Ryerson Lecture Series: November 20, 2007 – Lorraine Gilbert

“The intent of the photographer determines if it is documentary.”
“Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones that put life into stones and pebbles.”
“This is………. (not this is a photo of……….).”
Photographs may not lie but liars may make photographs.
The hardest role an actor will ever play is that of an actor, especially a bad one.

Ryerson Lecture Series: January 10, 2008 – Dr. Alex Bal

Second Life as a platform for documentary interaction?
Second Life is an internet based 3D virtual world launched in 2003.
It distributes social media cultural artifacts.
It has the potential to be cultural evolution based on CDA.
Distribution/Creation//Production Cultural Industries
Copyleft started on the net, people wanting to share info.
Value in information taken from net.
Any mediated communication system (media) equals tacit representation of ideology.
All current media was once new media.
No environment is fixed in time.
The public is part of producing context.
www.wefeelfine.org
“Dig It”
Gaming has a culture outside of games.
Knowledge versus information.

Ryerson Lecture Series: January 17, 2008 – Diedre Boyle

“Breaking The Silence”
Films: S-21 The Bet, The Sorrow and The Pity
Reenactments in documentary history when dealing with traumatic events.
Is reenactment legitimate?
How do you understand traumatic memory?
Relationship between memory and spirituality, memory and time?
Horror committed, then deemed to be terrorism.
Cambodia/Indonesia genocide.
“Cinema is an edifice of memories.”
Ridley Pan: S-21
Non-verbal aspect of the past (poetry from
Indonesia).
Two million people killed (25% of population).
Toulsang 19.000.
The memory of the body (body language) never lies.
Body language more “truthful” than stories.
Dissociative Memory.
Dominique LeCapra
Absence of narrative memory, excess of dissociative.
“If you can’t grieve, you can’t reenact the violence.”
Genocide without images.
S-21 helped break the silence.
Indonesian history of genocide (like Cambodia).
“Opera Java” –Peter Sellers
“The Killing Fields” – fiction film version.
Ibraham Cadir
De Dung – passing on cultural traditions, 2 groups dueling for 7 days.
Film made in 2001, people in film are actual survivors of the event.
The film becomes its own De Dung. Embodied memory.
Film funded by Ford Foundation, which referred to it (erroneously) as. “Quasi-History.”
George Rooker
Reenactment is, “the story living in the person telling it.”
“Fear of forgetting.”
boyled@newschool.ed

Ryerson Lecture Series: January 29, 2008 – Michael Schreier

“Tears for An Empty Desert”
Capture space.
Authority (cameraman)
Director (person asking for picture)
Photography can never die, only the technology can die.
One is not alone.
Territory.
Photography is the way to enter into the discipline of voice.
Exercise: Choose a work of art that inspires you. Sit and look at it for an hour.
The making of art is about gaining knowledge.
Continuity is the issue.
What is the urgency to speak?
The value of the individual and the singular experience.
An immigrant always brings memory of another time and place.
There are moments in time that can’t be shared.
The interaction with the individual may cause something to happen.
Portraits are really self-portraits.
Art is not the witness to time.
The witness to time is the witness.
What did you want to do?
What did you do?
What does your work say (learning)?
What are the implications?
Where do you place this in the history of your own voice and in the history of art?
Examine the work of Gaston Bachelard.

Ryerson Lecture Series: January 31, 2008 – Dr. Edward Slopek

Toronto/Montreal Together Elsewhere Conference.
Discussion of Charles Babbage, who started automatic computation.
‘The greatest thing the human soul does in this world is to see something.”

Ryerson Lecture Series: February 7, 2008 – Eduardo Kac

Part of Kodak Lecture Series
Introduction by Steve Daniels.
Interactive and navigational poems.
Background as a writer of experimental poetry.
One speaks, many listen.
1986 – Telepresence art (Will Robertson).
Robot had no intelligence of its own, reflected what was input.
Transgenic Art (“GENISIS”)
Biblical statement translated to Morse code.
Converted to DNA.
Encoding in (letters).
Creates disembodied.
DNA, context equals environment.
Every culture has imaginary creatures.
You cannot treat life as an object.
“I reappropriate their appropriation to fit mine.”

Ryerson Lecture Series: February 12, 2008 – David Tucker

The difference between documentary and drama, “Drama is life with all the dull bits cut out.”
“Your subject must want to explore the theme with as much enthusiasm as you do.”

Ryerson Lecture Series:February 26, 2008 – Carole Conde/Karl Bevridge

Political/Union photos
Stories about experience and conditions of work that documentary can only imply
Show what cannot be seen
Work as identity of what people do and contribute to larger social good
Climate of the times: issues of voice and representation
Process: conduct workshops with participants/research
All artists work with a community and need to connect with people and places where they live.

Ryerson Lecture Series: March 11, 2008 – Bob Arnold

Experimental should not necessarily exclude other categories.
What art form has the dialectic of formal language and had representational framework (to convey feelings)?
Script First!!
Conception over execution.
1991 – “Travel Postcards” Travelogue (5 – 6 years)
2000 – “Triptych” weapons of mass destruction
Narrative film creates expectation

Ryerson Lecture Series: March 27, 2008 – Clement Cleroux

What did we see of 9/11?
The same images over and over.
289 images of front pages.
9/11 treated as act of war rather than an act of pride.
“The government should terminate the system that did this.” – Henry Kissinger
Difference in coverage of event:
American Press French Press
Explosions 41% 5%
Cloud 17% 30%
Ruins 14% 30%
Plane 13.5% 10%
Scenes of Panic 6% 5%
Flag 3.5% 10%
Other 5% 10%

History is a memory of the past.
2001 – 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbour.
Disney – “Pearl Harbour”
“Flags of our Fathers” published in August 2001.
“History as seen as entertainment?”
“Hollywood profitized 9/11”.
Media coverage of attacks shaped by Hollywood (not history).
Blake Fitzpatrick: “Prismatic view….what role does trauma play?”
Blake: “We find trauma mostly for TV, not the press.”
Falling man photo had some reaction in the US and France.