Post Cinema: Audiovisual Culture in the 21st Century

Content

Objective

The emergence of cinema coincided with the end of the 20th century - just like the automobile and aviation industries – and it determined the visual culture of the industrialized societies into which it was born. Today, the loss of cinema’s identity as a photographic tool and collective screening experience has fueled the debates about its “death”. “Post Cinema: Audiovisual Culture in the 21st Century” course aims at understanding what the allegedly “collapsed” cinema means in a post-cinematic media regime in which it spreads to a much wider area of life with screenings in museums, computer-manipulated images and especially personal productions. In a complex socio-economic relationship where the distribution of roles between the producer and the audience is severely shaken and the boundaries and functions of the screens are redefined, what is cinema? How can it be defined in historical, technological, cultural, political and economic terms? How has the position and function of cinema changed today, where TikTok surpasses Netflix in terms of total video watch time without investing in content production? From Plato’s cave wall to digital platforms, the course will discuss different screens - as well as “no screen” possibilities - in the light of current film and media studies literature, and will also benefit from media archeology which allows to see the continuities as well as emphasizing the interruptions.

Course Content

Week 1: Introduction, basic concepts and readings
Week 2: What is medium?
Week 3: Remediation theory: Interruptions and continuities
Week 4: Media archeology
Week 5: Screens, screen-connected devices (remote control, keyboard, mouse) and temporality
Week 6: The “delocalization” of experience
Week 7: BREAK
Week 8: Amateur image production
Week 9: Portable screens and viewing as performance
Week 10: Touch screens and body techniques
Week 11: Digital cinema
Week 12: New cinema/screen policies
Week 13: Pandemic media
Week 14: Toward screen nostalgia

Course Learning Outcomes

- Understands the transformations in audiovisual culture through screen technologies and develops a broad understanding of body/technology relationship.
- Develops an interest in not only the audiovisual content itself but also in its mediation.
- Establishes a relationship between the past and digital media by using media archeology and sees not only interruptions but also continuities.
- Has a command of current literature and recent debates in a constantly evolving field such as audience and user practices.

References

Casetti, F. (2015). The Lumière Galaxy. New York: Columbia University Press.

Christie, I. (2012). Audiences. Defining and Researching Screen Entertainment Reception. Amsterdam University Press.

Denson, S. & Leyda, J. (eds.) (2015). Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st Century Film. Sussex: Reframe Books.

Everett, A. (2003). Digitextuality and Click Theory: Theses on Convergence Media in Digital Age. In A. Everett, & J. Caldwell (éd), New Media: Theories and Pratices of Digitextuality (p. 3-28). London, New York: Routledge.

Friedberg, A. (2006). The Virtual Window. From Alberti to Microsoft. The MIT Press.

Friedberg, A. (1993). Window shopping. Cinema and the postmodern. Los Angeles: Oxford : University of California Press.

Hagener, M., Hediger, V. & Strohmaier, A. (2016). The State of Post-Cinema. Tracing the Moving Image in the Age of Digital Dissemination. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gunning, T. (1997). From the Kaleidoscope to the X-Ray: Urban Spectatorship, Poe, Benjamin, and Traffic in Souls (1913) . Wide Angle, 19.4 , p. 25-61.

Hudson, D., & Zimmerman, P. (2009). Cinephilia, technophilia and collaborate remix zones. Screen, 50 (1) , p. 135-146.

Klinger, B. (2006). Beyond The Multiplex. Cinema, New technologies and the Home. University of California Press.

Kuhn, A. (2009). Screen and screen theorizing today. Screen, 50 (1) , p. 1-12.

Lessig, L. (2008). Remix. Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Parente, A., & De Carvalho, V. (2008). Cinema as dispositif: Between Cinema and Contemporary Art. Cinémas: revue d'études cinématographiques, 19 (1) , p. 37-55.

Parikka, J. (2017). Medya Arkeolojisi Nedir? İstanbul: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları.

Srinivas, L. (2002). The active audience: spectatorship, social relations and the experience of cinema in India . Media Culture Society, No. 24 , p. 155-173.

Verhoeff, N. (2012). Mobile Screens. The Visual Regime of Navigation. Amsterdam University Press.

Werning, S. (2016). The home screen as an anchor point for mobile media use: Technologies, practices, identities. Necsus, Home Issue.

White, M. (2006). The Body and the Screen. Theories of Internet Spectatorship. The MIT Press.

Assessment System

Relation of Proficiency

ECTS