The complex operation of taking – or making – pictures involves two bodies: the organic one of the human whose intention it is to record something, and that of technical object whose task it is to materialize that intention. The operation supposes that these two bodies meet, and establish relations of mutual understanding and interactions. As the aim is an image, it seems that the human’s eye should play the main role in that operation, but in fact, the points of contact are numerous, and the eye does not always play a central part. Sometimes, the heart of the operation does not even stand where the bodies touch, but in other parts of the bodies, or even outside. And the evolution of these modes of interplay engages a history of the operations, and of the kind of images it should produce.

Benoît Turquety is a Professor of Film Studies at the Université Paris 8, director of EUR ArTeC, and director of research at the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research focuses on the epistemology of media technologies, their politics (decolonial, ecological, feminist), and the decentralized history of vision and hearing machines.

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A “Camera Studies” event in cooperation with ZeM – Brandenburg Center for Media Studies.

Further ZeM LECTURES during the winter semester:

Die Flow-Maschine. Tetris als Urszene der Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie

by Johannes Pause (Université du Luxembourg)

Thu, 18 December 25, 17.00 h
ZeM

An event as part of the ZeM’s annual focus “Platformatizations”.

GOYA zwischen Widersprüchen und Experiment

by Mariana Ivanova (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Wed, 14 January 26, 18.00 h
Filmmuseum Potsdam

Part of the event series “Konrad Wolf – Dialogues with the Present”.

Further information will follow shortly in our calender of events.