Kolloquium Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften - Todd Carmody, Barbara Mennel, Carolin Duttlinger

The Work of the Image: Film and Labor in Turn-of-the-Century America and Contemporary Europe

This joint presentation traces the relationship between visuality and labor across the twentieth century, from Taylorist motion studies in the United States to the contemporary European heritage cinema of industrial and mechanical labor. How does film capture movement in the service of efficiency and the standardization of labor processes? How does contemporary cinema depict increasingly immaterial labor? This cross-cutting topic puts two different historical and geographical moments in conversation with each other in order to address continuities and ruptures in the relationship of visual culture and labor.