Faces

The close-up of the human face and its monumentalization on the screen were outstanding sensations in the early days of film, the “cinema of attractions” (Tom Gunning). However, the attractiveness of this motif runs through the history of the moving image right up to our digital culture.

We will trace the staging of the face primarily in avant-garde and underground cinema and in experimental film, but also undertake excursions into feature film and more commercially influenced areas such as music videos, as well as other arts. The face with its partial organs and senses becomes the connecting link between early and contemporary moving images across genres.

The algorithmic smoothing of individual physiognomic features, the degradation of the face to a data carrier for biometric recording, not least its masking in the pandemic as a gateway for a dangerous virus, have allowed our “facial society” (Thomas Macho) to enter a new phase – contemporary conditions that are to be considered in this seminar.

Artists: Bas Jan Ader, Khalik Allah, Frank Beauvais, Ingmar Bergman, Peter Campus, Shirley and Wendy Clarke, Die Tödliche Doris, Stephen Dwoskin, Omer Fast, Hollis Frampton, Herz Frank, Jack Goldstein, Holly Herndon, Narcisa Hirsch, Mike Hoolboom, David Horvitz, Kurt Kren, Lucrecia Martel, Mara Mattuschka, Adrian Paci, Katharina Pethke, Peter Roehr, Sophie, Chieko Shiomi, Henri Storck, Andy Warhol, Gillian Wearing, Katarina Zdjelar, Anna Malina Zemlianski and others.

Sessions: Facing Film / Look At My Face / I'll Be Your Mirror / Faces In The Crowd / Face Blindness / Masks / Pain Is Within Reach / Face Off: Loss Of Face / The Children Are Watching Us / La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc / Screen Tests / Star-Struck

Literature: Joanna Barck: Gesichter des Films; Hans Belting: Faces; Christa Blümlinger [Hg.]: Das Gesicht im Zeitalter des bewegten Bildes; Thomas Macho / Gerburg Treusch-Dieter [Hg.]: Medium Gesicht. Die faciale Gesellschaft; Noa Steimatsky: The Face on Film; Sigrid Weigel [Hg.]: Gesichter; Wolfgang Ullrich: Selfies; Judith Elisabeth Weiss [Hg.]: Kunstforum International – Gesicht im Porträt / Porträt ohne Gesicht, Bd. 216