FI109-15 Visual Cultures
Module aims
This module aims to give first year students in Film Studies an introduction to visual cultures and, in particular, to proximate media forms and questions of medium specificity. The module aims to complement and enrich students' year one work on film and television by exploring mediums proximate to television and cinema as well as by introducing students to the analytical and historical study of specific visual cultures. The term is divided into two units, a structure that allows for short intensive studies of discrete mediums, periods, genres, technologies, artistic practices, visual regimes, or mediascapes.
Outline syllabus
This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.
Unit A: Screen Media and Emerging Modernities
Week One: The Modern Experience: The City and its Crowd (Georg Simmel, Charles Baudelaire)
Week Two: The Railway Journey: Time and Vision (Wolfgang Schivelbusch)
Week Three: Mass Spectacle: Distraction and Boredom (Siegfried Kracauer)
Week Four: Forensic Photography: The Archive and the Criminal Body (Alan Sekula)
Week Five: Techniques of the Observer: Seeing Before Cinema (Jonathan Crary)
Unit B: Experimental Film and Video
Week Seven: Science and Abstraction: Painlevé and Dada Cinema
Week Eight: Structural Film: Stan Brakhage and Ken Jacobs
Week Nine: Time and Video: Bill Viola’s Slow Motion
Week Ten: Video in the Gallery: Douglas Gordon and Bruce Nauman
Indicative reading list
Charles Baudelaire (1995) The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, London: Phaidon Press.
Walter Benjamin, (2005) "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire" in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 4, eds. , Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Jonathan Crary (1992) Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chrissie Iles (2000) “Video and Film Space” in Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. Erika Suderburg, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Siegfried Kracauer (1995) The Mass Ornament: Weimer Essays, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Michele Pierson, David E. James, Paul Arthur (eds.) (2010) Optic Antics: The Cinema of Ken Jacobs, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
A. L. Rees (2011) A History of Experimental Film and Video, London: BFI
Christine Ross (2006) “The Temporalities of Video: Extendedness Revisited” in Art Journal Vol. 65, No. 3.
Ralph Rugoff (2000) “Fluid Mechanics” in Science is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painlevé, ed. Andy Masaki Bellows, Marina McDougall, Brigitte Berg, Cambridge, Mass.: Brico Press.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1992) The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Allan Sekula (1986) “The Body and the Archive” October , Vol. 39, (Winter) pp. 3-64.
Georg Simmel. (2002) “The Metropolis and Mental Life [1902-3]” in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Wiley-Blackwell.
Chris Townsend (ed.) (2004) The Art of Bill Viola, London: Thames and Hudson.
Malcolm Turvey (2011) “Ken Jacobs: Digital Revelationist” in October 137, Summer 2011.
Subject specific skills
No subject specific skills defined for this module.
Transferable skills
No transferable skills defined for this module.
Study time
| Type | Required |
|---|---|
| Lectures | 9 sessions of 1 hour (50%) |
| Seminars | 9 sessions of 1 hour (50%) |
| Total | 18 hours |
Private study description
No private study requirements defined for this module.
Other activity description
Tutorials: As required to discuss essays and progress.
Costs
No further costs have been identified for this module.
You do not need to pass all assessment components to pass the module.
Assessment group A1
| Weighting | Study time | Eligible for self-certification | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essay | 90% | Yes (extension) | |
| Group presentation | 10% |
Feedback on assessment
Students will receive detailed written feedback on each piece of written work and on their assessed group presentations.
Courses
This module is Core for:
- Year 1 of UFIA-W620 Undergraduate Film Studies