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.

Description: The more we are surrounded by audiovisual material the more we get trained not to pay too much attention on single instances. But we have to be aware that this habit of clicking and swiping through films, clips and images as swiftly as possible is not emancipatory but actually follows completely the capitalist logic of quick and smooth consumption. In contrast to such consumerist practices of fast viewing, pausing and lingering on audiovisual moments and watching them repeatedly turns out to be all the more subversive.

In this workshop we want to get acquainted and experiment with this subversive and revealing potential of lingering on the small and particular. We ask: What multiplicity is there hidden in just one film moment, in just one audiovisual fragment, in one image, one sound? Picking up on ideas such as Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s notion of minority or Hito Steyerls theory of the poor image and its materiality in the digital era you will be asked to produce a short audiovisual essay on just one audiovisual instance of your individual choice in order to unpack its diverse implications and potentials. In order to do so we want to reflect upon the materiality of your particular digital audiovisual phenomena, confront it with theoretical arguments and experiment with its materiality by radical practices like interrupting, reformatting, glitching, distressing, destruction. The goal is to experience scientific analysis of the audiovisual phenomena no longer as distanced and passive observation but as active and tangible collaboration.