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Upcoming:


Editorial Workshop – A Special Issue on Acoustic Space
November 9-10, 2022, Frankfurt/Main

with contributions by

Magdalena Zdrodowska, Jagiellonian University Poland
Maren Haffke, University of Bayreuth
Henning Engelke, Philipps University Marburg
Eszter Polonyi, University of Nova Gorica
Ken Eisenstein, Bucknell University
Seth Barry Watter, New York University

hosted by Henning Engelke and Sophia Gräfe
workshop assistance: Nora Neuhaus

Public Event: Film Screening and Dinner
November 9, 2022, 17:00, cinema Kino Mal Seh’n, Adlerflychtstraße 6, 60318 Frankfurt am Main

Film: Expedition Content
(Veronika Kusumaryati und Ernst Karel, 2020, 78 minutes)

With an introduction by Henning Engelke

Past:

Film Screening & Introduction
9 November 2021, 8 pm
Arsenal, Berlin 

Anticipation of the Night (Stan Brakhage 1958), Arsenal, Berlin, November 9, 2021. Part of the film series „The gatekeepers exist to be overthrown.“ 
Amos Vogel – Repeats und Responses.
More info on the website of Arsenal cinema.

Conference Panel
15 Dezember 2021, 10 am
Visible Evidence 2021, Frankfurt/Main, Mousonturm 

Henning Engelke: Teaching Film and Studying Visual Communication: Sol Worth’s Documentary Film Workshop.
Panel: Film Pedagogy, Bio-Documentaries, and the Politics of Student Films. December 15, Visible Evidence Conference, Frankfurt.
Panelists: Stephen Charbonneau (Florida Atlantic University), Yvonne Zimmermann (Philipps-Universität Marburg), Henning Engelke (Philipps-Universität Marburg); Respondent: Jane M. Gaines (Columbia University, New York).
More info on the conference website.

Conference Panel
16 Dezember 2021, 4 pm
Visible Evidence 2021, Frankfurt/Main, Mousonturm 

Sophia Gräfe: 5x5 m on 16mm – Synthesizing Wildlife Behavior in the Lab
Panel: Nonhuman Knowledge: The Epistemology of the Animal Documentary Image.
Panelists: Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa (Seattle University), Sophia Gräfe (Philipps-Universität Marburg),
James Leo Cahill (University of Toronto), Respondent: Janina Wellmann (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)
More info on the conference website.

Film Screening
16 December 2021, 8 pm
Visible Evidence 2021, Frankfurt/Main, Mousonturm 

Film Screening: “A Slice of Life” — Films from Sol Worth’s Documentary Film Lab. Visible Evidence Conference, Frankfurt. Panelists: Angela J. Aguayo (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Noelle Griffis (Marymount Manhattan College, New York), Michael Griffin (Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN), Henning Engelke (Philipps University, Marburg).
More info on the conference website.

Screening and Discussion
Documentary and the Nonhuman
Wednesday, July 7, 2021, online

5 pm CET: Screening B.F. SKINNER PLAYS HIMSELF (Ted Kennedy (US), work in progress))
7–8:30 pm CET: Ted Kennedy (filmmaker, New York/US) and Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa (Seattle University) in conversation with Sophia Gräfe (in English)

Registration via e-mail to sophia.graefe@uni-marburg.de
More info about the film project: https://www.bfskinnerplayshimself.com

This screening event is part of "Film and Ecology", an event series organized by Tina Kaiser in collaboration with Sophia Gräfe & Angela Krewani. It is supported by the QSL funds of the State of Hesse.


International Conference
The Movement Movement: Histories of Microanalysis at the Intersection of Film, Science and Art
Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany June 24–26, 2021, online

The desire to study the motion of humans and other animals is deeply embedded in the technological, social and aesthetic histories of film. For a long time, the focus was on individual behavior and individual actors. This changed in the 1950s and 1960s when anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, sociologists and ethologists increasingly turned to film to analyze movement as an element in systems of social interaction. Informed by cybernetics, systems theory and structural linguistics, researchers such as Ray L. Birdwhistell, Gregory Bateson, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Adam Kendon looked for patterns in what they regarded as the continuous, multi-sensorial stream of interaction/communication behavior. Film and later video became important tools to tap into this stream, to stabilize it and facilitate close attention to minute details through repeated viewings of brief stretches of interaction. Bringing to consciousness “visible, yet unseen” phenomena that sometimes lasted for only fractions of a second, film promised to open a window onto the microtemporalities and processuality of social systems. But such analysis also reflected back on the (micro-)temporalities of film itself. This point was not lost on experimental filmmakers like Hollis Frampton, who drew on studies of movement interaction in his theoretical and aesthetic reflections on film. The field of interaction studies also overlapped with developments in contemporary dance and performance art, drawing choreographers like Irmgard Bartenieff and Forrestine Paulay into the circles of communication research, while also influencing aesthetic approaches to dance and performance.

