should happen in the future.

Forensic Architecture: forensic-architecture.org
Eyal Weizman, Anselm Franke and Forensic Architecture (eds.), FORENSIS: The Architecture of Public Truth, Sternberg Press 2017:
content.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Forensis-interior-FINAL.pdf

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Histories of Labor
Histories of Vision

Volker Pantenburg

Harun Farocki’s “Images of the World and the Inscription of War” (1988) revolves around technologies of measuring. The film gathers evidence for a long historical trajectory in which the labor of vision is replaced by the process of calculating. Archival documents and unused film footage show the film growing out of a different project with the working title “On the History of Labor.” Between 1985 and 1988, Farocki’s focus shifted from questions of labor to questions of vision. In addition, an encounter with the aerial photographs unknowingly made of Auschwitz by US Army reconnaissance planes in 1944 led to the reorientation of the project. This eight-minute montage shows excerpts from the abandoned footage – a group of children in the Collection of Classical Antiquities (Berlin) exploring two statues – and speculates why the material was not included and how it might relate to “Images of the World.”

Volker Pantenburg, “Conceptual Doubts: Harun Farocki’s On the History of Labor Project,” Harun Farocki: On the History of Labor, ed. Volker Pantenburg, Harun Farocki Institut / Motto Books 2020, pp. 20–31
Download PDF

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Keeping It Distant from Up Close: How to See Cancer

Carla Gabrí Alexandra Gelis

Visual thoughts on distance and proximity in film, stemming from an ongoing collaboration between Carla Gabrí and Alexandra Gelis. After her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, Gelis began working on a series of artworks and artistic interventions surrounding her mother’s illness and subsequent healing process. This video deals with three works created during this time: “Radiotherapy,” shot on Super 8mm, the 16mm film “Exits and Entries,” and “Doing and Undoing: Poems from Within” – an 18-channel, electronic video installation. Excerpts from these three works are interwoven with additional footage not seen before, while a written text is being read aloud about how the films scale bodies, touch skin and connect memories. In this dialogue between image and sound, the video itself becomes a connective tissue, intermingling different types of material, thinking modes and experiences.

Notes on “The Last One”

Alexandra Navratil

In this video artist Alexandra Navratil talks about her new project “The Last One,” for which she recently started research. The voice-over was edited from the recording of a conversation with Fabienne Liptay and the visuals show excerpts of the script she is writing for the project. In “The Last One,” Navratil will depart from the cycad E. Woodii, which is the last one of its species and is located in Kew Gardens in London, in order to contemplate on colonial and fossil history, irrevocable loss, distance, gender, reproduction, doubles and clones, the inherent memory of materials, the circulation of images, but also on care and the overcoming of borders.

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Notes on Value

Kris Dittel Laura Walde

Referring to selected films and artworks, Kris Dittel and Laura Walde exchange video messages about the value and meaning of images. In this video, which took the form of an epistolary exchange, Dittel and Walde explore the question of value(s) and measures in film and in art at large. They touch upon issues of labor, the circulation of information and the distribution of images, the role of language and narratives, representation and faith. How is value, both economically and symbolically, tied to questions of visibility and recognition? How is the concept of migration (technologically, politically, institutionally) related to questions of circulation, representation and faith in images?

With selected short films and artworks by
James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Benera and Estefán, Louis Henderson, Lydia Ourahmane, Stefan Kruse Jørgensen and Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz

Inspired by thoughts and writings by
Byung-Chul Han, Jacques Rancière, Françoise Vergès and Hito Steyerl

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philipp fleischmann 2020

Philipp Fleischmann

I am sending a meter each of five of my analog films to five different film theorists.

See the responses to Philipp Fleischmann’s mail

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Portability, Projection and Formats

Benoît Turquety Haidee Wasson

Haidee Wasson is interviewed by Benoît Turquety, focusing on her recent book “Everyday Movies: Portability and the Transformation of American Culture.” The conversation is illustrated with key examples of small, portable film projectors in order to structure a conversation about what “format” can mean to a film historian and how it can help to open up new understandings about the history of moving image technologies, performance, presentation and culture. Such qualities as adaptability, modularity, adaptability, hybridity and programmability lead to a wide-ranging discussion about small cinema machines and the ways they have fundamentally reshaped mediated life throughout the 20th century.

ucpress.edu/book/9780520331693/everyday-movies

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Simulated Memory and the Wired Brain: The Emerging Superordinate Precariat

