'I AM THE DANGER!' THE ART OF TV SERIES
Symposium with Daniel Eschkötter, Sarah Khan, Gertrud Koch and Olof Olsson
6—7 December 2019
Fri 6 Dezember
7 p.m.
Gertrud Koch
As much as you can: Storytelling until sleep comes. Narrative time images in TV series (Lecture)
9—11 p.m.
Olof Olsson
Driving the Blues Away - An Info Comedy (Performance)
Sat 7 Dezember
6:00—7:15 p.m.
Daniel Eschkötter
Fables of Dis/Connectivity. A Politics of Post-(Network) TV Series (Lecture)
7:45—21:00 p.m.
Sarah Khan
Revisiting House M.D. - when thinking still helped (Lecture)
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Fri 6 Dezember, 7 p.m.
Gertrud Koch: As much as you can: Storytelling until sleep comes. Narrative time images in TV series
The new narrative formats test a new audience. An audience that simultaneously seeks diversion and immersion, the abundance of supply and the abundance of duration. Into this constellation spiral new narrative forms interweaving short forms such as episodes and serial individual parts into complex neo-baroque narrative labyrinths. In this constellation, the remake also becomes a part of an endless narrative.
Prof. Dr. Gertrud Koch is Professor emerita for Cinema Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, visiting professor at Brown University, USA and Professor II at Oslo university. She had numerous stays as research fellow and visiting professor (NYU, Columbia, Berkeley, Tel Aviv University, Getty Research Center in Los Angeles et al.) She was the director of the research center „Aesthetic experience in the sign oft he entanglement of the arts“ in Berlin from 2006-2014. Koch is the author of numerous publications and monographs and is also Co-Editor of numerous German and international reviews (October, Constellation, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Cinema&Cié et al.)
In German.
Olof Olsson: Driving the Blues Away - An Info Comedy
What connects Toblerone to Steve Jobs, cocaine, orange juice, the Virgin Mary, Heinz Ketchup, farts, and Immanuel Kant? Olof Olsson takes you on a mind-bending ride of comic infotainment. There’s no better way to drive the blues away, than Driving the Blues Away.
Driving the Blues Away is an info comedy racing through the histories of art, chocolate, cola-drinks, personal computers, philosophy, and theology. Along the way there’s a romantic melodrama – where Olof’s almost partner is seduced by an ultra famous software entrepreneur in the tax-free shop of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport. The whole thing is steeped in Olof’s twisted love of language: “Our language and the world are not always hooked up one-to-one. It’s a mess, and that makes us nervous. But it’s a funny mess.”
Olof Olsson is a product of the charter tourism of the 1960s. His Dutch mother and Swedish father met in Mallorca. In his youth Olof made attempts in journalism, documentary photography, and as a radio disc jockey. After having studied languages, philosophy and translation theory, Olof studied visual art at Konstfack in Stockholm and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Since 2007, Olof has mainly focused on spoken performance, especially info comedy.
In English.
Sa 7 December, ab 18 Uhr
Daniel Eschkötter: Fables of Dis/Connectivity. A Politics of Post-(Network) TV Series
That everything is interconnected was not just premise, formula and procedure of the big pay TV series about social connections in the American metropolis, The Wire. It was perhaps also guiding principle of the political aesthetics of a whole range of series from the peak era of auteur series, the noughties. The lecture is intended to trace this use, this political moment and to search for the continuations and abortions of the aesthetics and imagination of the network in present times of modular series. Serial networks and disconnections, in big city councils and small city bars, secret lodges and secret agencies, from Baltimore to Jonkers, from New York City to Las Vegas, from Washington D.C to Washington State, from South Dakota to Long Beach will be explored.
Daniel Eschkötter is a media scientist and film critic; editor of the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (ZfM), author of CARGO Film/Medien/Kultur and Filmbulletin, among others. He researches film phantom theory, society in series, media and substances, cinematographic proceduralism and re-education as a cinema complex. Last book publication: American Comedy. Cinema | Television | Web (joint authorship with Lukas Förster, Nikolaus Perneczky, Simon Rothöhler, Joachim Schätz). Berlin: Kadmos 2016; serial texts on The Wire, The Americans, Twin Peaks - The Return, Westworld, Hannibal, Mindhunter and many more.
In English.
Sarah Khan: Revisitung House M.D. - when thinking still helped
In 2013, Sarah Khan published her analysis of the television series „House M.D.“ and pointed out that this think tank disguised as a hospital series was a weekly workshop on American pragmatism in which 19th century detective thinking and analysis methods were practiced to retrain ideology-free thinking and problem-solving in the post-9/11 era. She predicted that „House M.D.“ would dream of a new type of US president, the type of the genius asshole. These past visions of the future appear today, only a few years later, in the face of right-wing populism, Marvel’s fight dramaturgies and Donald Trump, incredibly outdated and strangely misguided. Sarah Khan takes another look at House M.D.'s operating room to ask what has changed since then, and whether House M.D. is still good for a solution today.
Sarah Khan is a writer and lives in Berlin. Between 1999 and 2004 she published the novels "Gogo-Girl, Dein Film, Eine romantische Maßnahme". In 2009, Suhrkamp published a volume of contemporary ghost stories, "Die Gespenster von Berlin. Unheimliche Geschichten" (extended new edition 2013) and 2017 the eBay stories "Das Stammeln der Wahrsagerin". She regularly publishes reports and essays in daily newspapers and magazines. In 2012 Sarah Khan received the Michael Althen Prize for Criticism of the FAZ, which was donated for the first time. In spring 2019 she published the book "Wochenendhaus" at mikrotext, in 2013 the novella "Der Horrorpilz" was published, in 2018 the story "Weihnachten mit Hüsniye". More information on her website.
In German.
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"'I am the danger!'* The Art of TV Series" is a program at the Temporary Gallery. Center for Contemporary Art in Cologne, which presents artistic confrontations with television series. The aim of the project is to show how artists reflect the medium of the television series and how to artistically acquire it. The starting point of the entire series is the observation that television is currently experiencing a renaissance, especially in the form of television series. Millions of people around the world follow hundreds of TV series, which in this way become a very powerful means of conveying content of various (political, social, ideological) nature. The artists observe and comment on this development in their works of art, but also produce their own series. A subgenre here are, for example, artist webseries about inequality, commodification, institutional and structural defects in the art world and the role of the artists in it. Each presentation that takes place within the framework of the project will be accompanied by a discussion with invited artists and experts.
In English.