Academic Consultant: Prof. Dr. Georg Christoph Tholen, Ordinarius, Department of Media Studies at the University of Basel

The Shift Conference 2008, organised in cooperation with the Department of Media Studies at the University of Basel, will take a discursive, multi-perspective approach to three sub-themes of this year’s festival theme, “record, record”. Three lecturers will briefly address one aspect each of the respective sub-theme before opening up the discussion to the public.  

Introductory lecture

Sat, 25.10. 2008, 11.00 h, Small Hall

Prof. Dr. Georg Christoph Tholen

 

Ordinarius, Department of Media Studies at the University of Basel

Between Remembrance and Forgetting: Problems in Tracing the Locus of Memory

In the process of collecting, interpreting and archiving cultural artefacts, the cultural memory of a society (or societies) makes choices regarding both the quantity and quality of such information. In terms of media historiography, the archive constitutes that fixed location in which documents and monuments are given a permanent place in order that they will not be forgotten. The model and precursor of the archive is the library. The archive constitutes and produces cultural memory. The power it has to consign artefacts to memory defines archivable and memorable knowledge – and the relation of these to the future. Cultural databases are always simultaneously depositories of knowledge and power.
Not only data migration in the digital age – e.g. the potential codification and subsequent dissolution of previous media formats – but also the increasing dynamism of data storage and dissemination give rise to new types of cultural database and, hence, re-configure memory – which has always been incomplete. Yet it is only in differentiating between database, memory and the act of remembering that the gap between remembering and forgetting and between previous and future forms of (knowledge) transmission can be fathomed.

Panel 1

The Power of Archives. Yesterday and Today.

Sat, 25.10. 2008, 11.30 h - 13.30 h, Small Hall

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Ernst

Professor of Media Theory, Department of Media Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin

Buffer Aesthetics

Theoretical diagnosis can initially identify a shift in power – from the familiar western aesthetic of emphatic long-term archival storage through to short-term ‘data buffers’ in culture, media and human beings (which is to say, socio-cultural memory, media archaeology and neurobiological perspectives) – in other words, from the archive as a fixed space to its radical temporalisation. The conditions imposed by a techno-mathematical media culture not only cause a shift in archival power, but also call for a new dynamic model for the very definition of the archive, for which the traditional concept of archive is an obstacle. Whilst the classic archive in its role as a litigable memory of administrative power will continue to exist both as an institution and format, the new medial law of that which can be said, shown, written, heard and calculated is transformed into a critical instance of the buffer.

Prof. Dr. Herbert Burkert

Chair FIR-HSG, Titular Professor of Civil Law, especially Information & Communication Law, University of St. Gallen, President of the Research Centre for Information Law

Archives – Information Power and Opposition

Archives’ projected targets and effects – in particular those of a political nature – will first be illustrated by recourse to a number of examples to then analyse the special role of digital archives. The contexts thus examined will be structured in the light of the term "information power". This will set the conceptual framework for a comparative assessment of institutional and individual information power and a discussion of the availability, usefulness and limits of instruments that balance power (e.g. data protection, freedom of information, open access, information recycling) and the potential of information systems for ‘opposition movements’.

Dr. rer. nat. Martin Warnke

Academic Director of the Data Centre, ‘Kulturinformatik’, Director of the project
‘Hyper-image – visually oriented e-science networks’, Leuphana University, Lüneburg

The Paradox of Digital Archives

Contrary to a common perception of the immateriality of “the digital”, it is actually not the case that current archival procedures will blithely endure for all eternity: media fall apart, hard drives seem to “die”, entire generations of chips and computers disconnect, and formats disappear as quickly as they appeared. In spite of data rot and technical aging processes, certain strategies do exist to guarantee at least a modicum of permanence; but one thing is no longer of any use at all: to let sleeping archives lie and lock them up offers no protection against wear and tear in the digital age but amounts, in fact, to a death sentence.  The paradox of digital archives can be summed up thus: “Whereas analogue archival artefacts fade and wilt with every glance, digital archival artefacts require a constant song and dance”: the indisputable paradox of the matter being that the maxim “don’t touch” has ceded to “touch much”.

Followed by a discussion with all three participants.
Chaired by Prof. Dr. Georg Christoph Tholen, Ordinarius, Department of Media Studies, University of Basel

Panel 2

Memory and Media Transformation. Of the Appearance and Disappearance of Archives.

