Transcultural Media Studies Project

The Transcultural Media Studies Project (tmsp) serves as a platform to facilitate (and contribute to) collaborative research efforts in transcultural media studies (and develop tms as an approach to digital/visual media). 

Contact:

Dr. Soenke Zehle

Transcultural Media Studies Project

FR 4.3 British, North American, and Anglophone Literatures and Cultures

Universitaet des Saarlandes

66041 Saarbruecken

Germany

 

Current Projects

Cameroon - Visual Media in Transcultural Perspective (2008-)

Cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts Saar and the Goethe Institute (Cameroon). Student exchange, development of video/cultural journalism workshops and curricula. First workshops held in 2008, fact-finding mission 2009, second round of workshops (film education, documentary, 3D/animation) 2010.

 

Network Ecologies (2009-)

  • 2009: Special issue of IRIE. Cooperation with Matthias Feilhauer (European Support Center of the Club of Rome) and the International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE).
  • 2010: workshop in Shanghai, in cooperation with the Institute of Comparative Cultural Studies (Ningbo, China) and the Asia-Europe Foundation (Singapore).
  • 2010: Special eco-media issue of fibreculture (co-edited with Ned Rossiter, Sean Cubitt, Andrew Murphie)

 

Serious Games

African Cinema Festival (2006-)

Each year, a new edition of the African Cinema Festival introduces the work of 'anglophone' and  'francophone' African filmmakers, directors and critics are invited to introduce the various cinemas of the continent and its diaspora. Since its foundation in 2001, the African Cinema Festival has developed into an inter-departmental and inter-university media and research project and assumed a central place in the cultural life of the city of Saarbruecken as well as the larger (cross-border) region. tmsp has contributed to the Festival since 2006.

Microscience - Reverse Technology Transfer (2008-)

Translation of microscience materials for adoption in local school contexts. Partners include UNESCO, Saarlab, Saar Ministry of Culture. To be released spring 2010.

Organized Networks (2007-)

Orgnets was initiated in cooperation with Ned Rossiter (University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China). First series of workshops in the context of a 'Mobile Research Laboratory on the Creative Industries' in Beijing, China (summer 2007). A series of essays based on the mobile research lab is published in issue 33 (Nov 2008) of Urban China.

 

Archive

Grenzgänge/Bordercrossings(16 - 31 July 2009)

Grenzgänger zwischen Journalismus, Literatur und Wissenschaft, Chronist der Dritten Welt, einer der großen Schriftsteller Polens: Im Europa-Jahr 2009 stellt die Galerie im Rathaus Saarbrücken das journalistische und - erstmals - auch das fotografische Werk Ryszard Kapuscinskis (1932-2007) vor.

 

PC Global (2006-2007)

Research contributions to a project on the eco-political dimensions of ICT by the German NGO WEED. Also see the Good Electronics Network.

incommunicado (2004-)

The incommunicado network is a joint effort of tmsp and the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) in Amsterdam. Launched in 2004 as a mailing list, a collaborative weblog soon followed, and in June 2005, a first working conference was held. A post-conference reader and a CD with video-interviews was published in November 2005. As a pre- and post-conference initiative, incommunicado is used mainly as an info-site, traffic on the mailing list is low. But we just keep it online anyway.

tmsp news

Symposium Netz.Ökologien

Netz.Ökologien:

Zur Ethik des Abfalls im Zeitalter digitaler Medialisierung

Symposium in Kooperation mit dem International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE)

2.-3. Juli 2010

Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar, Saarbrücken

 

African Cinema Festival

Eröffnung 07. November 2009, 19 Uhr

 

Essay, Special Issue: Network Ecologies

"With this issue, IRIE – dedicated to the development of information ethics as a reflexive practice and conceptual horizon – aims to engage itself with the broad range of materials involved in the very acts and processes of communication, information, and knowledge production."

 

Essay: From Weak Ties to Organized Networks

"Winter Camp was too short, too small to yield results that can simply be generalized across the terrains of net.culture, but it confirmed the need to couple face-to-face meetings with a research agenda that both takes key signals from what’s happening at the grassroots and prompts critical reflection on issues across network boundaries."

 

Essay: Reporter ohne Grenzen

"Videoblogger konkurrieren mit den Welterklärern der Auslandsreportage,
neue Tools von Google und Co ermöglichen dynamische Visualisierungen
von Krisenverläufen - der Wandel des Internet zum Echtzeitmedium
verändert auch die Krisenberichterstattung."

 

Essay: Organizing Networks

"The return of political ontology and its critique of representation contributes to a retrieval of the antagonistic registers of "the political." A corresponding interest in processes of collaborative constitution has explored alternative modalities of the (conflictual) production of (political) subjectivity."

 

Essay: Freie Software

"Afrikanische FOSS-Initiativen zeigen, dass ein kollaborativer Ethos und die damit verbundenen Entwicklungspraktiken kein post-materieller Luxus der Industrieländer sind."