November 17: Eivind Røssaak on "The Performative Archive"

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar at 6:45 pm on Thursday, November 17 to welcome Eivind Røssaak (U.Chicago-visiting) for his talk, "The Performative Archive: The Archival Turn in Film, Art and New Media Practices." Domietta Torlasco (Northwestern) will provide the response. The CFS will be held, as always, in the Flaxman Theater, Room 1307 of the School of the Art Institute's building at 112 S. Michigan Ave.

Thursday, November 17 at 6:45pm
Eivind Røssaak, Associate Professor at the National Library of Norway and visiting professor at U.Chicago
"The Performative Archive: The Archival Turn in Film, Art and New Media Practices"
Respondent: Domietta Torlasco, Northwestern

Røssaak describes his talk as follows:

Paradoxically the archival turn in question happens as notions of the archive expand beyond the sphere of the archives proper, to philosophy, art, film and new media practices. This paper will present two interlinked aspects of the archival turn. On the one hand, inspired by the archival theories of Foucault and Derrida, research projects in Chicago, New York, Paris, Berlin and Oslo use notions of the archive as a key for understanding media history and the humanities. On the other hand, filmmakers, artists and new media wizards refashion old archival techniques to transform collections, memories and systemic structures into new arguments and sensible utterances. This is what I call performative archives. Key film and art works by Richter, Gordon, Godard, Jacobs, Müller and Farocki demonstrate this.