Trial + Error Szenarien medialen Handelns
Conference of the International Research Training Group Interart Studies
21-23 June 2012
What do inner experiences in respect to time-based visual media, early modern drafts of artes memorativae, and screen-based games have in common? They all operate with respectively in scenarios in their own specific ways. But, which forms of action, which categories of practices are used within this context? When dealing with mixed structures of media, different types of thinking in terms of scenarios become obvious here.While performing mental operations where something appears ‘as something’, it isn’t clearly defined what exactly occurred in the first place. If one follows this responsive mode of imagining, then signifying what is about to emerge is already subsequent to the act of signification itself: It involves an oscillation between aesthetic and semiotic qualities which finds its expression e.g. in the omission of performed or represented motion.Particularly non-representability must be considered an essential characteristic of scenarios of media practices. This disposition ranges between various levels of trial and error. Within the emphatic act of hesitation, in the moment before a subject matter is updated, different possible actions are played through by trial and error. The mode of creating scenarios is symptomatic for the perception and the handling of media. Without the precedence of a scale of knowing how, knowing that, and tacit knowing, related mental projections of action wouldn’t be possible – not to speak of a medial scenariology.An analysis of medialized behavioural economies is simply impossible in such a setting without a qualified notion of what ‘scenario’ means; media theory and history can’t merely be limited to a history of the apparatus. This way media research, as practiced by various disciplines today, could also be described as phenomenal registry for specific operational methods and their historico-cultural process of emergence/disappearance.The historical term of ‘scenario’ is closely linked to theater which, as a scenic product of cultural practices, has fundamentally reflected and shaped past and current forms of performative and perceptive practices. Accordingly, scenarios are continually re-shaping laboratories of media. If this model is to be taken seriously, then performances, images, films, maps, simulations, sketches, games, plans etc. are merely machines of visibility – displaying what constantly takes place behind the scenes when thinking in scenarios.This year’s conference of the International Research Training Group “Interart Studies” will follow those traces to allow a better understanding of why these gestures of practice can be described within intermedial models of action. Against the backdrop of major socio-cultural, technological, and aesthetic changes, current concepts of ‘scenario’ must be revised: These changes can be examined from the perspective of various disciplines and by using a multitude of subjects and materials. Recent developments, f.i. in the field of experimental philosophy, new pragmatist approaches in aesthetics as well as the creation of Speculative Realism/Materialism in the Anglo-American sphere, could be productive starting points.Addressee: media theory, theater studies, philosophy, art history, visual studies, literary studies, cultural studies.
Andreas Wolfsteiner und Markus Rautzenberg
===CONFERENCE PROGRAM ===
*** Thursday, June 21st 2012
13:30 Registration
14:00 Welcoming - Erika Fischer-Lichte
14:15 Introduction - Andreas Wolfsteiner/Markus Rautzenberg
14:45 Break
=== I. To Start+To Destroy
15:00 Fabian Goppelsröder: Einstimmen. Zur Musikalität von Versuch und Irrtum
15:45 Break
16:00 Matthias Bauer: Szenarien virtualisierter Historie im rezenten Kino-
und Fernsehfilm
16:45 Emmanuel Alloa: Machen, Durchmachen, Erproben. Zur Medialität von
Versuchsanordnungen
17:30 Break
=== Opening of the research college »BildEvidenz. Geschichte und
Ästhetik« [Koserstr. 20, 14195 Berlin-Dahlem]
18:00 Helmut Lethen: Die Ausstellung von Evidenz [evening lecture]
***Friday, June 22st 2012***
=== II. To Save+To Delete
10:00 Rolf Nohr: Umschalt+F12. Speichern und Re-Entry im Computerspiel
10:45 Sebastian Vehlken: Datengestöber. Trial and Error in der
computergestützten Schwarmforschung
11:30 Break
=== III. To Try+To Draft
11:45 Jürgen Bohm: Jenseits des Phantom Trucks. Laster der Evidenz und des
Kalküls in Szenarien medialen Handelns
12:30 Lunch break
14:00 Ana Ofak: Experimentieren. Szenarien des Bildwerdens in der
Neoavantgarde
14:45 Thomas Hensel: »Übrigens wurde häufig umgruppiert«. Aby Warburgs
Versuchsanordnungen
15:30 Break
=== IV. To Format+To Control
16:00 Anna Echterhölter: Atmosphärische Schrift. Formen der Wetternotation
um 1800 als körperliche und operative Zukunftsreferenz
16:45 Mirjam Schaub: Trial or Error: Stanley Kubricks »Dr. Strangelove«
als ultimative Kontrollphantasie eines Perfektionisten
17:30 Break
18:00 Thomas Macho: Gedankenexperimente der Beratung [evening lecture]
***Saturday, June 23rd 2012***:
=== V. To Experiment+To Puzzle
11:00 Georg Bertram: Kunst und die Möglichkeit des Scheiterns
11:45 Andreas Josef Vater: Näher, aber nicht größer. Das Rätselbild in den
»Frauenzimmer Gesprächspielen« Georg Philipp Harsdörffers
12:30 Lunch break
14:00 Helmar Schramm: Gesichter und Zahlen. Anmerkungen zu Christian
Boltanskis Installation »Chance«
14:45 Adam Czirak: Im Angesicht des Todes. Das Intervall von
Todesbewusstsein und Nicht-Sein in theatralen Szenarien
15:30 Break
=== VI. To Operate+To Intervene
16:00 Knut Ebeling: Mediale Operationen. Kleine Verschwörungstheorie der
Medien
16:45 Jean Clam: »Mädien«. Die unangreifbare Ontologizität von Szenarien
und wie sie (fast nie) reißt[closing lecture]
