The expression ‘organization of perception’ appears in one of the first paragraphs of Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’ (1935-36), in a passage that highlights the historical determination of sensory perception. The idea of the historicity of perception – which Benjamin found in art historians such as Alois Riegl, Franz Wickhoff, and Heinrich Wölfflin – lies at the very center of what one can consider his ‘media theory’.
Yet the notion of an organization of perception also relates to the wider context of aesthetic theories and practices of the 1920s and 1930s, including a series of sensorial experiments exploring this link: Thus, in theorizing rhythm, the Soviet avantgarde negotiates between transgressions of a homogeneous, linear time regime and the industrial organization of movements and frequencies of body, speech, and thought. Projection, on the other hand, structures the perception of light and redefines the materiality of perception in such a radical way that the very notion of materialism is challenged.
The workshop considers the relation of media and perception in terms of historicity, rhythm, and projection, thereby connecting to the current ICI Focus ‘ERRANS, in Time’. It brings together a number of scholars who have researched particular constellations of the historical, technical, and political organization of perception.
Programme
Part I
16:00 Welcome
16:10 Antonio Somaini (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3)
Light as Medium
16:40 Elena Vogman (DFG project ‘Rhythm and Projection’ at FU Berlin)
Rhythm, Medium, Milieu: On the Memory of Forms
17:00 Gertrud Koch (Freie Universität Berlin)
Film Theory as Media Theorie
17:20 Discussion
17:50 Coffee break
Part II
18:10 Ekaterina Tewes (DFG project ‘Rhythm and Projection’ at FU Berlin)
Organization of Perception, Organization of Matter
18:30 Georg Witte (DFG project ‘Rhythm and Projection’ at FU Berlin)
Rhythm, Organization, Form
18:50 Clara Masnatta (ICI Berlin)
Paradoxical Presence: Projecting Colors
19:10 Discussion
In English
With
Gertrud Koch
Clara Masnatta
Antonio Somaini
Ekaterina Tewes
Elena Vogman
Georg Witte
Organized by
Organized by the DFG project ‘Rhythm and Projection’ at the Peter Szondi-Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin (rhythmusundprojektion.com) in collaboration with Clara Masnatta
The event, like all events at the ICI Berlin, is open to the public, free of charge. The audience is presumed to consent to a possible recording on the part of the ICI Berlin. If you would like to attend the event yet might require assistance, please contact Event Management.
