Geist and the Machine
The German term Geist bears no simple translation into English. From spirit to mind to ghost to intellect, it exists both as a singular philosophical concept and an elusive shapeshifter. In The Spirit of Film, Béla Balázs writes that “the camera can photograph the unconscious,” citing cinema’s ability to use technology in order to reveal immaterial thoughts and desires, while placing it in a penetrating relationship to the idealist and invisible nature of Geist. Throughout film’s relatively short history, discussion and theorizing of the impact of the intrusive nature of the medium on individuals and society at large has remained ever-presently suspect. Yet writers such as Walter Benjamin offer an alternative approach to this seemingly symptomatic problem by proposing that the film actor is not exploited by technology, but rather “preserve[s] one’s humanity in the face of the apparatus,” and furthermore, offers the spectator a chance to regain one’s own humanity by proxy. This conference seeks to animate the debate surrounding film’s value for society by exploring the relationship between technology and imagination as illuminated by cinema.
A B O U T
Our keynote speaker, Gertrud Koch, teaches cinema studies at the Free University in Berlin where she is also the director of SFB626, a research center on aesthetic experience. She has taught at many international universities and was a fellow at research centers such as the Getty and Brown University’s Cogut Center for Humanities in 2011.
She is the author of books on Herbert Marcuse and Siegfried Kracauer, feminist film theory, and on the representation of Jewish history. She has edited numerous volumes on aesthetics, perception and film theory. She is also a co-editor and board member of numerous journals such as Babylon, Frauen und Film, October, Constellations, and Philosophy & Social Criticism among others.