Warren Neidich

In his lecture, Warren Neidich wagers that we are in the midst of a transition from an information and knowledge-based economy to one that can be described as neural-based or brain-based. The focus is on the burgeoning field of brain-computer interfaces and related neural technics to theorize their potential for healing as well as surveillance and despotism. In doing so he develops the following topics: first, that the accumulation of these neural techniques in the socio-political-economic and cultural milieu will have profound effects on the material brain; second, that as a result the cognitariat or mental worker is transitioning into a superordinate precariat. Precarity has evolved from being a part of the description with which to characterize the cognitariat or mental worker to a full-blown category all its own in the 21st century. These subjectivities can be distinguished from each other in two ways: 1. Real subsumption is replaced by neural subsumption. 2. Prosthetic memory is replaced by irreal memory. For the video presentation, he decided to concentrate on the latter rather than the former.

zueccaprojects.org/project/rumor-to-delusion/
032c.com/cognitive-capitalism-neidich-denny-popescu-harney-and-ndikung-at-the-sfsia-berlin
nytimes.com/2020/05/11/arts/design/drive-by-art-long-island.html
artforum.com/diary/christina-catherine-martinez-on-drive-by-art-los-angeles-83222
whitehotmagazine.com/articles/abyss-uncertainty/4758

Pizzagate: From Rumor to Delusion

Video, 19:19 min, 2019

“Pizzagate: From Rumor to Delusion” is a non-linear experimental documentary film that describes our post-truth society through the example of the Pizzagate fake news story. The Pizzagate scandal is a now-debunked conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It was distributed on right-wing newsfeeds, as well as the more centrist social media hub Twitter. Hillary Clinton and members of her staff, especially John Podesta, were accused of running a child sex ring out of the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor in Washington D.C. In exploring the complex relations at play in our networked society, the film also uncovers the motivations and influences that led the QAnon follower Edgar Welch to drive up from North Carolina to the nation’s capital in order to free these supposedly incarcerated children. On entering the restaurant, he fired a shot into the air but a few minutes later surrendered to the police after finding nothing to collaborate what he had heard.

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Statisten / Extras

Fabienne Liptay Clemens von Wedemeyer

In their conversation, Clemens von Wedemeyer and Fabienne Liptay talk about film extras in their relation to society and politics. Following an idea expressed in the work “Transformation Scenario” (2018), they look at the film as a testbed for society with a focus on background extras. By discussing works by Clemens von Wedemeyer and other related film material, they point out the many ways in which extras are bound not only to the practices of filmmaking, but also to statistical reasoning and state order. Extras, whether human or digitized, thus can become the material for modelling social scenarios. The images discussed in this talk range from the staging of the masses in classical cinema to recent examples of agent-based crowd simulations and intelligent surveillance.

Video editing: Clara Wieck

Further readings
Clemens von Wedemeyer, The Illusion of a Crowd (Film Material n° 7), Archive books, 2020
Clemens von Wedemeyer, Online exhibition: The Illusion of a Crowd, 7 April – 31 May, 2020
Fabienne Liptay, “Just Numbers,” View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 25 (2019)

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Strange Machines: Some Things Between Art and Biology

Hannes Rickli

In the form of audiovisual installations, art machines make tangible the digital work of scientific measuring devices and infrastructures that takes place within black boxes.

For many years, I have been following the mostly unobserved physical traces of monitoring and measuring animal behavior in biological laboratories and in fieldwork. Who or what organizes these collectives of human and non-human actors in Paris, Austin/Texas, in the Arctic Sea off Spitsbergen or in Zurich? Which agency do the animals develop in the question-and-answer game? What roles play digital media and infrastructures used to record the signals? And how do the matter and energies of nature cooperate in the process of their own observation?

The art project explores such questions, which affect environmental and media-ecological aspects, in the transition from analog (observable) to digital (closed in black boxes) processes. It develops its own measuring systems to make these abstract processes perceptible in installations.

Data and exhibition documentations
computersignale.zhdk.ch/en/about/exhibitions/african-cichlid-3
computersignale.zhdk.ch/en/data/remos1
computersignale.zhdk.ch/en/data/bremerhaven

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Television’s Partitioned Publics

David Joselit

A genealogy of the split screen as political splintering in television news is compared to the proliferation of screens and their inscription on the body as practiced by artists such as Nam June Paik. The split-screen has moved from a special-effects device to a literal figure of, and tool for, achieving political balkanization. This lecture traces the genealogy of this form from sports television through CNN’s invention of the 24-hour news cycle, and the explosion of political spin in an era of fake news. The split in split screens simultaneously isolates different informational realities from one another while insisting on the forced contemporaneity of “breaking news.”

