Documentary Inquiries

This course will investigate a broad range of
media art and documentary projects, with
attention to the performative act of witnessing,
the creative address of media archives by
artists, and the aspiration to negotiate new
social relations with collaborators and
audiences. Drawing from work in film, video, and
new media, this course will explore time-based
projects informed by documentary gestures such as
journaling, cinema-verite recording,
surveillance, re-performance, and non-linear
structuring of information. Narrative and
performative projects resulting from creative
detours in documentary exercises will also be
screened. The course will additionally examine
collections of work from specific historical
moments that aspired to strategic cultural
interventions, including a range of provocative
work across genre on incarceration in the U.S.,
samizdat and media arts projects produced during
late 1980s, dramatic cultural shifts in east
central Europe, and collective experiments
withnew technologies and audiences from the U.S.
in the 1960s/early 70s. Media projects from
Chile, Nunavut, and South East Asia address
generational loss or repression of archived
information and reinvigorate dialogues across the
distance of time. Offered by Program in Film and
Video.