Volker Pantenburg: Farocki/Godard: Film as Theory (2006/2015)

18 July 2016, dusan

“There is a tension between the requirements of theoretical abstraction and the capacities of the film medium, where everything that we see on screen is concrete: A train arriving at a station, a tree, bodies, faces. Since the complex theories of montage in Soviet cinema, however, there have continuously been attempts to express theoretical issues by combining shots, thus creating a visual form of thinking.

This book brings together two major filmmakers-French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard and German avant-gardist Harun Farocki to explore the fundamental tension between theoretical abstraction and the capacities of film itself, a medium where everything seen onscreen is necessarily concrete. Volker Pantenburg shows how these two filmmakers explored the potential of combined shots and montage to create ‘film as theory’.”

First published as Film als Theorie. Bildforschung bei Harun Farocki und Jean-Luc Godard, transcript, Bielefeld, 2006.

Translated by Michael Turnbull
Publisher Amsterdam University Press, 2015
Film Culture in Transition series
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License
ISBN 9789089648914
285 pages

Reviews: Dietmar Kammerer (taz.de, 2006, DE), Toni Hildebrandt (Senses of Cinema, 2015), Alex Fletcher (Review31, 2015), Chiara Marchini (Medienwissenschaft, 2016).

Publisher
OAPEN
WorldCat

PDF

Johanna Drucker: Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (2014)

25 May 2016, dusan

“In our current screen-saturated culture, we take in more information through visual means than at any point in history. The computers and smart phones that constantly flood us with images do more than simply convey information. They structure our relationship to information through graphical formats. Learning to interpret how visual forms not only present but produce knowledge, says Johanna Drucker, has become an essential contemporary skill.

Graphesis provides a descriptive critical language for the analysis of graphical knowledge. In an interdisciplinary study fusing digital humanities with media studies and graphic design history, Drucker outlines the principles by which visual formats organize meaningful content. Among the most significant of these formats is the graphical user interface (GUI)—the dominant feature of the screens of nearly all consumer electronic devices. Because so much of our personal and professional lives is mediated through visual interfaces, it is important to start thinking critically about how they shape knowledge, our behavior, and even our identity.

Information graphics bear tell-tale signs of the disciplines in which they originated: statistics, business, and the empirical sciences. Drucker makes the case for studying visuality from a humanistic perspective, exploring how graphic languages can serve fields where qualitative judgments take priority over quantitative statements of fact. Graphesis offers a new epistemology of the ways we process information, embracing the full potential of visual forms and formats of knowledge production.”

Publisher Harvard University Press, 2014
metaLABprojects series
ISBN 0674724933, 9780674724938
215 pages

Reviews: Scott McLemee (Inside Higher Ed 2014), Maggie Sattler (Zeteo 2014), Cory Taylor (2014), Johannah Rodgers (Brooklyn Rail 2015).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (17 MB, updated on 2016-8-15)

See also Drucker’s 2010 Graphesis article.

Marcel Broodthaers: Un voyage en mer du nord (1974)

9 December 2015, dusan

Publisher Edition Hossmann, Brussels, in collaboration with Petersburg Press, London
[38] pages, 15 x 17,5 cm
via The DOR

Commentary: Rosalind Krauss (2000), Cathleen Chaffee (2011).

PDF (31 MB)

See also Broodthaers’ film on UbuWeb (6 min).