The Movement Movement: Histories of Microanalysis at the Intersection of Film, Science and Art

More information: https://tinyurl.com/mcm33cx7
Please register here, until June 21, 2021: https://tinyurl.com/9fe29xnf

The desire to study the motion of humans and other animals is deeply embedded in the technological, social and aesthetic histories of film. A crucial moment occurrred in the 1950s and 1960s, when anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, sociologists and ethologists turned to film to analyze movement as an element in systems of social interaction, rather than individual behavior. Film and later video became crucial tools to tap into the multi-sensory behavioral stream, to stabilize it and facilitate close attention to minute details through repeated viewings of brief stretches of interaction. This conference brings together film and media scholars, historians of science, artists, art historians, and visual anthropologists to explore the media histories, political implications, and aesthetic configurations of microanalysis/the micro.

Keynote: Heather Love (University of Pennsylvania)
Screenings and Artist Talks by: Allison Jablonko, Naomi Faik-Simet, and Hannes Rickli
Presenters: Stefanie Bräuer, Peter Sachs Collopy, Ken Eisenstein, Oliver Gaycken, Vinzenz Hediger, Katie Joice, Igor Karim, Whitney Laemmli, Michael Lempert, Eszter Polonyi, and Seth Barry Watter.

The conference is part of the German Research Foundation (DFG) research project “Transdisciplinary Networks of Media Knowledge” at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Department of Media Studies. It is organized by Henning Engelke and Sophia Gräfe.

For questions, please contact engelkehuni-marburg.de.

Program

Thursday, June 24, 2021

4:00pm–4:15 pm CET
Welcome Note
Malte Hagener (Philipps Universität Marburg)

4:15pm–4:35pm CET
Introduction
Sophia Gräfe and Henning Engelke (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

5:00pm–6:00pm CET
Session 1: Policies, Practices, and Experiences of Studying Microrealities
Keynote address
Heather Love (University of Pennsylvania), “Meticulous student of the real”: Goffman’s Lessons for Queer Studies

9:00 pm–10:00pm CET
Film Screening
Maring in Motion (Allison Jablonko, 1968, 18 min.) and footage from Allison Jablonko’s and Naomi Faik-Simet’s recent research in Papua New Guinea

10:00pm–11:00pm CET
Panel discussion: Movement and Dance Research in Papua New Guinea: Lived Experience, Politics and Pedagogy
Allison Jablonko (Independent Researcher, Keene, NH) in conversation with Naomi Faik-Simet (Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, Papua New Guinea)

Moderator: Henning Engelke (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

Friday, June 25, 2021

1:00pm–3:30pm CET
Session 2: Archiving Movement: the Göttingen Institute for Scientific Film (IWF)

Igor Karim (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), Camera Movement as Exploration of the Body – or How Gestures Construct Personhood During Documentary Filmmaking

Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), Series, Comparison, Nature: Biology of Human Behavior and Cinematic Method in Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s Human Ethology Film Archive

Oliver Gaycken (University of Maryland), The Encyclopaedia Cinematographica as Microanalytic Archive
Moderator: Malte Hagener (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

4:30pm–7:00pm CET
Session 3: Politics, Gender, and Therapy

Katie Joice (Birkbeck, University of London), Mothering in the Frame: Cinematic Microanalysis and the Pathogenic Mother 1945–67

Whitney Laemmli (Carnegie Mellon University), When Words Fail: Movement Notation, Trauma, and Therapeutic Practice in the Post-WWII United States

Peter Sachs Collopy (California Institute of Technology), “Pass Through the Barrier of the Skin”: Video and Microanalysis at the Boundaries of the Self

Moderator: Erhard Schüttpelz (Universität Siegen)

8:00pm–9:00pm CET
Artist Talk and Screening
Hannes Rickli (Zürcher Hochschule der Künste), Videograms of Experimentation: Animal-Human-Media Constellations in Biological Research Films

Moderator: Sophia Gräfe (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

Saturday, June 26, 2021

2:00pm–4:30pm CET
Session 4: Movement, Art, and Cinematic Ecologies

Stefanie Bräuer (Universität Basel), Electronics in Experimental Animation: Para-Cinematic Practices and Sites

Ken Eisenstein (Bucknell University), Row Roe Micro Your Tod: Hollis Frampton and the Currents of Time

Eszter Polonyi (University of Nova Gorica), Between Film and Graphic Arrangement: Thom Andersen’s flicker

Moderator: Yvonne Zimmermann (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

5:00pm–7:30pm CET
Session 5: Media of Microanalysis

Michael Lempert (University of Michigan), Small Talk: Media and the Microscopic Science of Conversation

Seth Barry Watter (eikones, Basel), Minimal Units and Good Vibrations: The Work of Paul Byers

Moderator: Lena Trüper (University of California, Los Angeles)

7:45pm-8:30pm CET
Closing Discussion

Download the Conference Program (PDF):
https://www.uni-marburg.de/en/fb09/institutes/media-studies/research/research-projects/transdisciplinary-networks-of-media-knowledge/the-movement-movement_program.pdf