[spectre] Kinetographien, European Academy Berlin, 25-27 Oct 2001

[Inke Arns]

[this is a conference I am co-organizing, scheduled to happen next week ...
just in case you're around ;) - the conference schedule can be found at the
end of this email. there's also a website containing all the lecture
abstracts as well as short biographical notes on the participants (in
English) <http://www2.hu-berlin.de/slawistik/kineto>. greetings, inke]


* * *

Kinetographien

European Academy, Berlin, 25-27 October 2001=20

<http://www2.hu-berlin.de/slawistik/kineto>
                    =20

Concept =20

Organizers: Inke Arns, M.A., Dr. Mirjam Goller, Susanne Straetling, Prof.
Dr. Georg Witte, Lehrstuhl f=FCr Ostslawische Literaturen, Institut f=FCr
Slawistik der
Humboldt-Universit=E4t zu Berlin =20
                    =20
                    =20

I=20

Kinetographies. The notion of kinetography - as an academic term of dance
science - describes the attempt of a choreographical fixation of movement
of the body. In the plural form, kinetographies, however, alludes to the
paradoxes inherent in the desire to arrest the ever-fleeting notion of
movement. The notion of kinetographies also encompasses other
"movement-writings" as well as recording systems of mobilities and
dynamics. By reducing the notion into its elements - movement and writing -
the focal points of contemporary artistic, analytic, and theoretical
concepts are brought into view. And a re-construction, or re-montage, of
the terminological halves sets this polarity again into movement.=20

The interdiscursive notional and visual field of mobility implies
movement/mobility, dynamism, changeability, flexibility and a lack of
locality. Mobility implies movement, sparks movement, or is itself
movement. It encompasses a transitive and an intransitive aspect. Both the
experience and description of movement are set in a vibrant field between
the static and the dynamic. The construction of observers views points as a
series of fixed points, as experienced in writing, reading, film and music,
is part of a cognitive and sensual dispositive of movement - and, at the
same time, it is af-fected by its own effects, i.e. is itself mobilized. In
this way, it is suggested that a description of "movement-writings" has to
take into consideration the modi (velocities/speeds, directions) and forms
of realisation (fluidities/software, solidities/hardware) of its
representation as well as the receptive and perceptive aspects of their
perception and perceptibility (the sharpening and fading of one's senses).=
=20

Increasing speeds in film, video, and music (techno, house) indicate the
relevance of movement and of movement effects in the aesthetic discourse of
the time-based arts. No less symptomatic is the dissolving of boundaries
between the visual and action arts as well as the mobilisation of immobile
forms in kinetic art (machine sculptures, moving objects, light plays) and
architecture (concepts of mobile cities). Contemporary literature, as a
space of imagined movement (wanderings and flights, travels and trips),
increasingly stages these chronotopoi by exploiting processive effects of
unleashed narrative structures, rhetorics, or graphics.=20

Theoretical development in recent decades is full of models, which are set
into mo-tion. This is clearly present in temporalisation of spatial sign
models, philosophies and sciences of becoming, conceptualisations of the
fluid for a female aesthetic, and dromology, the latter focuses explicitly
on phenomena of movement and their perception.=20

Topical research into movement in art and theory, and the concentration of
contemporary research perspectives on the previously mentioned factors -
speed, the mobilisation of immobile forms, processive unleashings - all
call for uncovering these phenomena in previous epochs and concepts without
the assumption of evolutionary continuity. One might not only think of the
technically enhanced speed ecstasies of early modernity, but also of the
protean notations of the romantic, of medial accelerations of early modern
times, of writing and reading machines of the baroque and the age of
reason, or graphical representations of deceleration in chronical documents
of the Middle Ages.=20

The theoretical conceptualisation of movement has a strong autoreflexive
disposition. Thinking about movement considers itself in motion. This opens
up an exciting metatheoretical perspective: It raises questions about the
'locations' of theoretical models in general. While explaining the implicit
co-conceptualisation of movement in theoretical models, it cannot avoid
creating new fixations and associations. The conference will explicitly
address this metatheoretical problem.=20