This conference aims at exploring these often overlooked intersections of social science, ethology, experimental film and the performing arts in the 1960s and 1970s across the disciplines of film and media studies, history of science, visual anthropology and art history. It addresses questions of science policy during the Cold War in the East and West, epistemologies of the moving image, scales of observation, and interrelations between analytical and aesthetic procedures. It also addresses the question of how film was integrated, in various ways, into wider media assemblages/environments, including notational systems, viewing equipment, diagrams, and artistic performances. Considering the entanglements of cinematic movement, movement interaction research and artistic practices, the conference seeks to open an historical perspective on recent debates on media change and the relocation of film.

The conference is part of the DFG research project “Transdisciplinary Networks of Media Knowledge” at Philipps-Universität Marburg.

Conference organizers: Henning Engelke and Sophia Gräfe, DFG-Heisenberg-Project “Transdisciplinary Networks of Media Knowledge”, Institute of Media Studies, Philipps-Universität Marburg

More information.

Interdisciplinary Workshop
December 11, 2020, 9:45–17:00 (CET), online
Video Analysis – Methodological and Media Historical Aspects of Studying Microinteraction

This interdisciplinary workshop aims at the combined discussion of contemporary and historic research on procedures of video analysis. It focuses on methods of video analysis in diverse scientific contexts including motion interaction studies and research on simultaneity, sequentiality, embodiment, space and performance.
The overall goal is to consider the epistemological potential of approaches to video analysis and, at the same time, to discuss their technological preconditions and media historical development: On which theoretical assumptions and basic problems are current procedures of video analysis based? How did they develop historically? How does technological change influence methods and goals of motion analysis? How is video analysis used in different disciplines? What are the epistemological, aesthetical and ethical implications of video analytic  practice?

This workshop is organized by researchers from the fields of media studies, speech studies, sociology, sport science and psychiatry. It is funded by the Philipps University’s program “UMR vernetzt”.

Concept: Henning Engelke, Eva-Maria Gauß, Sophia Gräfe und Lydia Riedl

  • Program and Registration

    Program
    Friday, December 11, 2020, online (link upon registration)

    Part 1 (in German): 9:45am – 1pm (CET)

    09:45 – 10:00am Log In and Welcome

    10:00 – 10:40am
    Regine Hilt (Berlin) Qualitative Videoanalyse mit der Feldpartitur

    10:50 – 11:30am
    Jörg Bergmann (Universität Bielefeld, Fakultät für Soziologie) Zur Entwicklung einer Verhaltenspartitur - Theoretische Begründung und Geschichte eines frühen soziologischen Projekts

    11:40 – 12:20am
    Hedda Lausberg (DSHS Köln, Abt. Neurologie, Psychosomatik, Psychiatrie) Das NEUROGES Analyse System für Nonverbales Verhalten und Gestik

    12:20am – 1pm Discussion 

    –Lunch Break–


    Part 2 (in English): 2 – 5pm (CET)

    2:00 – 2:40pm
    James Trujillo (Cosilab) Studying Multimodal Language Using Video-Based Motion Tracking

    2:50 – 3:30pm
    Allison Jablonko (Keene, NH) Crucial durations, continuity and sense: some visual examples of micro-analysis of archival and recent material from Papua New Guinea (1964/2014)

    3:40 – 4:20pm
    Peter Sachs Collopy (Caltech, University Archives and Special Collections) “Mirror With a Memory”: Video Self-Observation between Art and Science

    4:20 – 5:00pm Discussion and Summary

    Registration until 09 December via e-mail to Mrs. Nora Neuhaus, neuhausn@staff.uni-marburg.de
    You will receive the link to access the online conference room after your registration. 

Teaching
Philipps-University Marburg, Summer Term 2020

Filmstudien und Wissenschaftsfilm: Geschichte und Theorie der Mikroanalyse
Henning Engelke and Sophia Gräfe, SoSe 2020, Medien und kulturelle Praxis: Geschichte, Ästhetik, Theorie (M.A.), Philipps-University Marburg

Conference Panel
Society of Cinema and Media Studies, Annual Conference, Seattle (US), March 13–17, 2019

Acoustic Space and Cinematic Ecologies, 1950–1980
Panel, SCMS 2019, Seattle (USA), Participants: Henning Engelke, Ken Eisenstein, Andrew Vielkind, Sophia Gräfe