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2036-461X
19117
11
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Michael Wedel
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Research Project - Imagined Futures (iFut)
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Projects & Abstracts
2008-10-01
2022-11-27
2008-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Michael Wedel
2008/10/01
Film University Babelsberg "Konrad Wolf"
2036-461X
11
en
Research Project - Imagined Futures (iFut)
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19117/16898
8
IMAGINED FUTURES (iFut)
A research project by the Media Studies Department, University of Amsterdam,
and the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), 2007-2011
Prof. Thomas Elsaesser, Dr. Wanda Strauven, Dr. Michael Wedel (Staff)
Tina Bastajian, Zeynep Gündüz, Pepita Hesselberth, Maria Poulaki, Laura Schuster,
Senta Siewert, Jennifer Steetskamp (Ph.D. candidates)




Mission statement
   Imagined Futures (iFut) is a research project concerned with the conditions, dynamics and con-
sequences of rapid media transfer and transformation. “Media” here encompasses all imaging
techniques and sound technologies, with the cinema providing the conceptual starting point and
primary historical focus. While changes in basic technology, public perception and artistic prac-
tice may often evolve over long historical cycles, the project’s main assumption is that there are
also moments when transfer occurs in discontinuous, unevenly distributed fashion, during rela-
tively short periods of time, and with mutually interdependent determinations.
   iFut initially identified two such periods of transformation taking place across a broad spectrum
of media technologies: the period of the 1870-1900 and the period 1970-2000. The first witnessed
the popularization of photography, the emergence of cinema, the global use of the (wireless) tele-
graph and the domestic use of the telephone, the invention of the radio and of the basic technol-
ogy of television, while the second saw the consolidation of video as popular storage medium and
avant-garde artistic practice, the universal adoption of the personal computer, the change from
analogue to digital sound and image, the invention of the mobile phone, and the emergence of the
internet and world wide web.
   A key characteristic of such periods of rapid media change is the volatility, unpredictability and
contradictory nature of the dynamics between the practical implications (industrial applications
and economic potential) of these technologies, their perception by the popular imagination (in the
form of narratives of anxiety, utopia and fantasy), and the mixed response (eager adoption or stiff
resistance) from artists, writers and intellectuals. These shifting configurations among different
agents offer a rich field of investigation for cultural analysis, posing methodological challenges
and requiring specific case studies.


Three strands
   The mutual basis of all research conducted in the context of the iFut is the triangulation of
media technology, the avant-garde and popular media as the main areas of cultural practice with-
in and across which imagined futures (and recovered pasts) take shape. iFut clusters three core
projects which fall into a historical, a theoretical and an “applied” strand.
   The historical strand directly relates to the concept of the (historical) avant-garde and the posi-
tion of the artist (in the past, the present and the future). The artist, the work (and, by extension,
the art world) are explicitly engaged – and intervening – in a dynamic (and not merely antago-

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nistic) relation with the theoretical text and its public/popular/commercial applications. This also
includes due consideration of technology and technological change, especially as this manifests
itself in the media constellations usually referred to as the different dispositifs.
   The theoretical strand extends very broadly to the academic discourses (and, by extension, the
academy as institution) whose ambition it is to make sense of the (technological, aesthetic, social,
economical) implications of changes in today’s media, and to investigate (new) models of “crisis
historiography” (such as Foucault’s concept of Archaeology, Systems and Network Theories,
New Historicism and Counterfactual History). These discourses include “performative theories”,
such as manifestos, artists’ statements, but also instruction manuals and online discussion groups
advising “users”.
   The “applied” strand is product- and practice-oriented. It includes all manner of applications of
(new) technologies, ranging from social issue uses, locative media projects, to commercial
schemes, military applications, public space projects. For the sake of mnemotic brevity we can
group the various uses in three categories: social applications, military/economic applications,
and public sphere applications (among which we include mainstream cinema).


Current research
   Seven ongoing Ph.D. projects address different aspects of iFut’s venture to explore how, at spe-
cific times, particular discursive topoi – such as the digital – function as indices of cultural change
and technological transformation. Questioning the validity of many commonplaces about these
tropes and constellations, the individual studies of the Ph.D. candidates examine the spatial, tem-
poral and experiential dimensions of divergent – and, often even more so, convergent – media
practices, taking them as a point of departure to rethink the history of media technologies and/or
the formation of theories in their respective fields. Among the practices under scrutiny are con-
temporary fiction films, locative media, installation art, and digital dance performances, acknowl-
edging both their timeliness and retroactivity. Important topics in common are non-linear tempo-
ralities, continuous dislocations, and shifting relations, as well as questions of agency, subjectiv-
ity, and criticality. Particular economic configurations, not only of representations, but also of
forms of attention, modes of address, spatio-temporal clusterings, and relational patterns, are
traced throughout different contexts.

