Practices of Viewing at VIDEOEX 2023

On Friday May 26, 2023 at 21:15 the Experimental Film & Video Festival VIDEOEX hosts a special screening of Johannes Binotto› video essays. Johannes will show and discuss a selection from his series «Practices of Viewing» including the still unpublished last video of the series on endings.… continue

2023 Conference – Open Call

IN THE WORKS. Makings and Unmakings of the Video Essay

International conference at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switzerland

November 2-4, 2023

 

One of the first academic conferences devoted to videographic research was held at the Frankfurt Filmmuseum and Goethe University in Germany in 2013.continue

Masterclass at INA

 

Project member Chloé Galibert-Laîné has been invited to present a 3 hour masterclass about their videographic work as part of the «Practices of archival» course at INA Sup in France.… continue

Video Essay. Techniques and Methods.

A working conference at Paxmontana, Flüeli-Ranft, Switzerland, 4.–8. December 2022

What do we do, when we make video essay? What are the different approaches, methods, working schemes, parameters in videographic practice?
continue

«GeoMarkr: the Gamification of Online Interfaces»

Chloé Galibert-Laîné was invited to present their latest video essay GeoMarkr, together with co-writer Guillaume Grandjean, at the conference «La Preuve par l’Image» at l’Institut National d’Histoire des Arts in Paris on December 9th, 2022.… continue

Chloé Galibert-Laîné Retrospective

 

The Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira in Porto, Portugal has organized a two-days retrospective of 8 films and video essays by Chloé Galibert-Laîné. The screenings were followed by in-person conversations with the spectators, as well as a workshop at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto.… continue

Videography: Art and Academia – Hannover 2022

Both Johannes Binotto and Oswald Iten were giving panel talks at «Videography: Art and Academia», an international video essay symposium about «Epistemological, Political and Pedagogical Potentials of Audiovisual Practices», November 2-4, 2022, organized by Maike Sarah Reinert, Evelyn Kreutzer, Anna-Sophie Philippi, and Kathleen Loock.… continue

J. Binotto: Practices of Viewing – Dubbing

As cinephiles we pride ourselves to watch films in original versions only. Dubbed versions, on the other hand, we consider as a massive and thus unacceptable deviation from how a film is intended to be viewed.… continue

Johannes Binotto: Practices of Viewing XI – Sleep

You are not supposed to sleep during a film.
But what if sleep is recognised as not an obstruction but as an essential element of experiencing cinema?
I remember those times I dozed off in the theatre and how I began to intermingle and flow together with those images I saw through my half closed, half open eyes.… continue

Johannes Binotto: Synced

The coupling of optics and acoustics in cinema never was a natural given, but always a construction and as such highly fragile, dependent on technical equipment, and therefore also open for experimentation.… continue

Chloé Galibert-Laîné – Screening at Avignon Festival

Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s PhD film Watching the Pain of Others will screen at the Avignon Festival in France, as part of a collaboration between the festival and the SACRe research lab, together with other screen-based and live performance works by other former candidates from the program.… continue

Chloé Galibert-Laîné – Workshop at University of Bern

«How Does Your Internet Feel?»

Chloé Galibert-Laîné was invited to teach a desktop documentary workshop at the University of Bern – Anthropology department.

The exchanges with the students and their professor Laura Coppens were tremendously stimulating, leading to the production of five short videos and performances.… continue

Video Essay Gallery on Filmexplorer

The online magazine Filmexplorer launches a digital Gallery with several exhibitions of video essays – curated by project members and associates Chloé Galibert-Laîné, Kevin B. Lee and Johannes Binotto.

Proposition and Curation

After a long period where definitory questions have prevailed, and a recent period of inclusion of a plurality of forms of video-essay, the time is now ripe to let aside the attitude of surveying or mapping the variegated landscape of video essays, and to let emerge the style of the author.… continue

Johannes Binotto: Web

Sirk, the artificial, and watching film history as augmented reality

Playing around with an augmented reality, researching film viewing practices, and my obsession with the question of artificiality in the films of Douglas Sirk – all this coincided in this video essay in for me surprising and disturbing ways.… continue

Master Talk Editing ZHdK mit Johannes Binotto

Master Talk Editing im Kino Toni ZHdK 1.4.2022
Gast: Johannes Binotto, Kultur- und Medienwissenschaftler, Experimentalfilmemacher und Videoessayist

Was macht ein Schnitt? Wie fangen durch die Montage Bilder an, sich gegenseitig nicht nur fortzusetzen, sondern auch zu kommentieren und analysieren?… continue

Vorlesung: Film als Text (inkl. VideoEssay Präsentation)

Vorlesung von Johannes Binotto vom 31.3.2022 im Rahmen der Vorlesungsreihe «Ansätze der modernen Filmtheorie» von Prof. Dr. Volker Pantenburg, Filmwissenschaft Universität Zürich

Filme als Texte zu lesen bedeutet auch, sie als unabschliessbare Texturen zu entdecken: als ein Gewebe aus Bildern und Klängen, das sich immer wieder neu verändert.… continue

«Ein Film ist wie ein Prisma, in dem sich die Zeit bricht.» Interview zu Filmarbeit und Videoessay.