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Zionism and Modernity in “White City”

Burcu Dogramaci Dani Gal

The artist Dani Gal speaks with art historian Burcu Dogramaci about his video “White City” (2018), on measurements in the biopolitics of nationalism and modern architecture. The film revolves around the complex character of Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943), one of the founders of the Zionist Settlement who promoted coexistence with the Palestinians before the establishment of the state of Israel. Ruppin was also an enthusiastic researcher of the science of race, which explains his motive in paying a visit to Hans F.K. Günther (1891–1968), the German race researcher and eugenicist who later became a major influence on National Socialist racial thought. “White City” shows Ruppin as he visits the Weissenhof Estate, a neighborhood in Stuttgart famous for its modern architecture style, and experiences flashbacks which reflect his views. The monologues and dialogues within this film are based mainly on Ruppin’s diaries.

White City
HD video, 25 min, 2018
Director: Dani Gal
Camera: Itay Marom
Production: Pong Films

“White City” on artist website
“White City” excerpt on Vimeo

Fabrice Aragno

Filmmaker collaborating with Jean-Luc Godard, Lausanne

Fabrice Aragno, born in 1970, is a filmmaker who studied cinema at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne ECAL after his apprentice as a draftsman. He directed several short and medium-length fiction and documentary films after his graduation film project “Dimanche” (1998; selection officielle Festival de Cannes, Cinéfondation 1999). Since 2002, he has been a close collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard’s, working as an editor, photographer, sound engineer and producer. He was also the editor and producer of Pippo Delbono’s last three films. Since 2001, Aragno has been experimenting in different cinematographic forms for creations such as “Tricycle” (with Jean-Pierre Battaggia, Grand Palais, Paris, 2015), “Lacustre(s)” (Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, Nanterre, 2019) and “sentiments, signes, passions – à propos du livre d’image” (Nyon, 2020). He is one of the four authors of “Orae, experiencing the borders” for the Pavillon Suisse at the Biennale Architettura 2021 in Venice.

casa-azul.ch/wordpress_X/livre-dimage
vidy.ch/metteurs-en-scene-auteurs/jean-luc-godard
chateaudenyon.ch/fr/expositions/sentiments-signes-passions-une-exposition-de-jean-luc-godard-458

Kris Dittel

Independent curator and editor based in Rotterdam

Kris Dittel is as an independent curator and editor based in Rotterdam. Her work centers on clusters of research that are informed by her background in economics and social sciences, as well as an ongoing interest in the (failure of) communication and performativity. Her most recent curatorial and editorial projects engaged with the notion of value in art and artistic labor (“The Trouble with Value,” Bunkier Sztuki Krakow and Onomatopee, 2017–2020), and she is currently exploring the material substance and performative potential of the human voice (“Voice as Material” and “Post-Opera,” 2017–ongoing).

krisdittel.com
onomatopee.net/exhibition/the-trouble-with-value/#publication_12074

Burcu Dogramaci

Professor of 20th-century and contemporary art

Burcu Dogramaci, born in 1971, is a professor of art history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary global art; exile, migration and flight; urbanity and architecture; photography; history of art history. She has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant for her project METROMOD (2017–2022), which focuses on six metropolises (Bombay, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, London, New York, Shanghai) as exile cities for European artists in the first half of the 20th century. Her recent books include: “Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century” (Leuven University Press 2020, ed. with M. Hetschold et al.), “Textile Moderne / Textile Modernism” (Böhlau 2019, ed.), “Handbook of Art and Global Migration: Theories, Practices, and Challenges” (De Gruyter 2019, ed. with B. Mersmann), “Design Dispersed: Forms of Migration and Flight” (transcript 2019, ed. with K. Pinther), “Fotografie der Performance: Live Art im Zeitalter ihrer Reproduzierbarkeit” (Fink 2018).

kunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professoren_innen/dogramaci
metromod.net
library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/41641

Monika Dommann

Professor of modern history at the University of Zurich

Monika Dommann is a professor of modern history at the University of Zurich. Dommann’s research and teaching focus on the intertwining of the Old and New Worlds (especially Europe, North America and the Caribbean), the history of media, economics, law, knowledge and science, and the methods of historical science. She has a special focus on the history of material cultures, immaterial goods, logistics and data centers.

hist.uzh.ch/de/fachbereiche/neuzeit/lehrstuehle/dommann/lehrstuhlinhaberin.html
fischerverlage.de/buch/monika-dommann-materialfluss-9783596702978

