Events
Past Events
May 2023
RFG Talk: Color: Additions, Subtractions, Signals – RICARDO CEDEÑO MONTAÑA Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia
In this presentation, Ricardo Cedeño Montaña will describe some of the particular principles, mechanisms, and techniques by which color film functioned in its formative years and the coding schemes for (re)producing, storing, and transmitting color information in electronic and digital media. Using a media archaeological approach to technical media, Cedeño Montaña will show that color in technical media is anything but stable and such instability implies different contexts of sensory data processing and storage. Dr. Ricardo Cedeño Montaña is professor,…
Find out more »GCLR Workshop – Translation Across Media
GCLR Workshop “Translation Across Media” on Friday, May 19, 1pm-6.30pm Wallis Annenberg Conference Room, SSMS 4315 The Workshop focuses on translation as a technique for cultural production. Our focus will be on the relationship between translation and media such as literary writing (in print and manuscript), film, photography, and computers, and the way these and other media technologies underwrite different ways of addressing the question of what it means to translate. Some questions we hope to address include: what happens to…
Find out more »September 2023
The Political Mandate of the Arts with Sasha Razor
Join the Wende Museum, the Thomas Mann House, and dublab radio for the eighth program in our monthly virtual program series on art and politics in times of crises. The freedom of art is one of the imperatives of every democracy. But does this freedom make art inconsequential? Does art have a role in addressing social issues, promoting social justice, or in defending democracy when it comes under pressure? In short: does art have a political mandate? The Student Council…
Find out more »November 2023
Grappling with Abandonment: OnlyFans and the Libidinal Economies of Pro Wrestling – Dewitt King (UC Irvine)
On April 15, 2020, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) released 19 wrestlers (and furloughed approximately 25 employees) just days after being designated an essential business by the state of Florida. While this designation allowed the WWE to continue to produce live televised shows and PPVS during the COVID-19 shutdown, these firings were only the beginning as they continued to release wrestlers on regular intervals until the summer of 2022. Following the story of a Black male wrestler who was released but…
Find out more »The Bars Are Ours and the Visual Culture of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After – Lucas Hilderbrand (Film & Media Studies, UC Irvine)
Lucas Hilderbrand is Professor and Chair of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of the books The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After; Paris is Burning: A Queer Film Classic; and Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright. Gay bars have operated as the most visible institutions of the LGBTQ+ public life in the United States for the better part of a century, from before gay…
Find out more »December 2023
African Media Arts Series [#1]: Q&A with Baloji preceded by a showing of Zombies (Baloji, 2019, 15 mins) on Zoom
We have invited the filmmaker and musician Baloji to discuss Zombies (2019, 15 mins), which will be shown at the beginning of our 1 hour long event. The conveners will introduce the filmmaker, the film will then be made accessible through a link in the chat, and a discussion will be convened. The co-conveners will begin with a series of questions and open the floor to participants to ask further questions. This event will be recorded and some of the…
Find out more »January 2024
Arabic Glitch Book Launch
Download Poster Discussants: George Legrady (Media Arts and Technology) Constance Penley (Film and Media Studies) Sherene Seikaly (History) Description: The concept of Arabic Glitch challenges the once dominant narratives about the relationship between technology and political agency that center Silicon Valley, as well as the study of digital art (specifically glitch art), the study of online social movements, and area studies of the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa. It instigates interventions by demonstrating that twenty-first century resistance movements are…
Find out more »February 2024
African Media Arts Series: Certain Winds from the South: Short Film and Q&A with Eric Gyamfi (Accra, Ghana)
Certain Winds from the South (dir. Eric Gyamfi, 2023, 40 mins) will be presented as part of the African Media Arts series convened by kwabena agyare (History), Francis Yeboah (Film and Media Studies), and Peter Bloom (Film and Media Studies). The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker, Eric Gyamfi, who will join us from Accra. The film focuses on the decision of Issah to embark on a journey to the South of Ghana in search of…
Find out more »April 2024
Luca Caminati, “RR Does Dams” & Masha Salazkina, “Romancing Yesenia: The Global-Popular in the Soviet Union”
Luca Caminati, “RR Does Dams” N. S. Thapa’s Films Division of India (FDI) documentary Bhakra Nangal (1958) celebrates the building of the eponymous dam on the Sutlej River. Towards the end of this 20-minute film, a group of workers is allowed to introduce themselves in their native tongues, and in a gesture of unity for a common cause, the diversity in physical features, dress, and languages is channeled towards the common cause of Indian modernity. As the late Fifties saw…
Find out more »May 2024
Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis – Joost Raessens, Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University
With the climate crisis and its repercussions becoming more and more tangible, the media are increasingly participating in the production, circulation, and interrogation of environmental assumptions, using both explicit and implicit ways of framing the crisis. In this lecture, I will present an overview of my research on green media/ecogames/VR. I will first present our ‘Green Media Studies initiative,’ the four thematic sections of our book Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis, and our Horizon Europe project STRATEGIES: Sustainable…
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