medieninitiative

Sensing Media: New Book Series at Stanford University Press

I have been sitting on this news for a while now, and I am excited that I can finally share it: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and I are editing a new book series at Stanford University Press called “Sensing Media” that is devoted to the aesthetics, philosophies, and cultures of media.

We are especially interested in contributions that rethink media aesthetics, understood broadly to include both artistic uses of media and their sensory dimensions; that conceive media as the site where art and technology converge; and that expand the scope of media-philosophical discussions to include global and heretofore marginalized perspectives. We are excited to explore the connections between sensory forms and their infrastructures, between media technologies and aesthetic sensibilities, and more generally between media and the many possible worlds they disclose.

Please spread the word about the new series, and consider submitting your manuscripts. If you have questions, you can direct them to me, Wendy Chun, or Executive Editor Erica Wetter, with whom we are thrilled to be working on this series. We look forward to learning about your work!

Discorrelated Images: 40% Off until March 31

Please enjoy this goofy selfie with book and pandemic hair, which I made for Duke University Press’s virtual booth at the College Art Association’s annual conference. During the conference, Duke UP is having another big sale: from now until March 31, you can use the code CAA21 to save 40% off all in-stock books and journals, including Discorrelated Images: https://www.dukeupress.edu/discorrelated-images

Pandemic Media — full PDF now available

The full PDF of Pandemic Media, an open-access collection edited by Philipp Dominik Keidl, Laliv Melamed, Vinzenz Hediger, and Antonio Somaini, is now available for download (here).

The volume contains 37 short chapters on various aspects of media and mediated experience under conditions of the pandemic, divided into 5 sections: Time/Temporality, Space/Scale, Technologies/Materialities, Education/Instruction, and Activism/Sociability.

The last section includes my essay on Zoom and related screen-based forms of interaction: “‘Thus isolation is a project.’ Notes toward a Phenomenology of Screen-Mediated Life.” There are lots of other things to discover in this book, though, so check it out!

Video: “Post-Cinematic Bodies” (Mercator Lecture, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

The video of my Mercator Lecture for the Configurations of Film Graduiertenkolleg at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, “Post-Cinematic Bodies” (from November 23, 2020), is now online. Hope you enjoy!

New Roles at Stanford

This year I am excited to have taken on a couple of new roles at Stanford, and I wanted shout about them briefly to express my gratitude and hope.

First, I am honored to have received a courtesy appointment in German Studies from the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. While my primary appointment remains in the Department of Art & Art History, I will now be able to teach and advise graduate students in German as well, and I am excited to collaborate more closely with my colleagues there.

Second, I have joined the Committee in Charge in Modern Thought & Literature, Stanford’s premier interdisciplinary humanities program. I have been working closely and learning from students in the program over the past couple of years, including serving on several dissertation committees, and I have discovered so many affinities with students and faculty alike, so officially joining the program feels in many ways like coming home.

Finally, for the duration of the 2020-2021 academic year, I am honored to have been awarded a Faculty Research Fellowship at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, where I am learning from an amazing interdisciplinary cohort of peers while developing a new project around seriality and serialization. Taking up Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of “serialities” as anonymous, alienated collectives, as well as Iris Marion Young’s re-working of the concept with respect to gender and specifically feminist purposes, the project relates these socio-political conceptions of seriality to the serialization of experience and identity in contemporary digital media.

In all, I am feeling very grateful for these new and strengthened interdisciplinary networks, which give me hope for the future of the humanities at Stanford.

“Racial Chain of Being” — Shaka McGlotten at Digital Aesthetics Workshop, December 8, 2020

I am excited to announce the fourth event of the Digital Aesthetics Workshop’s Fall 2020 lineup: on December 8 (1:00-3:00pm Pacific time), Shaka McGlotten will hold a presentation titled “Racial Chain of Being.”

