170126 UE Exercise Course "Media Analysis" (2021S)

The seminar examines forms of virtual and other time-based media as post-colonial empowerment strategies and in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, focusing on virtual, ephemeral, interactive, and utopian approaches. The keywords 'virtual' and ‘time based’ are understood in two ways. On the one hand, they refer to media and other technologies which rely on time and space as central factors, and which generate an 'extended' experience of artificial realities which range from unexpected camera angles and edits to 360° video or augmented reality experiences and formats that enable immersive interaction. On the other hand, in the context of post-colonial and anti-racist theory and practice, 'virtuality' and ‘time’ are concepts which capture the experiences of marginalized people in a hegemonic society throughout different economies of time – the now, before, and/or the (imagined) future(s).The seminar will examine different junctions between these two concepts by interrogating the multifaceted relationship between images (as captured and projected via virtual media, and other time-based interventions) and time—historical, individual, and communal. It is assumed that in a time of extreme global power and distribution gaps and the aftermath of extreme asymmetrical experiences of violence, which characterized the 20th century, virtual media, and other time-based interventions play a decisive role in shaping our sense of place and belonging by connecting us with the past and shaping our present and our imagination of the future. In the post-colonial context, virtual and time-based media are used to make persistent mechanisms of oppression visible, or to give alternative answers to 'Western' dominated discourses on development and progress.
Often times, these formats are linked to traditions of afro-futurism or magical realism. Questions of history and identity are often inherently negotiated even where, at first glance, science fiction or futuristic formats appear to be in the foreground. Special attention is therefore paid to projects that adopt elements such as silence, humor, magic and horror as their aesthetic strategies in order to make the inexpressible relatable and enable processes of negotiation. The focus of the class is on virtual media and other time-based interventions from African and Afro-American contexts that adopt digital technologies to address trauma, memory, and historicity. 360° and VR technologies play an increasing role in commemoration practices in the context of asymmetric violence, which is also true for post-genocide and post-colonial contexts. Colonial experiences are, thematized in the 360° video LET THIS BE A WARNING by the Kenyan Nest Collective, in which the viewer is placed in the threatening position of the 'other' on an imaginary planet via VR glasses. Interactive online formats can serve as forms of digital remembrance like Usher’s CHAINS, which, in order to commemorate victims of racist police violence in the USA, uses facial recognition technologies to make it impossible for viewers to 'look away' even in front of their devices at home, to name but a few examples.
Traumatic experiences and their effects on subjective as well as collective levels are characterized by the fact that they destroy existing strategies of meaning production which leads to the difficulty or even impossibility of articulation. Media and technologies are seen as potential instruments for creating meaning and communicative practices and for generating knowledge and common sense, and by doing so form the basis of either oppressive systems or resistance and empowerment. What cannot be articulated under the given social conditions of the present, is often expressed in an aesthetically mediated or encrypted manner. Artists and activists use films and audiovisual forms of representation, and virtual and time-based media in particular, to create visibility for alternative realities and to challenge the Status quo.