170733 UE "It's a Family Affair" (2022S)

The Corona times impact not only bodies in the form of a health crisis, but also social relations, as the policies of various governments renew the perennial idea of the nuclear family and the 'family home' - where the 'family home' not only demarcates private from public spaces, but also frames the norms of bodies, genders, and sexualities, serving as an instrument of restriction and social control. Reminiscent of U.S. government policies during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s/90s, in which conservative family values became a 'revitalizing force,' we take the 'cinema of transgression' and theorist Sara Ahmed's reflections as a starting point to imagine the idea of a 'snap.'
"Lauren Berlant introduces the idea of 'cruel optimism' to explain how we can end up holding on to what diminishes us... a cluster of promises that can surround an object (an idea, a thing, a person, a relation); how we can stay attached to a life that is not working. ... Cruel optimism might be one way of explaining how we do not snap the bonds that are, at some level, compromising, maybe of our existence; maybe of our capacity to realize an idea of an existence." A number of artists of different genres and aesthetics (film, video, sculpture, performance) have contributed their critical and often sarcastic views on a dysfunctional family system. In the seminar we will use the texts of Sara Ahmed and Lauren Berlant as a basis for our close examination of the artistic works of David Wojnarowicz, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Gillian Wearing, Tracey Moffatt (...). The seminar will be of particular interest to students of film and theater studies, as the video art examples often work with a kind of "stage", while also using very different cinematic, dramaturgical elements.