Coucou Magazin Nr. 104 (März 2022) / S. 16-21 ///

Ein Gespräch mit dem Winterthurer Kultur- und Medienwissenschaftler Johannes Binotto über die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten des Filme Sehens.

Interview & Bild: Sandra Biberstein

Sandra Biberstein (SB): Johannes Binotto, du beschäftigst dich seit seit Deiner Jugend mit Filmen – unterdessen auch einerseits in deiner Forschung aus kulturwissenschaftlicher, kulturgeschichtlicher und psychoanalytischer Perspektive, anderseits setzt du dich als Dozent an der Hochschule Luzern mit Film- und Medientheorien sowie mit verschiedenen Filmtechniken auseinander.… continue

Oswald Iten: Spannung auf der Tonspur

Within the framework of a series of lectures for the GIBZ (Gewerblich-industrielles Bildungszentrum Zug) in a local cinema, Oswald Iten presented videographic examples of how contemporary narrative feature films create tension on the soundtrack.… continue

Sensing Cinema. A collective video notebook

A collective video notebook on Alice Guy’s LES FREDAINES DE PIERRETTE (1900), the erogeneity of film and our sensibility as cinema spectators.

This notebook is the result of a video essay workshop taught by Johannes Binotto at the conference «Szenen des Sexuellen» (4.-5.… continue

Co-edited journal issue on post-cinema

 

A new issue of the peer-reviewed journal Images Secondes was published, co-edited by team member Chloé Galibert-Laîné with Gala Hernandez Lopez, entitled «Post-cinéma. Pratiques de recherche et de création».

It includes several videographic contributions:

03 | 2022 Post-cinéma, pratiques de recherche et de création

 

Abstract:

This issue of the French journal Images secondes wishes to interrogate the heuristic and critical potential of the notion of «post-cinema».… continue

The best video essays of 2021

 

The best video essays of 2021 poll, hosted by the British Film Institute and the Sight and Sound magazine is out with video essays of our research group being at the top.… continue

Online exhibition: Video works by Johannes Binotto

The association WHITE FRAME (WF) is presenting an online exhibition of video essays by Johannes Binotto, curated by Chantal Molleur; including a new interview and the not yet officially published video essay «Metaleptic Attack».… continue

Fear+

Oswald Iten: Angst + Sound

Oswald Iten has been invited to talk about «Fear + Sound» at the Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen on November 23, 2021. As a presenter of film clips (both with original and experimentally de-familiarized soundtracks), he will moderate a discussion with the audience.… continue

Oswald Iten: Video Note I

HER vs BLADE RUNNER 2049
As part of my research, I often swap soundtracks of similar scenes in order to see what this de-familiarization might reveal about the characteristics of the audiovisual relationship. These video notes* are usually just temporary tools of my process.… continue

Johannes Binotto: Versions (on Providence)

WARNING: this video is concerned among other things with death and mortality and may not be suitable for everyone

Alain Resnais film PROVIDENCE from 1977 – the same year I was born – is a film of twos folded into one:
A film about writing and about dying; about memory and decay; an American film made by a French director; a film about the word providence in its double meaning as metaphysical term for complete artistic control and as shibboleth for the universe of H.… continue

Johannes Binotto: music, crystal, memory

In Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046 the use of music from other sources, and from François Truffaut’s VIVEMENT DIMANCHE in particular, becomes an additional layer to its multi-layered images and narrative.
By musical cue one film gets into an intimate conversation with another.… continue

Podcast «Dritte Klappe» zum Videoessay

Diskussion über Videoessays und Videoessay-Forschung im Podcast «Dritte Klappe» der Filmuniversität Babelsberg, mit Dr. Johannes Binotto, Dr. Maike Sarah Reinerth und Anna-Sophie Philippi.

