Final Annual Conference of the DFG Graduate Research Training Group “Documentary Practices: Excess and Privation” (GRK 2132, Ruhr University Bochum).

The third annual conference of the DFG Graduate School The Documentary: Excess and Privation will be held from May 8th to 10th, 2025, at the Kunstmuseum Bochum. The conference marks the conclusion and upcoming dissolution of a research context that has grown over nine years. We propose thinking about the documentary from its ends and focusing on these medial and aesthetic boundary figures of documentary forms of existence in the sciences and the arts. If it is the framework of observation itself that determines when a process can be considered complete, we want to engage with the concepts, practices, and politics that shape the image we have of endings.

The conference language is English.
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// Programme:

I Thursday, May 8, 2025

1:00—2:00 pm I Registration
2:00—3:00 pm I Welcome and opening remarks

3:00—4:00 pm I Panel #1: Loss
Ana Catarina Pinho (IHA, Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal):
The Politics of Archival Loss: Visual Remnants and Colonial Memory in the Digital Era
Lisa Le Anh (Goethe University Frankfurt / Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany): Fragments of Farewell: CCTV Footage as a Documentation of Loss
Moderation: Katharina Menschick(GRK 2132, RUB)

4:00—4:30 pm I Coffee break

4:30—5:30 pm I Panel #2: Film in the Anthropocene
Aleksi Rennes (University of Turku, Finland):
Petrified Cinema Beyond Death: Roberto Rossellini’s Volcanic Archive
Felix Hasebrink ((Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany):
Mud Fields of Cinematic Detritus, or Locating the Physical Endpoints of Film
Moderation: Catherin Persing(GRK 2132, RUB)

5:30—6:00 pm I Coffee break

6:00—7:00 pm I Archives and Butterflies
A reading dialogue by Helen Brecht (RUB, Germany)

From 7:00 pm I Buffet dinner and get-together

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I Friday, May 9, 2025

10:00—11:00 am I Panel #3: After Film
Chauhan Arundhati (Northwestern University, USA):
Situating the Feminist Archive as Documentary: Reading Navina Sundaram’s Archive The Fifth Wall
Elisa Linseisen (University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, Germany) and
Philip Widmann (University of Zurich, Switzerland):
“THE END IS THE BEGINNING IS THE END IS”: Potentialities of Film Undone
Moderation: Ying Sze Pek (GRK 2132, RUB)

11:00—11:30 am I Coffee break

11:30 am—1:00 pm I The Artwork as a Living System
Artist talk with Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (University of Arts Linz, Austria)
Moderation: Anna Grelik and Amelie Wedel (GRK 2132, RUB)

1:00—2:00 pm I Lunch break

2:00—3:30 pm I Panel #4: Performing Temporalities
Theresa Schlesinger (Münchner Kammerspiele, Germany):
How to Experience Endings? A Performative Exploration on the Concepts of Endings and Beginnings in Theater
Yon Natalie Mik (Free University of Berlin, Germany):
The Unfinished Ritual: The Dancing Body as Documentary and Resistance.
Ira Goryainova (Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound, Belgium):
Navigating Melancholia, Loss and Death through Image Recycling
Moderation: Rose Beermann (GRK 2132, RUB)

3:30—4:00 pm I Coffee break

4:00—5:00 pm I Panel #5: Archiving the Digital
Ruolan Wang (China Academy of Art, China):
Echoes of the Past: The Reconstruction of Memory in Dead Souls

Minna Lee (Princeton University, USA):
Archiving Against the Jetztzeit of the Digital Present: A Case Study of Daum Road View on Jeju Island
Moderation: Lana Uzarashvili (GRK 2132, RUB)

5.00—5:30 pm I Coffee break

5:30—7:00 pm I Technology at the End Times
Keynote talk by Amanda Lagerkvist (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Response: Franziska Barth (GRK 2132, RUB)

From 7:30 pm I Conference dinner at Masala Project (Viktoria Straße, 71, 44787 Bochum)

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I Saturday, May 10, 2025

10:00—11:30 am I Large Language Models and the Returns of Critical Theory
Keynote talk by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Response: Anne Küper (GRK 2132, RUB)

11:30 am—12:00 pm I Coffee break

12:00—1:00 pm I Panel #6: Disintegration
Max Böhner (Humboldt University of Berlin / University of Potsdam, Germany):
Destroyed Slides, Saved Porn, Rediscovered Collections: Shifting Cultural Heritage in the Case of Albert Hoxie
Michael Klipphahn-Karge (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Germany):
De-documenting: Visual Practices of Refusal in the Digital Field
Moderation: Lena Demary (GRK 2132, RUB)

1:00—2:00 pm I Lunch break

2:00—3:30 pm I Queering Documentary Ends
Roundtable Discussion with GRK 2132 Alumni and Colleagues
Moderation: Paulena Müller (GRK 2132, RUB)

3:30—4:00 pm I Closing remarks by Ying Sze Pek & Anne Hemkendreis (GRK 2132, RUB)

From 7:30 pm I RK 2132 Farewell Celebration at Schlegel Kultur Club (Willy-Brandt-Platz 5, 44787 Bochum)

Weiterführende Informationen zur Tagung finden sich unter: https://das-dokumentarische.blogs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/en/404notfoundprogram/