If you would like to join us via Zoom for what is sure to be an exciting event, please register here: tinyurl.com/ShakaDAW

Shaka McGlotten is Professor of Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY, where they also serve as Chair of the Gender Studies and Global Black Studies Programs. Their work stages encounters between black study, queer theory, media, and art. They have written and lectured widely on networked intimacies and messy computational entanglements as they interface with qtpoc lifeworlds.

They are the author of Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality, published by SUNY Press in 2013. They are also the co-editor of two edited collections, Black Genders and Sexualities (with Dana-ain Davis) and Zombies and Sexuality (with Steve Jones). Their book Dragging: In the Drag of a Queer Life, forthcoming from Routledge, and their current project, Black Data, have been supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and Creative Capital | The Andy Warhol Foundation.

Post-Cinematic Bodies — Mercator Fellow Lecture, Nov. 23, 2020

I am excited to be serving as the current Mercator Fellow at the Konfigurationen des Films Graduiertenkolleg / Configurations of Film Graduate Program at the Goethe Universität in Frankfurt — via Zoom, of course — and to deliver a talk titled “Post-Cinematic Bodies” on November 23, 2020 (6pm European time). More info about the event can be found here, with registration details coming soon.

Videos of Two Recent Book-Related Talks

Discorrelation, or: Images between Algorithms and Aesthetics — Nov. 3, 2020 at CESTA, Stanford University

Here are videos of two recent talks related to my book Discorrelated Images. Above, a talk titled “Discorrelation, or: Images between Algorithms and Aesthetics,” delivered at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) on November 3, 2020. And below, a talk titled “Discorrelated Images” from October 26, 2020 at UC Santa Barbara’s Media Arts and Technology Seminar Series.

Discorrelated Images — October 26, 2020 at MAT Seminar Series, UCSB

Exploring the Media Archaeology Lab: A Workshop with libi rose striegl at Digital Aesthetics Workshop, Nov. 10, 2020

Please join us for an exciting, interactive event next Tuesday, November 10th at 5 pm (PT) with libi rose striegl who runs the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

libi will be giving a virtual tour and demonstration of pieces from the Media Archaeology Lab collection, followed by a defamiliarization exercise in the form of a Take It Apart(y). Participants are invited to take-apart-along with libi, dissecting and deciphering a piece of household technology. It’s probably best to use something already broken, if you’re not confident with re-assembly!

libi rose striegl is an artist, teacher and friend of mechanisms who currently manages the Media Archaeology Lab. She is perpetually ambivalent about technology. Her work ranges from anarchival exploration to large-scale installation, and she is co-founder of artrepreneurial start-up sharing turtle and one half of audiovisual experiment Prayer Generator. libi recently defended her dissertation ‘Voluntary De-Convenience’ for the PhD in Intermedia Arts, Writing and Performance at CU Boulder, and holds an MFA in Experimental Documentary Arts from Duke.

The Media Archaeology Lab (MAL) was founded in 2009 by Associate Professor Lori Emerson. Their motto is “the past must be lived so that the present can be seen.”Nearly all digital media labs are conceived of as a place for experimental research using the most up-to-date, cutting-edge tools available. By contrast, the MAL—which very well might be the largest of its kind in the world—is a place for cross-disciplinary experimental research and teaching using still functioning media from the past. The MAL is propelled equally by the need to preserve and maintain access to historically important media of all kinds—from magic lanterns, projectors, and typewriters, to early personal computers from the 1970s through the 1990s; as well as early works of digital literature/art which were originally created on the hardware and software housed in the MAL.

Please register here to get the Zoom link: tinyurl.com/ExploreMAL

Discorrelation, or: Images between Algorithms and Aesthetics — Nov. 3 at CESTA

On November 3 (12pm Pacific), I’ll be giving a talk, via Zoom, titled “Discorrelation, or: Images between Algorithms and Aesthetics” at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). The talk will focus on my book Discorrelated Images, just out from Duke University Press (and 50% off right with code FALL2020).

In case you’re wondering, this is a different “book talk” than anything you might have seen recently, so check it out if you can! (Though I am told that there is something else going on on November 3rd, so only tune in if you’ve already voted!)

See here for more information and registration!