Projection Studies

Abstract

This paper aims at contrasting the traditional field of “screen and film studies” with an investigative approach inspired by practices of projection, more attentive to the heterogeneous character of media technology, and therefore more able to analyse the particularities of images enacted and distributed by digital networks. Specifically, it will present curating as an empirical methodology that both highlights the materiality underpinning academic work and allows for an actual engagement with the contradictions inherent to research objects. My proposal is based on similar methodological efforts made by Matthew Kirschenbaum and Lisa Parks, respectively for the study of the inscription of data in computer hard drives and of the transmission of signal via satellites. Inspired by their work with digital forensics and information visualisation, I appropriate Siegfried Zielinski’s idea of projection as “a media strategy located between proof of truth and illusioning” as a self­reflexive model for understanding the processes simultaneously involved in the constitution and operation of audiovisual systems. I mean to exemplify this approach by the means of projects such as the video exhibition Tape Deck Solos, commissioned and presented during the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), which allowed for a sort of “immediate media archaeology” that underscored the character 15 of videomaking as performance. In this context, the exhibition created an opportunity for video to reflect upon itself and its history. By doing so, I hope to demonstrate the advantages of the making of the exhibition as a research strategy.