Carla Gabrí

PhD candidate in film studies, University of Zurich

Carla Gabrí is a doctoral student at the Department of Film Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She is a member of the research project “Exhibiting Film: Challenges of Format,” led by Fabienne Liptay. In her dissertation project titled “Re-Formatting as Resistance: Textile Verhältnisbestimmungen im Bewegtbild, 1970–2020,” she examines contemporary artistic positions at the intersection of the media of film and textiles that deal with formatting processes in industrial and post-industrial eras, as well as with practices of standardization, normalization and scaling in the context of commercial relationships.

film.uzh.ch/de/team/drittmittel/gabri.html
exhibitingfilm.ch
carlagabri.com

Omer Fast

Artist based in Berlin

Much of Omer Fast’s work delves into the psychology of contemporary trauma, often relying on the blurring of memory and the retelling of actual events through cinematic convention. Fast’s work moves beyond the formalities of the genre, pushing through reality and non-reality of his subject matter, and is ultimately about the status of the image as a tool to disseminate information, both real and manufactured. In his work as a filmmaker, Omer Fast defines a new relationship between reality and fiction. He is interested in exploring the construction of narratives, in particular how stories change when told from different perspectives. Many of his recent works examine the shifting boundaries of modern conflict through the personal stories of those involved. Fast borrows from traditions of documentary, dramatization and fantasy, and uses human emotions as stand-ins for the larger socio-political reality of contemporary warfare.

Fast’s work has been exhibited extensively internationally and is included in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of American Art in New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Tate Modern, London, UK; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, among others. Fast lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

sgsm.eu/ausstellungen-exhibition/aktuelle-ausstellung-current-exhibition/

Philipp Fleischmann

Artist and filmmaker based in Vienna

Philipp Fleischmann is an artist and filmmaker based in Vienna, Austria. He primarily works with the medium of analog film. For his projects, he often develops site-specific cameras that allow him to reflect on the physical and cultural dimensions of institutional spaces. Since 2014, he has served as the artistic director of the School Friedl Kubelka for Independent Film in Vienna. He has had exhibitions and screenings at venues including the São Paulo Bienal, Macro Museum Rome, Berlinale Forum Expanded, Austrian Filmmuseum, Vienna Secession, Toronto International Film Festival, mumok kino and Anthology Film Archives, NYC.

Ursula Frohne

Professor of art history, modern and contemporary art

Ursula Anna Frohne has been a professor of art history, modern and contemporary art at the University of Münster since 2015. She received her PhD in art history at the Freie Universität Berlin, worked as chief curator at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and taught as adjunct lecturer at the State Academy of Fine Art in Karlsruhe between 1995 and 2001. Following a visiting professorship at the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University (USA) and a professorship of art history at International University Bremen, she became a professor for 20th and 21st-centuries art at the University of Cologne in 2006, where she was chair of the research project “Cinematographic Aesthetics in Contemporary Art” and was awarded the Leo Spitzer Award for arts, humanities and human sciences for excellence in research by the University of Cologne. Since 2017, she has co-chaired with Marianne Wagner the research project “The Sculpture Project Archive Münster: A Research Institute for Science and the Public,” funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. She has published on the sociology of the artist, contemporary art practices and technological media (photography, film, video, installation), political dimensions and socio-economic conditions of art and visual culture.

uni-muenster.de/Kunstgeschichte/Lehrende/prof.dr.u.frohne
skulptur-projekte-archiv.de
21-inquiries.eu/en

Dani Gal

Video artist based in Berlin

Dani Gal, born in 1975 in Jerusalem, lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem, the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt, and the Cooper Union in New York. His films and works have been shown widely, including: 54th Venice Biennale (2011), The Istanbul Biennale (2011), New Museum New York (2012), Kunsthalle St. Gallen Switzerland (2013), The Jewish Museum New York (2014), Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014), Kunsthaus Zurich (2015), Kunsthalle Wien (2015), documenta 14 (2017), Centre Pompidou (2018), Steirischer Herbst Festival (2020).

dani-gal.com
e-flux.com/announcements/341662/dani-galthree-works-for-piano/
paranoia-tv.com/en/program/content/200-three-works-for-piano
historical-records.com
kadel-willborn.de/en/data/artists/110/dani-gal.html

Alexandra Gelis

Visual artist based in Toronto

Alexandra Gelis is a Colombian-Venezuelan artist living and working in Toronto, Canada. Her studio practice combines new media, installation and photography with custom-built interactive electronics. Her projects incorporate personal field research as a tool to investigate the ecologies of various landscapes by examining the traces left by various socio-political interventions. She uses data-capture techniques, video, sound, and spatial and electronic media to create documentary-based immersive installations, single-channel videos and experimental photography.

