240196 SE Myths of the visual, audio-visual realities and media discourse (P4) (2012S)

We live in a media and information-dominated society, in which the 'visual' gains more and more in importance i.e. a world without (audio-)visual media has become unimaginable. What we know about the world, our notion, is basically conveyed by media. Media influence the human perception of time and space, our idea of the past and present history. In this sense, visual anthropology is far more than a reduction on ethnographic film as was originally intended when this subject was developed - it covers a broad spectrum of research opportunities, which have provided and still provide new approaches to the subject matter.
As a multidisciplinary subject, visual anthropology provides basic theoretic and methodological concepts for new anthropological fields such as performance studies, anthropology of emotions, anthropology of communication, anthropology of space, design anthropology etc.

In this combined lecture-seminar, the great range of conceptual implementation possibilities of visual anthropology will be discussed along with current technological trends, which are, in turn, reflected in the discourses of visual anthropology (digitalization of visual media, amalgamation of media in cyberspace, iconic turn etc.) and (re)define the term 'media'. Given the regional focus on Latin America, the above-mentioned processes which are of current significance when examining visual media will be illustrated by the diverse realities of life in Latin America.