Race as Film Technology

• In Event: Race and/as Technology - I

Abstract

In my paper I aim to examine the extent to which the audiovisual artwork „Night Cries. A Rural Tragedy“ by Tracey Moffatt draws a contrast to the racist aesthetics that have been manifest in color film since its earliest days. With her color concept, I want to argue, Moffatt sets a counterpoint to a film history that has exploited women and/or People of Color, in particular Indigenous Peoples, as reality markers in order to help color to attain the status of reality and thus establish it on the film market as a legitimate technique. My analysis will also engage in how Moffat not only questions visual racism in ways that are highly media reflexive, but also critically appropriates and reformulates mainstream white aesthetics.
In understanding "race" as technology, it is possible to perceive technological instruments of the moving image as instruments of "race" as technology. Ultimately, this means that I will look at the nexus of technology as a dispositif and technology as an analog device. This will not only help to understand technological-aesthetic exclusions, but also the shaping of and work on counter-aesthetics. Furthermore, I will be concerned with the following questions: What can we learn from Art to understand the history and workings of Race as Technology? Can Aesthetics tell us something about the Usage of Technology? Does the shift in focus from "the what of race to the how of race" make the category "race" vanish, because its tautological nature can be experienced?

Author

• Julian Sverre Georg Bauer, Universität der Künste Berlin