II=20

Configurations of moving and moved writing have to be defined. A heuristic
of kinetographic must be applicable for individual phenomena - set in the
plural, kinetographies gains an explosive interdiscursive effect. They have
to take into account interference and convergence between aesthetic
('formative') and theoretical ('de-scriptive') practices and consider the
deformative and 'transgressive' disruption of such dualisms. For the
purposes of an interdiscursive and interdisciplinary thought on mobility,
one could define the following 'kinetographic' fields:=20


Description of movement=20

Here we find the techniques of a fast-slow, hot-cool medial fixation of
processes of movement. Notation and recording systems, in the broadest
sense, are also found here. Besides questions of media changes, one would
also have to research the specific aspects of the respective conditions
dictated by the of the recording medium, the recording technique, and the
subject/object, i.e. the framing, lining, italicisation, cuts, focuses,
perspectives, cadences, rhythms/metrics, structures. Possible
sub-categories of this area are:=20

o the written fixation of audio and visual processes - choreography, dance
notations, music/score, scripts, alphabets (phonetic, visual
transcription), scriptures, typographies=20
o the fixed acoustic differentiation between noise and sound (sound
recording)=20
o the visual fixation of movement as of a series of positions or as a still
(photography, cinematography, action painting)=20
o the digital recording and the digital definition of processes=20
o recording speeds and speeds of narration (in fiction and historiography)=
=20

As the performativity of the forms in which movement is realised become
more prominent, a second field must be defined which encompasses the
re-translation of the notations as well as the reciprocal affects of the
systems of notation.=20


Movement of description=20

Here, the effects of the re-dynamisation of notations and documents become
rele-vant. This includes new horizons of movement which result from medial
fixation, as, e.g., all forms and media-historical phases of a
communication stretched in time and space, as well as from a releasing of
residues of movement in immobilised / immobi-lising media, the activation
of an inherent potential for mobility: theories of writing which discard
their fixation syndromes (like the one of notation), programming concepts
which infect memory; archiving procedures which mobilise their archives.
The following performativities of energetic matter can be distinguished:=20

o specific forms of communication (e.g. letters, book objects)=20
o poetic "feet" (writing in movement)=20
o dancing documentation and exuberant writings (calligraphies)=20
o stagings=20
o the fluidalisation of writing as digital "streams" (digitalisation)=20
o virally growing software in net art (source codes, hypertexts, links)=20

The phenomena mentioned evoke concepts of a processive aesthetic which
attempt to describe the character of art and communication as an event via
theories of de-focalisation and dissolution. These theories open up yet
another field consisting of a generative modelling of becoming.=20


Nomadologies=20

Both mobilised and mobilising descriptions should also be discussed
regarding scientific-theoretical and philosophical concepts for the
dynamisation of categories and models. One has to question models as
representations of static and spatially structured explanation (e.g.
semiotic sign models, psychoanalytical topographies of the un/conscious or
spatial text notions of narratology) and to release them from their
constraints through temporalisations and/as processualisations. Focusing on
move-ment in theoretical models, one raises questions about perceivability
/ observability as well as the (phenomenal and analytical) possibility of
description as a mode of stabilising ability to fix in a certain location.
A 'kinetographic' construction of theory would have to record its own
notions as both variable and dynamic and would have to be able to show the
inherent commotion and transgressivity of the object without appropriating
it in an oversimplifying way. A nomadological/nomadising descriptive
practice which takes into account that immobile things before could be
mobile under human perception could=20

o profile the temporal aspects of a pre- and subcategorical thinking=20
o trace medial extensions of anthropomorphic perception into micro and
macro spheres=20
o counter simultaneity and successivity of pre-representational relations=20
o elaborate speeds of the ephemeral=20
o generate a theory and practice of inexactitude=20