Unabgeschlossen, versuchhaft, sich vortastend: Video Essays sind kritische Landkarten, bei denen die Kamera zu Stift und Papier wird.… continue

Johannes Binotto: TV Dictionary – Miami Vice

As part of the collaborative video essay project TV DICTIONARY by Ariel Avissar this psychoanalytically inspired video essay reads the 80s TV series MIAMI VICE on the basis of a word that designates its central trope, its aesthetic principle, as well as its fundamental philosophical and psychological concept.… continue

Johannes Binotto: a message from Jiří

Early cinema, the materiality of film, and today’s audio messaging.
The message from scholar and film theorist Jiří Anger on his research on the Czech film pioneer Jan Kříženecký made me see the things he is obsessed with.… continue

Student video notebooks on film history

As part of their first year BA course in film theory the students at the Lucerne School of Art and Design together with Johannes Binotto and in conjunction with the videoessay research project produce collaborative video notebooks on classics of film history.… continue

Screening at the Massachussetts Multicultural Film Festival

The Massachussetts Multicultural Film Festival organized a solo screening of two of Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s recent video essays. She also took part in a public conversation about her work with researcher Barbara Zecchi and the host of the Video Essay Podcast, Will DiGravio.… continue

“Chloé Galibert-Laîné en conversation avec Delphine Jeanneret”

Chloé Galibert-Laîné was invited to screen her video essay Forensickness and discuss her videographic research practice in dialogue with researcher and curator Delphine Jeanneret, as part of the international conference “EDITING ARTS: Le montage au cinéma et dans les arts contemporains” organized at the HEAD in Geneva, Switzerland.… continue

Oswald Iten: Silence in THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS

David Lean’s 1949 melodrama THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS has never gained the same popularity as its similarly themed predecessor BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945). But apart from a stellar performance by Claude Rains it has something that is practically inexistent in the earlier film: silence.… continue

Johannes Binotto: Practices of Viewing II: Pause

Pause is just a click away. The fact that on our devices we can pause a film whenever we want makes us forget how unsettling this actually is. Thinking about how dangerous it once has been when the images come to halt should help us to see this practice as subversive.… continue

«Resisting ISIS: Art against political violence»

Chloé Galibert-Laîné was invited to contribute to the panel conversation organized to launch the online platform reCLAIM, in which her collaborative video essay project Bottled Songs is exhibited. The event was hosted by the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne in Germany.… continue

Student Video Essays on The Conversation

As result of a theory course in February 2021 on filmanalysis taught by Johannes Binotto the first year video students at the Lucerne School of Arts and Design produced these eight video essays.… continue

Dealing with Texts (Differently). The Essayistic from Virginia Woolf to the Video Essay 

BA Seminar taught by Johannes Binotto
Spring Semester 2021, English Department University of Zurich

Abstract: We tend to forget that the term „essay“ literally means „trial, attempt“. As Theodor Adorno has pointed out, the essay as a specific textual form necessarily challenges the ideas of pre-established methods and scientific rules and must instead be understood as an adventurous trial, as a radical experiment which „pays for its affinity to intellectual experience with a lack of security.“… continue

Artikel zum Videoessay-Projekt in Der Landbote

Was machen die Bilder mit uns?

Artikel von Helmut Dworschak, Der Landbote 6.2.2021, S. 7


Der Filmwissenschaftler und «Landbote»-Kolumnist Johannes Binotto leitet an der Hochschule Luzern ein Forschungsprojekt des Schweizerischen Nationalfonds über Video-Essays.
continue

Johannes Binotto: Practices of Viewing I – F.FWD

Fast forwarding – nothing is as despised and as omnipresent among those in love with cinema. But what if we consider the speeding up of film as a reflexive practice that connects contemporary media consumption with the experimental beginnings of cinema before standardization.… continue

«Monograph» Screening at La Casa Encendida

La Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain) 25.2.2021

Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s video essays Flânerie 2.0, Watching the Pain of Others and Forensickness will screen as part of the «Monográfico» screening series at La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Spain.… continue

«Split Screens: Starving for Connection»

University College Cork – National University of Ireland, 02.02.2021

Chloé Galibert-Laîné will give a guest lecture in Prof. Dr. Laura Rascaroli’s class at the Cork University in Ireland entitled «Split Screens: Starving for Connection».… continue

«Desktop | Essay» Symposium at the Heinrich-Heine-University

Heinrich-Heine-University (Düsseldorf, Germany), 29.01.2021

Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s ongoing project Bottled Songs (co-authored with Kevin B. Lee) will be screened and discussed as part of the «Desktop | Essay» Symposium at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany.… continue

C. Galibert-Laîné: What Scholarly Video Essays Feel Like (2020)

in Tracy Cox-Stanton and Allison de Fren (ed.), «The Scholarly Video Essay», The Cine-Files, n°15, Fall 2020 [online].

