The Shards of Zadar

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-210
Author(s):  
Ulrich Meurer
Keyword(s):  
Media History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Founding Myth ◽  
Similar Element

By ‘unearthing’ artefacts from folded layers of time, media archaeology undermines linear historical discourse: in this regard, this chapter addresses an exemplary art-based project on the origins of cinema that takes the epistemological metaphor of ‘excavation’ at its word. In 2011, the Canadian artist Henry Jesionka discovers several ancient bronze and glass objects on a Croatian beach, dates the pieces to the first century CE, and identifies them as components of an intricate Graeco-Roman mechanism for the projection of moving images. This rewriting of media history not only illustrates how traits of materiality and contingency interfere with teleological history; it also reflects on industrial capitalism’s paradox claims of ‘reason’ and the ideological presuppositions of progress: Cornelius Castoriadis’s notion of a merely simulated Rationality of Capitalism (1997) suggests that traditional narratives of technological invention are invariably organized around a clandestine and insufficiently repressed nucleus of the unforeseen, unpredictable, and irrational. By admitting to a similar element of chance or lost control, Jesionka’s Ancient Cinema project and new founding myth of cinema comment on the logic of media archaeology as an expression of late capitalism’s waning belief in its own rationale.

scholarly journals Germania de Tácito: en los límites del género literario

Nova Tellus ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-167
Author(s):  
Nicolás Russo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Rhetorical Situation ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
Sociopolitical Context ◽  
Text Features ◽  
New Space ◽  
Textual Features ◽  
The One ◽  
Geographical Space

This article proposes a new generic label for Tacitus’ Germania as “frontier ethnography”. Our reading is supported by Germania’s textual instability, due to its topical originality and compositive innovation. Although these features place Germania in a disruptive positioning face of historiographical tradition of Monography, it is consistent with the particular rhetorical situation of the late first century AD, traversed by the mixture of genres and the inversion of center-periphery relationships, and with the rise of a new dynasty as well. These characteristics are found in the two main text features of Germania. On the one hand, Ethnography, which was traditionally relegated to the excursus, is used here as the text’s main narrative device, whereas historical discourse is relocated to the digression. On the other hand, Barbaric periphery beyond the frontier becomes the central narrative matter of the text. Therefore, these textual features allow us to state that Germania insinuates a discourse move towards the limits of Roman generic and geographical space. Hence, Tacitus’ Germania can be interpreted as a literary exercise representing a new space within its sociopolitical context: the frontier.

Projection between Exhibition and Information

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-236
Author(s):  
Adeena Mey
Keyword(s):  
Research Group ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Media History ◽  
Land Art ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Entire Country ◽  
The Many ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
The Way

Among the many reconfigurations and experiments with the ‘medium of the exhibition’ of the 1960–1970s, Sonsbeek 71 stands as one the most audacious examples. Organized by curator Wim Beeren as an attempt to find a new curatorial language and innovative exhibition form, Sonsbeek 71 took ‘the entire country as its field of operation’, the ‘exhibition’ consisting of several works of land art, ‘information centres’, as well as pavilions dedicated to film, video, and art mediation. The ‘spatial relations’ exposed by the scale of this apparatus became the very object of Beeren’s curatorial inquiry. Focusing on projected moving images at Sonsbeek 71, this chapter discusses it on three different levels. First, it identifies the way both the film and exhibition apparatus were reconfigured and how Sonsbeek 71 functioned as an epistemology of the exhibition as medium. Second, it articulates a critique of the exhibition as a form intersecting technical, discursive, informational, and sensible elements, and shows how, in its radical expansion of the exhibition medium, Sonsbeek 71 ‘conflates media history with earth history’ (Parikka). Third, what is meant by the notion of the exhibition as ‘medium’ is discussed in light of the inflatable pavilions designed by the Eventstructure Research Group where structural films and artists’ films were projected. This eventually opens up to a critique of the informational, cybernetic epistemology of Sonsbeek 71.

scholarly journals A Retórica da Morte na Narrativa de Tito Lívio (Século I a.C.) * The Rhetoric of Death in Livy´s Narrative (First-Century B.C.)

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
LUCIANE MUNHOZ DE OMENA ◽  
SUIANY BUENO SILVA
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ab Urbe Condita ◽  
The Relationship

<p><strong>Resumo:</strong> O artigo aborda algumas questões conceituais e políticas da relação entre morte e retórica na <em>Ab Urbe Condita</em> de Tito Lívio. Traçaremos algumas reflexões acerca da morte voluntária da aristocrata Lucrécia e, dessa forma, compreenderemos a relevância de seu papel político no discurso histórico a partir dos aparatos da memória, que se vinculam à arte do convencimento, e de suas interferências no espaço social durante o século I a.C.</p><p><strong>Palavras-chave:</strong> Morte – Retórica – Memória – História e Política.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Abstract:</strong> The article discusses some conceptual issues and policies of the relationship between death and rhetoric in <em>Ab</em><em> Urbe Condita</em> by Livy. We are going to describe some reflections on the voluntary death of the aristocrat Lucrezia and thus understand the relevance of its political role in historical discourse from the memory apparatus, which are linked to the art of persuasion, and their interference in the social space during the first century B.C.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Death – Rhetoric – Memory – History and Politics.</p>

Alexander Kluge’s Installations

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-80
Author(s):  
Tara Hottman
Keyword(s):  
Installation Art ◽  
Art Museums ◽  
Black Box ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Late Night ◽  
Exhibition Space ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Primary Medium ◽  
Reception Aesthetics

Abstract Analysis of recent exhibitions featuring Alexander Kluge’s earlier films and televisual work in dialogue with work by other artists demonstrates how the aesthetics of installation art and modes of exhibiting moving images in art museums and galleries have allowed Kluge to continue developing but also revise practices he first engaged in other media. The so-called white-cube exhibition space presents Kluge’s earlier works in terms of remediation and provides him with an opportunity to employ and reconceptualize his approach to montage techniques and reception aesthetics. With their deployment in the white cube, his earlier works become emphatically transmedial, their content and forms no longer bound to one primary medium. This article proposes that the white cube might be better suited for actively and collectively engaging with Kluge’s work in the twenty-first century than the black box of the cinema, the late-night television screen, or the internet.