Transformers / Transformations=20

Movement affects, fascinates or produces effects, the latter immobilise the
viewer / listener (at a concert, in the cinema, in the car) or results in
new, transformed move-ment (in zero gravity, in virtual reality, in the
masses). In order to be able to describe this productive aspect of mobility
previous to all its products, one has to enquire after the
processes/methods of translation and transposition. Media and/as bodies can
be used as transformers of movement in order to make perceivable effects
and changes. Materialisations and somatisations of movement can also
recede, retreat, in the sense of an aesthetic of acceleration/disappearance
or as a power competence of distance created through fast media. The
following aspects could belong to the field of amplification, medial
transposition and sensory "condensations":=20

o media of movement (transportation)=20
o techniques of movement, organisation of movement, body disciplining=20
o wandering spaces=20
o kinetic art=20
o virtual matters=20


Movement phantasmatic=20

The phantasmatic potential of the physio- and sensomotoric effects of
movement, of each historical medial and perceptive shock of speed, of
de-territorialisation, of dispersion and evaporation, would have to be
examined separately. In this context, one has to enquire after the - be it
imaginative, be it media-technically realized - hallucinogenic qualities of
anthropological primeval scenes of mobility: From wandering to swarming,
from flying to falling, from giddiness/rapture to yielding. This field
provokes a discussion of the possible connections to aesthetic practice and
programmatic as well as to broadened concepts of aesthetic experience and
play. Finally, one finds in this field the fictional and real chronotopoi
of movement. Individual phenomena could be=20

o "floating signifiers" as well as other de-formative procedures and
"dismorphoma-nies"=20
o aesthetics of speed=20
o aesthetics of the moment and of abruptness=20
o fascination, trance, "flow", =20
o travels, migrations, trips ...=20

                    =20
----------------------------------------

Conference Schedule=20
                    =20

THURSDAY, 25 October 2001
                    =20
9:30 - 10:15 Welcome, Introduction


CHRONOTOPOI

10:15 - 10:45 Verena Lobsien (Berlin)=20
Movement at/as standstill. Varieties of "Translative" Imagination in early
modern and modern texts=20

10:45 - 11:15 Michail Ryklin (Moskau) =20
Schreiben als Kinesis in "no man's land" =96 Nabokovs Berlin, Nabokovs=
 Deutsche

11:15 - 11:45 Break

11:45 - 12:15 Brigitte Obermayr (Salzburg) =20
TRIPS: Chronotopoi, Territories and Transfigurations in 1990s Russian Prose =
=20

12:15 - 12:45 Georg Witte (Berlin) =20
"How happy I am that I am gone!" - Writing In Transit

12:45 - 14:30 Lunch Break


TEXT KINETICS

14:30 - 15:00 Heike Winkel (Bochum) =20
Stop and Go und anderer Schreibverkehr. Zur Kinetographie der Post

15:00 - 15:30 Florian Cramer (Berlin) =20
Changeable Sentences and the Changing Wheel in Quirinus Kuhlmann=92s 41st
Libes-Ku=DF

15:30 - 16:00 Inke Arns (Berlin) =20
Moving Texts: On the Performativity of Program Codes in Net Art

16:00 - 16:30 Break


LOCO-MOTORIK

16:30 - 17:00 Gudrun Heidemann (Bielefeld) =20
Stepping on the Gas, Slamming on the Brakes, Hitting the Clutch =96 Shifting
Gears with Writing=20

17:00 - 17:30 Sabine H=E4nsgen (Bremen) =20
Visualisation of Movement =96 Circulation in One Country. The Train Motif in
1920s and 1930s Soviet Film

17:30 - 18:00 Harro Segeberg (Hamburg) =20
Kinematographische Kinetographien. Der Action-Film "Speed" im Kontext
moderner Geschwindigkeitsdebatten


                    =20

FRIDAY, 26 October 2001=20
                    =20
                    =20
STANDSTILLS

9:30 - 10:00 Thomas Schestag (Frankfurt/M.) =20
"Mort =E0 jamais?" =96 Notes on Mobility in the Word =93mort=93 from Proust=
 to Adorno

10:00 - 10:30 Susanne Str=E4tling (Berlin) =20
The Statuary Language of the Ephemeral

10:30 - 11:00 Sven Spieker (Santa Barbara)=20
The Filing Treatment or Put an Archive Where It (Id) Was

