Prof. Dr. Gertrud Koch
Gertrud Koch is professor emerita for cinema studies at Freie Universität Berlin (1999-2020); since 2011 visiting professor at Brown University, USA. 2016-2018 she was professor II at Oslo University, Norway. She was the director of the interdisciplinary research center “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits“ at Freie Universität Berlin from 2006-2014. From 1993-1999 she was head of a research group on Democracy, Media and the Public Sphere at the Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies, Essen (KWI) and from 1991-1999 professor of film and TV studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She spent numerous stays as research fellow and visiting professor among others at NYU, Columbia University, University of Berkeley, Tel Aviv Universit, Getty Research Center in Los Angeles). Also, she was principal investigator and head of numerous research groups and graduate schools. Her research interests are the limits of political and historical representation, picture and film theory, techno-aesthetics and philosophy of art and film.
In 1993 she received a prize by the Academy of Arts, Berlin for her book Die Einstellung ist die Einstellung and her editorial work at the feminist film review Frauen und Film. In 2019 she received the honorary prize of the Association of Film Critics for her scholarly support and influence on film culture.
Gertrud Koch is co-editor and on the board of numerous German and international reviews like October, Constellation, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Cinema&Cie, et al.
Her book publications include Die Wiederkehr der Illusion. Film und die Künste der Gegenwart (2016; English translation in preparation); Zwischen Raubtier und Chamäleon. Texte zu Film, Medien, Kunst und Kultur, ed. by Judith Keilbach and Thomas Morsch (2016); Breaking Bad (2015; Breaking Out, Breaking Bad, Breaking even, 2017); Siegfried Kracauer zur Einführung (1996; Siegfrid Kracauer: An introduction, 2000), Die Einstellung ist die Einstellung. Zur visuellen Konstruktion des Judentums (1992);"Was ich erbeute, sind Bilder". Zur filmischen Repräsentation der Geschlechterdifferenz (1988); Herbert Marcuse zur Einführung (with Hauke Brunkhorst) (1987). Currently she is preparing a book on techno-aesthetics and animation.
Abstract
Animation - On the Relationship Between Technology and Aesthetics
In the renewed explication of the concept of “animation”, the project attempts to divert the gaze between the hardened fronts of dystopian technophobias (“soulless mechanics”) and romantic technophilia (“machine god” vs. nature-decaying defective human being) to areas in which technology is placed in a practical relationship and is able to sharpen an aesthetic sense of possibility through playful experimentation. Between work, exploitation and play, technology in art and as art unfolds its own field of activities that do not have to subordinate themselves to the post-human or stand in a mere expressive relationship to man. This interrelationship between human practices and technical objects (machines, instruments, screens, PCs, etc.) is what I encompass under the term “animation”. We let ourselves be animated by technical media and practices and we animate them by giving them human attributions (intelligence, etc.) and anthropomorphic designs.