Film History as Media Archaeology

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Elsaesser
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Film History ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Media Change

Since cinema has entered the digital era, its very nature has come under renewed scrutiny. Countering the 'death of cinema' debate, Film History as Media Archaeology presents a robust argument for the cinema's current status as a new epistemological object, of interest to philosophers, while also examining the presence of moving images in the museum and art spaces as a challenge for art history. The current study is the fruit of some twenty years of research and writing at the interface of film history, media theory and media archaeology by one of the acknowledged pioneers of the 'new film history' and 'media archaeology'. It joins the efforts of other media scholars to locate cinema's historical emergence and subsequent transformations within the broader field of media change and interaction, as we experience them today.

scholarly journals The European Topos

Media-N ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-45
Author(s):  
Matt Bernico
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Zero Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media History ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
Decolonial Theory ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Adolfo Bioy Casares

There is an unexplored synergy between the ways media archaeology and decolonial theory handle the notion of modernity. Both consider modernity as happening at different places and at different times: modernity is an event that is larger than Europe or the United States. Using this resonance, this article will make a media archaeological reading of the decolonial theorists, Walter Mignolo and Santiago Castro-Gomez’s concept, the zero point. The zero point will be read as a media topos present throughout the immersive media that grounds much western media history and visual culture. Finally, based on these criticisms, this article will offer an alternative starting point based in the imaginary media of Adolfo Bioy Casares’ novel, The Invention of Morel. The goal of this intervention is to demonstrate the way the western paradigm of technology has imperialized the imaginations of the world and to offer another place for media artists and technologists to begin from.

scholarly journals Students' expressive engagement with historical film's moving images in a Maltese secondary history classroom

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Cutajar
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Engagement ◽  
Study Data ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Classroom Talk ◽  
Dialogic Teaching ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Academic Year

This paper arises from research into using historical film in a Maltese secondary history classroom vis-à-vis its impact on student motivation, engagement and historical understanding. The paper outlines and discusses indicators of students' affective and cognitive engagement when responding to and analysing historical film's moving images – that is, extracts from footage of twentieth- and twenty-first century historical events captured live on camera as shown on newsreels, broadcast on television or forming part of a historical documentary. Using a single-site study, data was collected from two cohorts of Year 11 students following the history option programme. Each cohort was taught for an academic year and moving images were used as sources in history lessons. Analysing students' discourse in whole-class dialogues to obtain evidence for student engagement, findings showed different indicators of students' expressive verbal engagement with moving images: asking questions, making spontaneous observations, inserting oneself, establishing associations, and peer interaction. Findings suggest that underlying students' expressive engagement were the visual and auditory appeal of moving images, and classroom talk. Features of classroom talk in which moving images were used were consistent with views of dialogic teaching. Based on this evidence, it is argued that moving images can be used as a tool for engaging students, through classroom talk in a dialogic context, in developing historical understanding. It is also suggested that there is potential for using students' verbal utterances when analysing moving images for assessing learning.

scholarly journals Towards a Decolonial Media Archaeology: The Absent Archive of Screenwriting History and the Obsolete Munshi

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Rakesh Sengupta
Keyword(s):  
Reverse Engineering ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Media History ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
Early 19Th Century

Much has been written about how Foucault's archaeology of the modern episteme, emerging from early 19th-century Europe, was curiously divorced from its context of colonialism. Media archaeology, as Foucault's legacy, has also remained rather geopolitically insular and race agnostic in its epistemological reverse engineering of media modernity. Using screenwriting history as a case study, this article demonstrates how bringing decolonial thinking and media archaeology together can challenge linear narratives of modernity/coloniality in media history. The article connects two seemingly disparate histories of archival absence and human obsolescence to reveal the construction of an elusive screenwriting modernity that has historically obscured parallel scripting practices and pre-existing scribal traditions.

scholarly journals Editorial

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Andreas Fickers ◽  
Anne-Katrin Weber
Keyword(s):  
Media History ◽  
Homogeneous Field ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
Friedrich Kittler ◽  
History And Theory

Over the last few years, ‘media archaeology’ has evolved from a marginal topic to an academic approach en vogue. Under its banner, conferences and publications bring together scholars from different disciplines who, revisiting the canon of media history and theory, emphasize the necessity for renewed historiographical narratives. Despite, or maybe because of profuse debates, media archaeology remains a loosely defined playground for researchers working at the intersection of history and theory. Far from offering uniform principles or constituting a homogeneous field, its prominent authors – Friedrich Kittler and Wolfgang Ernst, Siegfried Zielinksi, Jussi Parrika and Erkki Huhtamo, to name just a few – distinguish themselves by their heterogeneity regarding methodology and theoretical focus.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document