The panel was dedicated to the deep time of visual media and of thinking in images as well as the current relationship of the film image to different practices and logics of thinking. Ancient rhetoric and memory arts that make use of interior sequences of images have been examined, as well as mental images and the arts of projection and transmission.

Thinking is not realized or circulated apart from sensual comprehension in an abstract sphere of conceptualizations. Rather, the specificities of how media mediates also mark our thoughts at the level of content. The current discourse on the “iconic turn” makes it clear that the concept of thinking has become increasingly detached from its traditional association with language. Archives of technical illustrations also alter the understanding of history. The formation and representation of simultaneity, which became possible in the film image, temporal restrictions, and inversions designate a few of the problem areas that have become virulent in the observation, description, and memory of film images. The object of this panel was to reflect on all of this through the example of (experimental) film.

Moderator:
Marc Ries (media theorist, Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach)
Panelists:
Gertrud Koch (film scholar, Freie Universität Berlin)
Siegfried Zielinski (media theorist, Universität der Künste Berlin)