Audiovisual Histospheres
Lead: Dr. Rasmus Greiner
ZeMKI-Labs "Audio-visual Media and Historiography" and "Film, Media Art and Popular Culture"
Funded by the German Federal Ministery of Education and Research (BMBF)
Duration: 2017 - 2020
The project "Audiovisual Histospheres: Experience and Reflection of Latin American Contemporary History in Fictional Film" is funded within the framework of the programme "Small Subjects - Great Potentials" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The initiative aims to further strengthen the Small Subjects and to promote outstanding young scientists with innovative research projects.
The Bremen-based project follows on from the "Film and History" field of investigation, which was initially explored by the ZF-funded "Audio History" exploration project (Winfried Pauleit, Rasmus Greiner, Mattias Frey) and established in the ZeMKI labs "Film, Media Art and Popular Culture" (Winfried Pauleit) and "Audiovisual Media and Historiography" (Delia González de Reufels). The project explores the "audiovisual histosphere" - a cinematically constructed and modelled space-time structure in which film image and film sound make history tangible and reflect it. Representations of the military dictatorship in Argentina in fictional film serve as the object of investigation. The project is thus located at the intersection of film science and Latin American history. On this basis, the project aims to exploit the potential for explorative interdisciplinary research within the framework of the small subjects mentioned above and to make the knowledge gained accessible to larger research fields in the fields of media and history studies.
In order to investigate the interaction of the various levels of meaning of the audiovisual histosphere in a model-like manner, film-scientific processes that are oriented towards narration, film image and film sound are integratively intertwined. Theories on history and film as well as the interrelationship of the medium with culture and society are also included in the considerations. Consequently, the study understands film not only as a form of representation, but also as the production of 'reality', which is expressed in particular in the aesthetic and narrative modelling of historical worlds and processes, as well as in the provision of historical interpretations.
The innovative core of the audiovisual histosphere lies in the integrative processing of the theoretical reflections on film and history, on the specificity of film as a combination of moving images and sound, on the experience of history and on the role of film as a medium of reflection in Latin American contemporary history, which have so far been largely monolithically juxtaposed. The funding period is three years.