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In the context of the project "Images of Research" of the class Explanded Cinema and in cooperation with the support office of the HGB Leipzig we talk to 

Charlotte Eifler & Clarissa Thieme
Artists, Berlin and Leipzig

about

Images of Research / Images as Research - 
Current reflections on artistic research as a working medium

Screening: Archival Grid I-III, 34 min

Huge archival collections such as those of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) draw attention to the relationship between forensic evidence, surveying, and collective memory. But they also cast doubt on a simple causal relationship between legal reappraisal and social remembering.

How are forensic methods used artistically, as well as legally, politically, and what impact does this have on international archives and their respective social contexts?Database logic and its aesthetics seem to increasingly dominate archival collections, especially in post-conflict societies. But are these data archives also capable of forming a collective memory, or are they too entangled in structures of digital coloniality for that?

In presenting their work ARCHIVAL GRID, artists Charlotte Eifler and Clarissa Thieme will address these questions. In a subsequent workshop, they will explore methods for memory practices and counter-narratives together with the Expanded Cinema class.

The lecture is held in the context of the project „Images of Research“ in cooperation with the support office of the HGB Leipzig.

Charlotte Eifler is an artist and filmmaker spanning performance, video, installation, XR, and sound. Her works address the politics of representation, abstraction, and computation, and are characterized by interdisciplinary forms of collaboration. Focusing on feminist approaches and elements of science fiction, she explores processes of image & history production and imaginations of alternative futures. Charlotte is co-founder and/or member of the networks Digital Critique Leipzig, G-Edit, cobratheater.cobra, FACES – gender,art,technology und feat.Fem. Since Nov 2020, she’s teaching in the department of Media Art/ Film at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG). Eifler’s works have been presented at ACM Siggraph Art, Los Angeles (US); Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden Baden (DE), Le printemps de Septembre, Toulouse (FR); Sapporo International Art Japan (JN); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (DE); IMPAKT Utrecht (NL); Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and RENCONTRES INTERNATIONAL Paris among others. Residencies and scholarships facilitated her research in Moskau (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation), New York (KdFs Foundation) and Mexico City (Institutio Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura).

Clarissa Thieme works with film, performance, text, and installation, combining documentary and fictional methods to explore processes of memory and historical translation as well as their identity implications. For this purpose, Thieme often deals with subjective testimonies in the context of collective traumas and their reconstruction with technical and legal means to trace the fissures that open up between the languages of individual memory and their translation into processes of historical objectification. Her practice is research-oriented and takes a collaborative approach. In series, many of her works link together to form long-term studies that span several years. Since the early 2000s, various artistic projects have taken her to the post-Yugoslav space, where she has collaborated with various archival collections and initiatives such as the Library Hamdija Kreševljaković Video Arhiv Sarajevo, the UnWar Space Lab Sarajevo/Mostar, and the Public Court Records of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) (http://icr.icty.org/), among others.