alexandragelis.com
conversalon.org

David Joselit

Professor of art, film and visual studies at Harvard

David Joselit has taught at the University of California, Irvine, at Yale University where he was department chair from 2006-09, and at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is currently professor of art, film, and visual studies at Harvard. Joselit is author of “Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910–1941” (MIT Press 1998), “American Art Since 1945” (Thames and Hudson 2003), “Feedback: Television Against Democracy” (MIT Press 2007) and “After Art” (Princeton University Press 2012). He co-organized the exhibition “Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age” at the Brandhorst Museum in Munich in 2015. Joselit is an editor of the journal “October” and writes regularly on contemporary art and culture. His most recent book is “Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization” (MIT Press 2020).

afvs.fas.harvard.edu/people/david-joselit
mitpress.mit.edu/books/heritage-and-debt

Thomas Julier

Artist and guest lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Thomas Julier studied photography and fine arts at the Zurich University of the Arts. In his artistic practice, he is preoccupied with the means of digital production and language. He uses a multitude of media including hardware and software development as well as photographic printing techniques, video projection, light programming, digitally aided restoration processes, generic growth patterns, motion tracking and various methods of digital composition. His projects are often site- and context-specific. His artistic means are ever-expanding through collaborative and experimental processes that systematically transcend his own skills. Interdisciplinary dialog therefore plays a key role in the development of works, projects and exhibitions. The artist is keen on working with specific spaces, rhythms and time, using them for fictitious narratives, speculations, suggestions and scenarios.

chameleoneyes.info/en
thomasjulier.info

Fabienne Liptay

Professor of film studies at the University of Zurich

Fabienne Liptay, born in 1974, is a professor of film studies and head of the department of film studies at the University of Zurich. She has studied film, theater and English literature in Mainz, Germany, and has held academic positions at the University of Mainz and LMU Munich. Her research interests are the aesthetics and theory of film, the interrelations between the visual arts and media, theories and practices of film exhibition, as well as concepts of aesthetic production. She is head of the research project “Exhibiting Film: Challenges of Format,” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Her publications include, as author: “Telling Images: Studien zur Bildlichkeit des Films” (diaphanes 2016); as co-editor: “Immersion in the Visual Arts and Media” (Brill 2015) and “Artur Żmijewski: Kunst als Alibi” (diaphanes 2017). She is also the co-editor of the quarterly series “Film-Konzepte,” published by edition text + kritik.

film.uzh.ch/de/team/people/liptay
exhibitingfilm.allyou.net

Jacqueline Maurer

PhD candidate in film studies, University of Zurich

Jacqueline Maurer, born in 1984, studied art history and German philology at the University of Basel (2005–2013) and at University College London UCL (2011–2012). She was an academic assistant at the Department of Art Education at the Kunstmuseum Basel (2007–2011) and at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH Zurich (2013–2016). Since 2015, she has been a PhD student at the Department of Film Studies at the University of Zurich. Her project on Jean-Luc Godard and the interrelations between research in film, architecture and urbanism was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Doc.CH grant (2015–2019). Since 2019, she has been a research fellow at the research department of the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland.

film.uzh.ch/de/team/extern/maurer.html

Alexandra Navratil

Artist based in Zurich and Amsterdam and lecturer at the Institut Kunst FHNW in Basel

Alexandra Navratil’s work often starts with scientific and historical research on the beginnings of photography, film and industrial history. By combining and animating found visual material, the work cycles reflect on the beginnings of modernity and their effects on today’s visual world. The works in video, installation, sculpture and film follow material stories in a poetic and analytical way. Navratil’s work was awarded the Manor Art Prize in Zurich in 2013 and the Swiss Art Award in 2009 and 2012. In 2018, she was the artist-in-residence at the EYE Film Museum in Amsterdam. Her work has been shown in solo shows at the Kunsthaus Langenthal, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, CCS, Paris, Photoforum Pasquart, Biel, as well as in institutional group shows at the Kunsthaus Zürich, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, CAPC, Bordeaux, Museum Sztuki, Lodz, ICA Philadelphia and de Appel, Amsterdam.

alexandranavratil.com/projects/Split-Hatch-Mutate-Double
dertank.ch/we-are/alexandra-navratil/

