This seminar is intended for students interested in photographic archives and developing their own artistic projects. It is closely connected to the interdisciplinary seminar 'One Million Hot Cells' and will comprise bi-weekly working sessions.
Through analysing photographic materials from the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Centre (founded in 1956) and the Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU, founded in 1957), as well as images produced during a site visit to an operational nuclear safety research facility, this practical as well as theoretical seminar explores the following questions together with specialists and fellow teachers: In what ways can images from these collections be interpreted? To what extent can the spaces, technologies and arrangements depicted be understood as material expressions of particular assumptions, claims, demands or lines of enquiry, especially in relation to radioactive materials and their extended temporalities? Laboratory settings and configurations are embedded within specific scientific cultures and research contexts. How are these dimensions revealed in the images, and how might our own photographic work contribute to or reshape these perspectives?
Through analysing photographic materials from the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Centre (founded in 1956) and the Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU, founded in 1957), as well as images produced during a site visit to an operational nuclear safety research facility, this practical as well as theoretical seminar explores the following questions together with specialists and fellow teachers: In what ways can images from these collections be interpreted? To what extent can the spaces, technologies and arrangements depicted be understood as material expressions of particular assumptions, claims, demands or lines of enquiry, especially in relation to radioactive materials and their extended temporalities? Laboratory settings and configurations are embedded within specific scientific cultures and research contexts. How are these dimensions revealed in the images, and how might our own photographic work contribute to or reshape these perspectives?
- Dozent/in: Judith Milz