2013/2 – 'Waste'

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Editorial Necsus
NECSUS Editorial Board (2013) , S. 321-322
Each issue of NECSUS begins with general articles which are not bound to a specific theme. Please note that we accept abstract submissions on a rolling basis throughout the year for these articles. In this issue we are extremely pleased to present a series of dynamic contributions, as always, dealing with cutting-edge topics in media studies.
The tactile and the index – From the remote control to the hand-held computer, some speculative reflections on the bodies of the will
Engell, Lorenz (2013) , S. 323-336
The article deals with the conception of tactility in Marshall McLuhan’s media theory and its relation to the notion of the index and the category of ‘secondness’ in the semiotic pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce. It shows how two different aspects of tactility in McLuhan’s work can be differentiated and, by further comparison with Michel Serres’ philosophy of the senses, how they are linked to the philosophical problem of the delegation of the will, or of the intention, from the human body to media technologies such as remote controls or computer interfaces.
Archival gambits in recent art – What can an image do?
Fournier, Anik (2013) , S. 337-358
In recent decades new technologies have increased access to and the manipulation of audio-visual material, to the point that today, reusing found footage has for many become a daily practice. Although the word ‘archive’ still continues to evoke notions of preservation, order, and authority, images circulate through increasingly pervasive mediascapes, being ripped, cut, retouched, pasted, and repurposed along the way. If the rise of neoliberal hegemony in the 1980s turned everyone into a consumer, in the early 1990s, with the introduction of the JPEG and other formats of what Hito Steyerl has called ‘poor images’, everyone became a produce.
Social infomediation of news on Twitter – A French case study
Smyrnaios, Nikos; Rieder, Bernhard (2013) , S. 359-382
Social infomediation is an emerging phenomenon that sees growing numbers of Internet users share and comment on news items on Facebook and Twitter. This study analyses a large sample of French-speaking Twitter users over a period of two months. First, we study some general characteristics of our sample’s usage of Twitter, such as timescale, productivity, hashtag, and URL distribution. We then compare the French online media agenda to the most shared and discussed news items in our sample in order to highlight similarities and differences. Our findings show that even though they depend on mainstream media coverage, Twitter user preferences often push political and technological stories that have been overlooked or even ignored to the forefront.
Revisiting the voice in media and as medium – New materialist propositions
Tiainen, Milla (2013) , S. 383-406
Approached with varying attention to its sensory, auditory, and signifying dimensions, over the past decades the voice has attracted repeated investigation and theorisation in research and discussions about media. The voice in media has been explored and conceptually defined by a series of undertakings, from enquiries in film studies to recent examinations of sound in the digital era. Whether overtly or more implicitly, diverse approaches both under and beyond film and media studies have also speculated about the voice itself as a medium or as involved in crucial processes of mediation. To this extent, the voice has become implicated in the very concepts of ‘media’ and ‘mediation’ – terms whose uses span a famously multi-layered range.
Waste – An introduction
Schneider, Alexandra; Strauven, Wanda (2013) , S. 409-418
With this special section we do not endeavour to synthesise the on-going debate. We rather aim at adding something to it by concentrating on the less obvious or hidden side (or ‘hidden agenda’) of waste, both from a contemporary and a historical perspective.
Orbital ruins
Parks, Lisa (2013) , S. 419-429
When satellites or meteorites fall back to earth they draw attention to the extraterritorial domains that extend up from the surface of the planet; through the atmosphere, stratosphere, and ionosphere, into the multiple orbital paths and out to the edges of the super-synchronous or ‘parking’ orbit, where satellites go to die.
‘The Sprawl of Entropy’ – Cinema, waste, and obsolescence in the 1960s and 1970s
Nardelli, Matilde (2013) , S. 431-446
The following discussion broaches the relation between cinema and waste not so much by addressing examples of cinema about waste, but by presenting cinema itself as a kind of waste. Such an approach is in part prompted by current debates about the obsolescence of cinema, be this obsolescence considered in strictly material terms – i.e. the imminent end of the film-based technology from which the medium derived its traditional definition – or from the (differently material) perspective of cinema as a socio-cultural practice, a mode of producing, circulating, and consuming moving images largely for and in the cinema theatre.
Blood, sweat, and tears – Bodily inscriptions in contemporary experimental film
Knowles, Kim (2013) , S. 447-463
The contemporary works discussed in this article emerge from a wider desire in experimental film to (re)discover the aesthetic and critical potential of celluloid as it shifts, to employ the terminology coined by Raymond Williams, from the dominant to the residual.
Transcending obsolescence in technological ruins? Questions of conservation and presentation in Nam June Paik’s Something Pacific and Rembrandt Automatic
Hölling, Hanna B. (2013) , S. 465-482
Standing amidst the lively garden of the campus of the University of California, San Diego, I am looking at the many television sets, Buddhas, and elements of various electronic devices scattered around. As the first outdoor ensemble of the Korean video artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006), the installation Something Pacific (1986) was installed here almost three decades ago. Although meticulously trimmed, the grass grows over the sculptures just slightly – nature, as time, is taking over the arrangement. There is a particular feeling that is attached to this observation, a feeling of tranquillity, stasis, deactivation, perhaps meditation and somewhat religious emotion. This strangely-arranged ensemble, rather than putting malfunction on display, takes the viewer to the other side (perhaps to nostalgia), questioning the standard of what is expected of media – a desire or even demand to view a transmitted image. It is astonishing in its devotion to stillness and contemplation.
Documentaries without documents? Ecocinema and the toxic
Schoonover, Karl (2013) , S. 483-507
A recent wave of ecological documentaries made in the United States and Europe appear to confer with this sense that waste is something to which we are blind. These documentaries forecast an impending environmental catastrophe of trash, a future global disaster with its roots in humanity’s current unwillingness to acknowledge waste as a problem.
‘The Sown and the Waste’ – or, the psychedelic writing of film history
Tybjerg, Casper (2013) , S. 509-525
The word ‘psychedelic’ was coined in the 1950s by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond to describe hallucinogenic drugs like mescaline and LSD – but this essay will not be about either the history of ‘head’ films or how to write film history on acid. What I want to do is to show what film historians can learn from J.H. Hexter’s writings on the rhetoric of history, including a look at what he meant when he wrote about how historians use language ‘psychedelically’.
Media zoology and waste management – Animal energies and medianatures
Parikka, Jussi (2013) , S. 527-544
In this article I will investigate the relations of media and ecology, arguing that the incorporation of nature and ecology as part of the media theoretical discourse should also be connected to the ecological contexts in which theory is being produced. This means a concretisation of media ecology in terms of its focus and topic to take into account the current eco-crisis, from perspectives related to animal studies, electronic waste, and even geology. In this sense, the argument of the text is simple: there is a concrete edge to media ecological theory, and in this instance it is elaborated through the themes of animals, waste, and mineral resources.
The aesthetics of dispersed attention – An interview with German media theorist Petra Löffler
Lovink, Geert (2013) , S. 545-555
Found footage photogénie – An interview with Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi and Mark-Paul Meyer
Olesen, Christian Gosvig (2013) , S. 555-562
Colour Films in Britain
Hanssen, Eirik Frisvold (2013) , S. 563-568
Re-writing the history of the avant-garde
Camporesi, Enrico (2013) , S. 569-573
Moving data
Gnesda, Sophie; Reichert, Ramón (2013) , S. 573-578
Trans* film festivals – An interview with Eliza Steinbock
de Valck, Marijke; Loist, Skadi (2013) , S. 579-588
The business of audience festivals – Calgary International Film Festival 2012
Kredell, Brendan (2013) , S. 588-593

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