[Make-up date of the lecture of 23 April 2015, which was cancelled due to the strike].
The political changes around 1989 and the crisis of the image caused by the first Iraqi war are the climate in which the so-called “documentary turn” is rooted. As a consequence of this turn, the question of how social and historical realities should be approached – a problem usually dealt with either by academic disciplines or traditional documentary cinema – was reformulated and redefined in various artistic disciplines such as performance, theatre, installation, photography and the moving images.
Designerly practice faces the very problem of documenting and documentary practices constantly in different areas, in project research, for example, but also in scenographic projects or whenever working processes are documented and archived. Furthermore, a critical use of media implies that we are aware of how we conceptualize our approach to reality, which, of course, also holds true for design. How can we shape our perception of reality under the condition of the apparent surplus of a medial overkill?
The presentation will give an insight into various forms of documentary practices and discuss their relevance for designerly practice.
Cornelia Lund is a design and media theorist and curator living in Berlin. She holds a PhD on “French Poetry Illustrations” from the University of Stuttgart. Since 2004, she is co-director of fluctuating images, a platform for media art and design, since 2009 member of General Public. In fall/winter 2011/2012 she was visiting professor for “Culture.Aesthetic.Media” at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf. Since 2012 she is research fellow in a DFG research project on German documentary film at the University of Hamburg. Lecturer for design theory at various universities, such as University of Applied Sciences Vorarlberg, University of Applied Sciences Hamburg. Cornelia has widely published on experimental film forms, the relationship of image and text, on dance and film, she is co-editor, together with Holger Lund, of “Audio.Visual – On Visual Music and Related Media” (2009) and of “Design der Zukunft” (2014). Her work as a curator includes numerous screenings and exhibitions (e.g. Mapping Festival Geneva, Academy of the Arts Berlin, Index Festival New York, Hamburger Architektursommer).