Warren Neidich

Multidisciplinary artist and theorist

Warren Neidich is an artist, theorist and educator working in Berlin and New York. He is the founder and director of the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, based in Berlin from 2005–2020, and C.A.R.E. LTD gallery, New York. He is a recipient of the AHRB/ACE Arts and Science Research Fellowship, Bristol, 2004, the Vilém Flusser Theory Award, transmediale, 2010, and the Fulbright Scholarship from the American University in Cairo in 2011 and 2013. His one-person exhibition “Rumor to Delusion” premiered at the Zuecca Project Space during the Venice Biennale 2019 and critiqued fake news and the post-truth society. He is a former tutor at Goldsmiths, University of London, and professor of art at the Weissensee Kunsthochschule. His new books are “The Glossary of Cognitive Activism,” recently published by Archive Books, Berlin and “Neuromacht” published by Merve Verlag in 2018. Neidich has been a visiting artist at universities such as Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Princeton, UCLA, UC San Diego, Oxford, Cambridge, the Jan Van Eyck Academie, the Dutch Art Institute, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Art, the Rijksakademie and the Sorbonne.

warrenneidich.com
sfsia.art
artbrain.org
americanhistoryreinvented.com

Volker Pantenburg

Professor of film studies at Freie Universität Berlin

Volker Pantenburg is a professor of film studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has published widely on essayistic film and video practices, experimental cinema and contemporary moving image installations. Book publications in English include “Farocki/Godard: Film as Theory” (2015), “Cinematographic Objects: Things and Operations” (2015, editor) and “Screen Dynamics: Mapping the Borders of Cinema” (2012, co-editor). His latest books in German are “Handbuch Filmanalyse” (2020, co-edited with Malte Hagener) and “Gerhard Friedl: Ein Arbeitsbuch” (2019, editor). In 2015, he co-founded the Harun Farocki Institut, a platform for researching Farocki’s visual and discursive practice and supporting new projects that engage with the past, present and future of image cultures.

geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/we07/film/mitarbeiter-innen/prof/pantenburg
harun-farocki-institut.org/en/

Hannes Rickli

Visual artist and professor at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Hannes Rickli is a visual artist and professor at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Born in Bern in 1959, he studied photography, the theory of art and design in Zurich, and media art in Karlsruhe. From 1988 to 1994, he was a freelance photographer for various newspapers and magazines. Since 1991, he has staged visual art exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad. In 2004, the Swiss Federal Office for Culture awarded him the Meret Oppenheim Prize. Fellowship 2016–2020 at Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich.

His teaching and research focus is on the instrumental use of media and space as well as on media ecology. His research project “Computer Signals: Art and Biology in the Age of Digital Experimentation” was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF, 2012–2021).

Selected exhibitions
Wired Nation – Landscape, Architecture, Infrastructure, 2020
computersignale.zhdk.ch/en/about/exhibitions

Selected publications
Data Centers: Edges of a Wired Nation, 2020
Natures of Data, 2020
Videograms: The Pictorial Worlds of Biological Experimentation as an Object of Art and Theory, 2011

Links
computersignale.zhdk.ch/en/home
collegium.ethz.ch/en

Benoît Turquety

Associate professor at the University of Lausanne

Benoît Turquety is an associate professor at the Department of Film History and Aesthetics at the University of Lausanne. After having led an SNSF research project on Bolex and amateur cinema (2015–2019), he is now the director of a project about Nagra recorders, between technology, media studies and sound studies. His recent publications include “Inventing Cinema: Machines, Gestures and Media History” (Amsterdam University Press 2019), “Medium, Format, Configuration: The Displacements of Film” (Meson Press 2019), and “Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub: ‘Objectivists’ in Cinema” (Amsterdam University Press 2020). He is preparing a book on technicity as a way of understanding media’s relations with users’ bodies as well as with geopolitical and environmental ecologies.

https://unil.ch/cin/fr/home/menuinst/collaborateurstrices/ancienn/turquety-benoit.html meson.press/books/medium-format-configuration
vimeo.com/296202947

Marijke van Warmerdam

Artist renowned for her short films, photographs and sculpture

Marijke van Warmerdam, born in 1959 in the Netherlands, first garnered international attention at the Venice Biennial in 1995 with her short film loops portraying the beauty of simple movements and everyday actions. Her frame of reference is without guile: “Art can give life a twist, and the other way around.”

She makes use of images where seemingly unrelated elements are united in what comes across as a natural combination. Dramatic shifts of scale, doubling, reflection, rhythmic repetition, or surprising juxtapositions provide an open perspective. In doing so, she draws attention to the beauty of trivialities: the fleeting moments gone in the blink of an eye.