Sat, 25.10. 2008, 14.30 h - 16.30 h, Small Hall

PD Dr. Matthias Vogel

Lecturer and Project Director at the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts and at the Institute of Theory of the Zurich University of the Arts; Lecturer at the Art History Faculty, University of Basel

A Flautist on the Move through the archives

Drawing on various case studies, central among them Werner Bischof’s photographic icon “The Little Flautist ...”, the lecture will examine how images suddenly pop up from one archive only then to disappear into another. Images are used throughout all forms of media: classic print media, the exhibition, the Internet. All of these media, the archives included, possess an innovative potential that frequently finds expression in the often unintentional erasure or overwriting of images’ content or aesthetics. This contribution will consider two questions: what an archive should do in order to record and store the lively biography of ‘an image on the move’, and what advantages digital archives may have over analogue archives in this regard.

PD Dr. Kornelia Imesch Oechslin

Lecturer at the University of Zurich; also holds a Research Chair and Lectureship at the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS) of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Re-accessing of the Schweizer Filmwochenschau Newsreel (1940–1975): A Caesura

Archives “pop up” and archives “disappear”. The myriad of factors that determine this process can end in insight, incrimination, relief or loss. Negotiating the public interests of a knowledge-based society proves to be a constantly shifting site of contest. In the light of the key-words and concepts “collective archiving system”, ”grand narratives” and ”gaps”, old Filmwochenschau newsreels from Switzerland, and their recent re-accessing, respectively, will be used to illustrate the implications of what happens when things “pop up”.

Prof. Dr. Franziska Sick

Professor of Linguistics and Literature, Institute of Romance Studies, University of Kassel

Links and Memory

Every type of memory, in particular archival memory, is based on a certain degree of organisation: on mnemonics in antiquity, catalogue systems in book-based cultures, and links in the computer age. The two questions here addressed are how link technology changes the structure of our memory and how the link fosters forgetfulness or creates confusion in structures of memory. Ted Nelson, the inventor of hyperlinks, is of historical interest. His vision of an archive composed of links will be contrasted with storytelling, a much more ancient form of remembering. In its advanced form, this oral tradition used complex structures of reference to subvert traditional patterns of narrative and hence anticipated the link: a theme that hyperfiction is now addressing.

Followed by a discussion with all three participants.
Chaired by Dr. Dominik Landwehr, media scientist and director of the Pop and New Media department of Migros Kulturproduzent

Panel 3

Record and Sample: The Use and Abstraction of Archives.

Sun, 26.10. 2008, 12.30 h - 14.30 h, Small Hall

Prof. Daniel Weissberg

Composer, writer and co-director of the Music and Media Arts Faculty at the University of Fine Arts, Bern

Deceased! Recording Methods as Cemeteries. Why Recordings Must Die.

Recording music is generally held to be synonymous with the capture and storage of sound waves, yet this modus came into existence only in the latter half of the 20th century. Music has been recorded since the 9th century in western Europe. A short lecture will illuminate this development – from the invention of musical notation through to smooth transitions from recording to synthesis in the field of digital media – and thereby reflect on some of its significant aspects.

Prof. Dr. Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer

Professor of Music and Media, Institute of Music, University of Oldenburg

Sampling Is Everywhere!

Sampling practices are nothing particularly new in the history of music: to cite, parody and vary songs and tunes etc. has been on the musical agenda for centuries. Yet in an age when sounds are available on multiple media, sampling has changed the pace and the types of copies. Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer will present examples to illustrate the technology and history of sampling in pop music, and look at some economic and aesthetic issues such as conflicting models of authorship and ownership and how technical refinement contributes to a re-implementation of the concepts of “authenticity” or “spiritualisation”.

Prof. Dr. Verena Kuni

Institute for Art Education/Visual Culture, Goethe University, Frankfurt; director of the  <interfiction>-Conference of Art, Media and Net.Culture since 1999.
http://www.kuniver.se http://www.interfiction.org

Record – Remix – Reinvent!

When cards are re-shuffled, constellations change. Re-recording and re-using that which already exists implies not only the potential of critical revision in the sense of deconstruction. Rather, combination, performative and transformative procedures, from permutation through to up-cycling, forcibly open up new perspectives. In this sense “re-mixes” of “record(ing)s”, the “use and abstraction of archives”, can be understood as re-Discovery with a capital ‘D’: as an innovative cultural and artistic practice that draws on raw material from the database. Whoever takes the opposing view and condemns “re-mixes” as simple piracy overlooks that such use is also a means of preservation, as an unused archive falls into oblivion and disintegrates. 

Followed by a discussion with all three participants.
Chaired by Raffael Dörig, curator [plug.in] and co-organiser of Shift