Tina Bastajian, Archival Afterlives In Situ: The Shifting Contingencies from Expanded
Cinema to Locative Media
   Archival proclivities have become a recurring trope in contemporary art, likewise in unstable filmic
performative works rooted in the past (i.e. Expanded Cinema) and their subsequent returns, as reflect-
ed in the pilot study Electric Cinema ReDux, a curatorial program mounted at the 2007 Rotterdam
International Film Festival together with an ensuing documentation project. The ephemeral character
of these practices, which always appear under new and fluctuating conditions, call for another
methodology or paradigm in which to preserve and re-render them. Conversely, new media forma-
tions, specifically in locative media (explored in projects such as You Are Not Here, 2006-2008;
NomadicMILK Project, 2006-2008; Call Cutta – A Mobile Phone Theater, 2005; Loca: Set To
Discoverable, 2006-2008), posit similar aspects and genealogical threads as an oblique resemblance:
through the nomadic screen, spatial annotation, mapping, geo-tagging, and hyper-textual encounters
and entry points that seep over into the fabric of the quotidian. Through the lens of media archaeol-
ogy within and beyond déjà vu, the project charts out relational features through diverse configura-

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tions of documentation, and migration of materials and artistic movements: traces and indexes, ana-
logue and digital, performed, captured, and databased, both in premise and in praxis. A triangulation
of research, curating and artistic practice serves to leverage the shifting of cinematic surfaces, sub-
jectivities, and agencies, and to put forward imagined and alternative dis/locative dispositifs.

Zeynep Gündüz, Interactive Dance: The Merger of Media Technologies and the Dancing
Body
   Theorizing “digital dance” performance in the light of avant-garde dance practices created by
pre-digital technologies in the 1960s, this project examines the consequences of the integration of
digital interactive media technologies in Western contemporary dance and paves the way for
developing new views on emerging mediatized artistic expressions and cultural practices. By con-
textualizing different forms of interactivity and interactive systems incorporated in contemporary
dance practices, the study explores the notion of interactivity on three levels: technics/technolo-
gy, ideological discourse, and experience. Moreover, it aims to illustrate parallels, shifts, and con-
tradictions between these levels from a practice-based perspective, which entails to examine the
processes of creation, exhibition, and perception of current digital dance artworks. The main
research concerns are: how the artistic intentions of the choreographer are negotiated with the
mathematical approach of the programmer; the ways the interactive system may be experienced
by the interactor; and how his or her experience may differ from the understanding of interactiv-
ity of the choreographer and programmer. Apparition (Klaus Obermaier, 2004), Glow (Gideon
Oberzanek, Frieder Weiss, 2006) and 16 [R]evolutions (Mark Coniglio, Dawn Stoppiello, 2006)
are among the selected case studies of this project. In the context of these works, sophisticated
motion tracking systems are used to display real-time responses to the impulses given by the
dancer, in the form of abstract shapes, text, and sound.

Pepita Hesselberth, Chronoscopy: Affective Encounters with Cinematic Temporalities
   The objective of this study is to analyse the ways in which contemporary media rework our
sense of time, subjectivity, memory, and agency in an era of pervasive media presence, in order
to resituate the embodied subject. By investigating the complex and reciprocal impact of cine-
matic temporalities – ranging from a play with rhythm, chronology, and duration to the enactment
of memory-traces, a developing sense of the future and our being-in-time –, it tries to locate new
forms of subjectivity, presence and consciousness, which are made possible by new media prac-
tices that regulate the perceptive and affective experiences of the viewer. On a historical level, the
project aims at pinpointing changes of and within cinematic dispositifs. Theoretically, it propos-
es to consider our encounter with media practices as instances of performative philosophy that
“occur” when “texts” are being “viewed”. Case studies include the 2007 exhibition Andy Warhol:
Other Voices, Other Rooms (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) as an example of a contemporary
multimedia exhibition, including Warhol’s cinematic endurance (con)tests from the 1960s, but
also the handheld aesthetics of digital video technology (e.g. Dogma), and memory matters in
mainstream Hollywood cinema: e.g. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004), etc. This project is co-hosted by the Copenhagen Doctoral
School in Cultural Studies, Literature, and the Arts (CDS).

Maria Poulaki, Cyberpunk Politics: Worlds and Subjectivities between Reflexivity and
Emergence
  Cyberpunk can be seen as a (pop-)cultural attempt to reflect on the – during the 1980s still
emerging – new information technologies as nonhuman actors, and to imagine futures where the

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role of human agency is downplayed in favour of new decentralized or distributed subjectivities.
Taking contemporary “meta-cyberpunk” films such as The Final Cut (Omar Naim, 2004) and
Renaissance (Christian Volckman, 2006) as a point of departure, this research project aims to
rethink cyberpunk as a genre that raised questions about the limits of reflexivity in the context of
agency, quite similar to how social theory and cybernetics have broached this issue, in a spectrum
ranging from biological to social systems. Moreover, it tries to rethink cinema as a medium
between reflexivity and emergence, exploring the political and ethical significance of this shift-
ing point for agency. Theoretical and applied cultural responses to information technologies are
thus paralleled and intermingled in order to adumbrate a trajectory of transition concerning media
technologies and subjectivities alike.