Van Warmerdam does not tell stories in her works, but relies on the visual power of the motif: a hat dancing in the wind, a girl doing a handstand or a red suitcase sliding down a snowy mountain. Although she utilizes a variety of media including photography, sculpture, and sound installations, she is best known for her short, looped films.

marijkevanwarmerdam.com

Clemens von Wedemeyer

Artist and filmmaker based in Berlin

Clemens von Wedemeyer, born in 1974 in Göttingen, Germany, currently lives and works in Berlin and holds a professorship for expanded cinema at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. The artist and filmmaker studied photography and media at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld and the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig and graduated as Meisterschüler of Astrid Klein in 2005. Von Wedemeyer participated in group shows such as the 1st Moscow Biennale (2005), the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006), skulptur projekte münster (2007), the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008) and documenta 13 (2012). He had solo shows at MoMA PS1, New York, ARGOS Centre for Art and Media, Brussels, the Barbican Art Centre, London, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Hamburger Kunsthalle. His works “70.001” and “Transformation Scenario” were exhibited in solo shows at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, and Kunstmuseum Luzern in 2020, among others.

filmmaterial.net
hgb-leipzig.de/personen/professor-innen_mitarbeiter-innen/prof-clemensvonwedemeyer
galeriewolff.com/artists/Clemens-von-Wedemeyer
kow-berlin.com/artists/clemens-von-wedemeyer

Laura Walde

PhD candidate in film studies, University of Zurich

Laura Walde holds an MA degree in Film Studies and English Literature from the Universities of Zurich and Aberdeen. Since 2013, she has been working as a freelance curator and programmer for Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur. Since October 2017, she has been part of the research project “Exhibiting Film: Challenges of Format,” supervised by Fabienne Liptay at the University of Zurich. Her thesis “Brevity – Format – Program: The Short Film and Its Exhibition” takes as its points of departure the short film’s brevity, its marginalization in the discourse on film theory and its circulation in different institutional contexts, and asks what specific formats the short film and its exhibition assume, and what sort of epistemological potential and impact these formats might have on a cultural, social and political level.

exhibitingfilm.allyou.net
kurzfilmtage.ch

Haidee Wasson

Professor of film and media at Concordia University, Montreal

Haidee Wasson is a professor of film and media at Concordia University, Montreal. She is the author and editor of five books, among them, “Museum Movies” (University of California Press 2005), “Useful Cinema” (Duke University Press 2001, ed. with Charles R. Acland) and recently “Everyday Movies” (University of California Press 2020). Her research addresses the history of American film at the intersection of cultural institutions and changing technologies.

concordia.ca/finearts/cinema/faculty.html?fpid=haidee-wasson
ucpress.edu/book/9780520331693/everyday-movies

Eyal Weizman

Founding director of Forensic Architecture and principal investigator

Eyal Weizman is the founding director of Forensic Architecture and a professor of spatial and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of over 15 books, he has held positions in many universities worldwide including Princeton, ETH Zurich and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He is a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court and the Centre for Investigative Journalism. In 2019 he was elected life fellow of the British Academy and appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to architecture. In 2020 he was elected the Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Bosch Academy. Eyal studied architecture at the Architectural Association, graduating in 1998. He received his PhD in 2006 from the London Consortium at Birkbeck, University of London.

Forensic Architecture:
forensic-architecture.org/about/team/member/eyal-weizman
Eyal Weizman, Anselm Franke and Forensic Architecture (eds.), FORENSIS: The Architecture of Public Truth, Sternberg Press 2017:
content.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Forensis-interior-FINAL.pdf
Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability, Princeton University Press 2014:
press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781935408871/forensic-architecture
Eyal Weizman and Thomas Keenan, Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of a Forensic Aesthetics, Sternberg Press 2012:
sternberg-press.com/product/mengeles-skull-the-advent-of-a-forensic-aesthetics/

Imprint

Concept and organization
Fabienne Liptay, Carla Gabrí, Laura Walde (University of Zurich)
Nadia Schneider Willen, Nurja Ritter (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst)

Head of Press and Public Relations
René Müller (Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst)

Video editing and technical assistance
Romaine Imboden

Copyediting
Katrin Gygax

Design
Resort

Code
Roger Burkhard

A cooperation between
University of Zurich
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst

As part of the project
Exhibiting Film: Challenges of Format

Funded by
Swiss National Science Foundation

Please contact us if you have questions or feedback
exhibitingfilm@fiwi.uzh.ch

@ 2020

Privacy Policy

Contact in case of questions

University of Zurich
Department of Film Studies
SNSF Project “Exhibiting Film: Challenges of Format”
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exhibitingfilm@fiwi.uzh.ch

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Scroll Down

Taking
Measures

Usages of Formats
in Film and Video Art

Video
Symposium

Marijke van Warmerdam

Marijke van Warmerdam offers insights into her own work as samples from the history of film formats. For her, “everything can be a film.”

