The State of Things. On Collective Filmmaking

During the Summer semester of 2024, IZK - Institute for Contemporary Art offered two specialization modules - In Stasis. The State of an Island and The State of Things. On collective Filmmaking. Sharing a common theme, the courses focused on built landscapes, seascapes, histories, and political contexts of the Brijuni archipelago. The format of the courses was based on international collaboration and shared lectures, excursions, and exchange among students and staff with the Research Department for Spatial Design, Vienna University of Technology, the Professorship of Architecture and Territorial Planning, ETH Zurich, and the MA City Design, Royal College of Art, London.

The State of Things. On collective Filmmaking

Art and the Social Specialisation module C21

Course Lecturers: Philipp Sattler, Milica Tomić

In this course, students worked on film along the southern Istrian coast - from Pula to Vodnjan, Fažana and into the archipelago of Brijuni. These cities, islands and the socio-political and military histories inscribed spatially into land and sea formed objects of study for the course. Inspired by cinema clubs in Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s, the amateur filmmaking movement, and anarchist self-organization forms, students developed an experimental collective film project. We explored the themes of anti-fascist graffiti as a form of spatial resistance and the history and critique of the Non-Aligned Movement in the area. We asked what form collectivity can take and what it means inside the university. How and what political positions arise from a collective film approach - historical, contemporary, and our own - were thought together with several inputs on histories of the region, current research on human and more-than-human worlds, archive, museum, and site visits.

Dates:

March-May

Tuesday13:00-15:00

Friday 13:00-15:00

Field Recording April 12-April 15. 2024

Excursion May 13-May 17. 2024

Collaboration partners:

Milica Tomić, Philipp Sattler, IZK - Institute for Contemporary Art, Graz University of Technology

Wilfried Kuehn, Marko Lulić, Wassily Walter, Research Department for Spatial Design, Vienna University of Technology

Milica Topalović, Professorship of Architecture and Territorial Planning, ETH Zurich

Dubravka Sekulić, MA City Design, Royal College of Art, London

Classroom Collaboration and Excursion to Brijuni