Excerpt: As incidental as it may seem at first, I think the most critical feature of the spectatorial experience offered by a scholarly video essay is determined by its fixed pace and duration.… continue

Masterclass: Chloé Galibert-Lainé

Solothurner Filmtage, 25.1.2021

Chloé Galibert-Lainé in conversation with Giuseppe di Salvatore talking about her videographic research, how she makes her films, and the questions both theoretical and practical she faces in her work.… continue

Videoessay-Panel at Solothurner Filmtage

Solothurner Filmtage 25.1.2021

Discussion on the video essay, its many forms, its networks, the personal journey of some of its proponents, and its future.

German Abstract: Der Videoessay hat sich zu einer wichtigen und facettenreichen Form der Filmkritik entwickelt.… continue

Best video essays of 2020 poll

The best video essays of 2020 poll (hosted by the Sight&Sound Magazine and the British Film Institute) is out with several video essays by team members Chloé Galibert-Laîné, Johannes Binotto and Oswald Iten among the top picks.… continue

Chloé Galibert-Laîné: A very long exposure time

Inventing a poetic path through images created with Louis Daguerre’s centuries-old photographic device, 16mm film cameras, pixelated video games consoles, early smarphones and contemporary computer interfaces, the work asks: what aspects of reality have these different technologies been designed to document?… continue

Oswald Iten: Beyond the Catchy Tunes

Audiovisual essay for the NECSUS issue Autumn 2020_#Method.

When it comes to Disney music, and The Jungle Book (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1967) in particular, most people think of character-defining songs like ‘The Bare Necessities’.… continue

Jialu Zhu: The Absent Father, Cultural Trauma

Taking “Papa was a Rollin’ Stone” by The Temptations and The Autobiography of Malcolm X as the departure point this video essays traces the theme of the absent black father as rooted in the trauma of colonialization and slavery, perpetuated by the cultural trauma of racism in America. … continue

Video Essay Workshop: Minor Instances, Major Consequences.

Charles University Prague, 25.11. / 26.11. / 2.12.2020 (workshop will be held online, due to Covid-19)
Video Essay Workshop on Audiovisual Materiality by Johannes Binotto

The workshop is part of the seminar «Found footage: Praktická teorie filmu» taught by Jiří Anger.continue

Johannes Binotto: Key/Frame

In digital video, keyframes are those images which serve as anchoring points for all the other images. By removing them the video becomes unstable.

A digital automaton working against cinema’s obsession.… continue

J. Binotto: In Lag of Knowledge. Video Essay as Parapraxis (2020)

in: Bernd Herzogenrath (Ed.): Practical Aesthetics. London, New York: Bloomsbury 2020. S. 83-93

Abstract: The video essay as a form of film studies which does not only think about cinema but which is working with film excerpts as tools of their own analysis has seen widespread success and proliferation in recent years.… continue

Jialu Zhu e.a.: Subdue the Earth

 

A video essay exploring the exploitation of the American west, along the lines of Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis and western films, from THE MAN FROM LARAMIE to WESTWORLD Season 1.… continue

Chloé Galibert-Laîné: Forensickness

In an attempt to analyse Chris Kennedy’s ‹Watching the Detectives›, a researcher dives into a massive archive of media produced after the Boston attacks. Her online wanderings offer a performative exploration of the history of critical thinking and the ruthless politics of truth production.… continue

Johannes Binotto: Trace

The first image of «Hiroshima mon amour» – a trace, asking for interpretation, resisting interpretation. Feeling for the facets of just this one image is personal, visceral. Never final.… continue

Johannes Binotto: Crossings

There is this magical scene in Ulrike Ottinger’s FREAK ORLANDO which brings into play the questions of otherness and identification, of desire as queer and transgressive, and of film (and media in general) as that which is caught between transparence and opacity.… continue

Oswald Iten: The Age Of Emptiness

Video essay based on Martin Scorsese’s 1993 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel «The Age Of Innocence» and Bernard Herrmann’s score for TAXI DRIVER (Scorsese, 1976).

«The Age Of Emptiness» takes a look at how we might also read Scorsese’s film in our current situation of «Social Distancing».… continue

J. Binotto: Analyse in Bewegung: Videoessay als Zukunft der Filmkritik (2019)

 
in: P. Brunner, T. Fischer, M. Kuhn (Hg.): Freie Sicht aufs Kino. Filmkritik in der Schweiz. Marburg. Schüren 2019, S. 157-172.

Auszug: … Die Vitalität und Zukunft des Videoessays wird denn auch insgesamt weniger in einer Vereinheitlichung der Verfahren liegen, wie sie etwa in einschlägigen How-to-Anleitungen auf Youtube angeboten werden, sondern darin, wie sehr dieses Format als Labor für ganz unterschiedliche Experimente mit und an Filmen genutzt wird.… continue