Laura Schuster, Fetishizing the Fear or Plotting the Possibilities: Adventures in Cinema
Fiction
  The period of 1997-2007 saw a proliferation of fiction films taking technological innovation
and/or mediation as a direct or indirect subject through topics such as surveillance, memory dis-
tortion, artificial intelligence, biomedia, simulation, and code. These films – examples range from
eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999) to Deja Vu (Tony Scott, 2006) – self-reflexively offer het-
erogeneous but coherent questions surrounding technology and its representations: questions
about perception, reality, and virtuality; about identity, knowledge, and belief; and ultimately,
about the status of the human subject in contemporary and future Western societies. Many of the
concerns symptomatically expressed in these films use technological reconfigurations such as
digitization as tropes for rapid change and the unreliability, permeability, or volatility of infor-
mation. Tracing these tropes throughout modernity reveals consistent patterns of technological
anxiety and externalisation. By a combination of perspectives (spectatorship, pragmatism, psy-
choanalytical film theory, cognition, media ecology/archaeology, posthumanist theory) this proj-
ect aims to develop a method of analysis for such films, and for their constant oscillation between
technophilia and technophobia.

Senta Siewert, Displacement Films – Music, Affect, Memory – A Pragmatic Poetic of
Contemporary European Films
  European films from the 1990s onwards have drawn on film history, avant-garde techniques,
music videos and pop music. This period has also raised theoretical issues concerning the adoption
of digital technologies and convergence between the film and music industries, which mark changes
in film studies since the “sonic turn”. The use of pop music soundtracks, which employ both ana-
logue and digital music, has also influenced the production and the aesthetic style of recent films
such as Head On (Fatih Akin, 2004), Inside Paris (Christophe Honoré, 2006) and Trainspotting
(Danny Boyle, 1996). Consequently, songs become an integral part of the narrative and visual world
while at the same time keeping their status as musical song. This study thus builds both on the his-
torical and theoretical strands of the iFut research project, yet simultaneously highlights the contri-
bution of music as a central narrative and aesthetic component within contemporary European film.
The musical sampling technique is considered as an overall structuring element, because the rhythm
of the songs crosses both auditory and visual registers and also affects the montage. Since mainly
pre-existing songs are used in these films, the cinema spectator participates in acts of recognition
when listening to the soundtrack during the film. These acts of recognition are considered as lay-
ered forms of cultural musical memory and appropriation and have an effect on the experience of
time. Moreover, cinematic experience is posited as having a direct affect on the body of the specta-
tor, thereby enhancing a co-participation and connecting audiences from different countries.

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Jennifer Steetskamp, The Endless Endeavour: Installation Art and Media Histories
   Installation art, while it is paradigmatically located in the museum, conceptually moves beyond
this space by evoking other institutional frames, such as the cinema, public archives, entertain-
ment park attractions, etc. Considering its key characteristics (such as the mobility of the specta-
tor, the multiplicity of viewpoints and trajectories, and the potential endlessness of the experi-
ence), screen-based installation art appears to challenge common assumptions about cinematic
and art historical pasts, technological genealogies and discursive formations. It is especially the
figure of virtual endlessness as well as the acknowledgement of site-specificity or site-relational-
ity that allow for drawing new connections between early cinema and databases, television and
ubiquitous computing. By exploring the spatio-temporal economies of particular installations,
such as Kutlug Ataman’s Küba (2005), Harun Farocki’s Deep Play (2007), or the collaborative
project T_Visionarium (2008), the study aims to demonstrate that installation art could not only
be seen as a re-enactment of past (pre-)cinematic strategies, but makes earlier media configura-
tions function as pre-enactments of what is happening in the digital era. In this way, traditional
historical groupings of visual art and media are called into question, which points to the particu-
lar historiographical concerns of this project.


Additional information
   Some of the Ph.D. projects are the result of collaborations with other institutions, such as Pepita
Hesselberth’s dissertation project, which is co-hosted and funded by the Copenhagen Doctoral
School in Cultural Studies, Literature, and the Arts (CDS). While Laura Schuster, Senta Siewert
and Jennifer Steetskamp are ASCA fellowship holders, other iFut members are supported by
additional organizations: Zeynep Gündüz is granted a Mosaic scholarship by the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and Maria Poulaki receives funding from the State
Scholarships Foundation of Greece (IKY). Tina Bastajian receives a Dr. Carolann S. Najarian
Scholarship from the Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA). Her artistic activi-
ties are partially made possible by the kind support of the European Cultural Foundation.




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