'Constructing the Active Citizen: Political Aesthetics and Audio-visual Form'

Professor John Corner, University of Liverpool and visting Professor at University of Leeds
Thursday 12th February, 4 pm - 6 pm, W/222
Chair: Flaminia Caprara

Interview

Professor John Corner

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John Corner has written widely on documentary and on political communication, including in the books Documentary and the Mass Media (edited, 1986), Television Form and Public Address (1995), The Art of Record (1996), Media and the Re-Styling of Politics (2003), Public Issue Television (co-authored 2007) and Theorising Media (2011, paperback 2013) as well as in many journals. He is an editor of the journal Media, Culture and Society. Recent papers and downloads can be found atwww.johncorner.com

Seminar synopsis

Documentary work, along with campaigning and promotional videos, sometimes tries to invoke the civic membership of the viewer, as part of a strategic attempt to generate specific kinds of engagement and post-viewing behaviour. This paper connects aspects of the study of audio-visual discourse with political aesthetics, investigating the forms used to engage viewing subjectivity as a mode of political subjectivity. How is the viewer presumed to be positioned politically? What, if any, assumptions about class, gender, race and other demographic variables are in play? What does the address tell us about tell us about the terms on which involvement is urged and the structures of power within which civic identity will be exercised? Does it appear to issue from outside the documented realities or is it located within them? Having looked briefly at some theoretical and analytic issues, the paper will illustrate its points by screening short extracts from three or four very different items, ranging from ‘classic’ British documentary to recent social movement videos, looking at how variations in their voicing is related to their assumptions about civic space and forms of participation within it.

Tickets

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