Overview Research Program

Our work at Cinepoetics – Center for Advanced Film Studies is set to theoretically and methodologically grasp the poiesis of viewing films, and to describe all its possible implications. The assumption is that specific schemata of cognition, feeling, and thinking – on the basis of which we experience and understand film – only emerge through the interaction of audiovisual images as an embodied seeing and hearing. By analyzing the repetition, alteration, or intertwining of these schemata, understood as modulations of the temporality and expressivity of images, we want to approach a genuine discourse of thinking in cinematic images. Thus, political as well as historical effects are expressed in this discourse.

In making our central theses concerning the poiesis of viewing films and the discourse of cinematic images graspable, we are exploring several different scholarly perspectives, with the help of colleagues from disciplines such as film and media studies, but also psychology and linguistics, philosophy, literature studies, and artistic researchers. At the core of our work lies the constant interchange of ideas between our research group (directors as well as the post-doctoral and doctoral researchers) and the contributions of our fellows and guests through readings, film screenings, and talks in each research focus.

Both, individual projects and group events aim at closely taking into account the dimensions of the poiesis of viewing films and the discourse of audiovisual images. These are:

1.)   Theoretical and methodical models, able to describe the interaction with cinematic images as a process of generating meaning and the production of effects of subjectivity.

2.)   Effects of community building which can be analyzed within the poiesis of viewing films as a ‘making’ of different forms of shared experience – as a mode of plural thinking.

3.)   Establishing a space of historical experience where various poetologies of audiovisual images can connect and branch out, thus, enabling a thinking of historicity.

We have been working on these three dimensions in discrete but consecutive research foci: first we worked with theoretical and methodical models. Our paradigmatic focus here was the case of metaphor and metaphorizing in film. Subsequently, we treated questions concerning the relation of genre poetics and affective dimensions of audiovisual images, before we continued with historical as well as recent concepts of poiesis, poetics, and political praxis. Furthermore, we researched perspectives from the philosophy of history to understand not only the discourse of historical experience, but also the artistic practices within this realm of experience.