11:00 - 11:30 Break


UTOPIAS OF MOVEMENT

11:30 - 12:00 Aage Hansen-L=F6ve (M=FCnchen) =20
Bewegung und/als Ruhe=20
                   =20
12:00 - 12:30
Anke Hennig (Bochum) =20
=84Dialektika sokhranila dvizhenie kak osnovu sjuzheta=93 (=84Die Dialektik
bewahrt die Bewegung als Sujetgrundlage=93) (Jeremija Joffe: Die synthetisch=
e
Betrachtung der Kunst und der Tonfilm, Moskau 1937)

12:30 - 13:00 Vladimir Papernyj (Los Angeles) =20
Recording the Movement as an Art Form: Lev Nussberg and Francisco Infante
(Kinetism/Dvizhenie)

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch Break
                  =20

GESTALTUNGEN - ENTSTALTUNGEN

14:30 - 15:00 Ern=F6 Kulcs=E1r-Szab=F3 (Berlin)=20
How (In)Accessible are Literary "Images of Movement"? Notes on the
Legibility of Kinetographic Techniques in Poetry Between the Avantgarde and
Late Modernism

15:00 - 15:30 Sabine Gro=DF (Madison/Wisconsin) =20
Text as Body Chronotope

15:30 - 16:00 Stefan Hesper (Fr=F6ndenberg) =20
=93All events are, so to speak, in the time where nothing is happening."
Vertigo, Faintness and Narrative

16:00 - 16:30 Break=20

16:30 - 17:00 Mirjam Goller (Berlin) =20
Fluid Bodies. Detections and Deformations of Anthropomorphy (in Literature
and Theory)

17:00 - 17:30 Peter Zajac (Berlin) =20
Ivan Lauc=EDk =96 der Bewegliche im Beweglichen

17:30 - 18:00 Bettine Menke (Erfurt) =20
Aufgezeichnete Bewegung. Bild- und Schallfigur.


                    =20

SATURDAY, 27 October 2001=20
                    =20
                    =20
ORDER OF MOVEMENT - HUMAN ORDER - ORDER OF LIFE

9:30 - 10:00 Stefan Rieger (Konstanz)=20
Einstellung und R=FCckkopplung. Zu einer Theorie menschlicher Bewegung

10:00 - 10:30 Inge Baxmann (Berlin)=20
Bewegungskulturen in der Transnation

10:30 - 11:00 Dmitri Zakharine (Konstanz)=20
Decorum of Movement in Western European and Russian Society. A Historical
Perspective

11:00 - 11:30 Break

11:30 - 12:00 Henning Teschke (Osnabr=FCck) =20
Trahe me post te =96 Notes on the metaphysical origin of internal movements

12:00 - 12:30 Anton Sergl (Berlin)=20
I am moved by. Die kinetische Ethik als =E4sthetische Wirkungstheorie

12:30 - 13:00 Valerij Podoroga (Moskau)=20
Konflikt prostranstv i dvizhenij. Zametki po povodu tvorchestva A. Germana
A.Sokurova (Der Konflikt von R=E4umen und Bewegungen. Bemerkungen zum
Filmschaffen A. Germans und A. Sokurovs)

13.00 - 14:30 Lunch Break


CINEMATOGRAPHICS

14:30-15:00 Winfried Pauleit (Berlin)=20
Ein Flugzeug f=FCr Malevich. Zur Darstellbarkeit von Bewegung und Stillstand
in der bildenden Kunst und in der Filmtheorie

15:00 - 15:30 Guido Heldt (Berlin)=20
At Every Turn. Image, Music and Movement in the Films of Sergio Leone and
Ennio Morricone

15:30 - 15:45 Break

15:45 - 16:15 Cornelia Soldat (Berlin)=20
Written Films (Tytus Czyzewski)

16:15 - 16:45 Natascha Drubek-Meyer (M=FCnchen) =20
Cine-graphies

16:45 - 17:30 Final Discussion


<http://www2.hu-berlin.de/slawistik/kineto>





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