Play

Artist Talk

Omer Fast Fabienne Liptay

In this Artist Talk hosted by the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Omer Fast discusses his newest works “A Place Which Is Ripe” (2020) and “Karla” (2020). In response to a 1917 self-portrait by Max Beckmann, in which the artist draws himself after the mental breakdown he suffered from his military service, Fast’s works address the visual politics of violence.

Play

Beyond Standards: The Hans-Rudolf Lutz Collection

Monika Dommann

A visit to the Hans-Rudolf Lutz collection of imprints on cardboard packaging takes us on a journey into the varieties of standards in transport logistics.

Play

Chameleon Eyes

Thomas Julier

In “Chameleon Eyes,” the robotic inhabitant of a Zurich housing co-op that tracks the flight paths of resident and migratory birds in the surrounding park introduces itself.

Play

Exhibiting Jean-Luc Godard’s “Le Livre d’image” (2018–)

Fabrice Aragno Jacqueline Maurer

Play

Forensis as Critical Practice

Ursula Frohne Eyal Weizman

Play

Histories of Labor
Histories of Vision

Volker Pantenburg

This video presents an archival take on Harun Farocki’s “Images of the World and the Inscription of War” (1988).

Play

Keeping It Distant from Up Close: How to See Cancer

Carla Gabrí Alexandra Gelis

Visual thoughts on distance and proximity in film, stemming from an ongoing collaboration between Carla Gabrí and Alexandra Gelis.

Play

Notes on “The Last One”

Alexandra Navratil

In this video artist Alexandra Navratil talks about her new project “The Last One,” for which she recently started research.

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Notes on Value

Kris Dittel Laura Walde

Referring to selected films and artworks, Kris Dittel and Laura Walde exchange video messages about the value and meaning of images.

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philipp fleischmann 2020

Philipp Fleischmann

I am sending a meter each of five of my analog films to five different film theorists.

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Portability, Projection and Formats

Benoît Turquety Haidee Wasson

Haidee Wasson is interviewed by Benoît Turquety, focusing on her recent book “Everyday Movies: Portability and the Transformation of American Culture.”

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Simulated Memory and the Wired Brain: The Emerging Superordinate Precariat

Warren Neidich

In his lecture, Warren Neidich wagers that we are in the midst of a transition to a neural or brain-based economy. He describes the “wired brain” and its potential capacity for healing, as well as for surveillance and despotism.

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Statisten / Extras

Fabienne Liptay Clemens von Wedemeyer

In their conversation, Clemens von Wedemeyer and Fabienne Liptay talk about film extras in their relation to society and politics.

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Strange Machines: Some Things Between Art and Biology

Hannes Rickli

In the form of audiovisual installations, art machines make tangible the digital work of scientific measuring devices and infrastructures that takes place within black boxes.

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Television’s Partitioned Publics

David Joselit

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Zionism and Modernity in “White City”

Burcu Dogramaci Dani Gal

The artist Dani Gal speaks with art historian Burcu Dogramaci about his video “White City” (2018), on measurements in the biopolitics of nationalism and modern architecture.

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Taking Measures

1992

Artist Talk

Beyond Standards: The Hans-Rudolf Lutz Collection

Chameleon Eyes

Exhibiting Jean-Luc Godard’s “Le Livre d’image” (2018–)

Forensis as Critical Practice

Histories of Labor Histories of Vision

Keeping It Distant from Up Close: How to See Cancer

Notes on “The Last One”

Notes on Value

philipp fleischmann 2020

Portability, Projection and Formats

Simulated Memory and the Wired Brain: The Emerging Superordinate Precariat

Statisten / Extras

Strange Machines: Some Things Between Art and Biology

Television’s Partitioned Publics

Zionism and Modernity in “White City”

Fabrice Aragno

Kris Dittel

Burcu Dogramaci

Monika Dommann

Carla Gabrí

Omer Fast

Philipp Fleischmann

Ursula Frohne

Dani Gal

Alexandra Gelis

David Joselit

Thomas Julier

Fabienne Liptay

Jacqueline Maurer

Alexandra Navratil

Warren Neidich

Volker Pantenburg

Hannes Rickli

Benoît Turquety

Marijke van Warmerdam

Clemens von Wedemeyer

Laura Walde

Haidee Wasson

Eyal Weizman

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