Abstract of the Talk
I am interested in interrelating approaches from Cultural Studies and Media Studies that discuss cultural and aesthetic forms of convergence under the rubric of hybridization. When viewed together, it becomes clear that the concept of hybridization involves two divergent poles. The first is connected to the tendencies of homogeneity of cultural artifacts and products on a global scale and reflects the power of globally networked enterprises in consumer industries. The second can be identified in in-between spaces where multiple, diverse, and plural forms and elements of different cultural identity correlate and interplay in ways that characterize a "creative intervention". From the point of view of cultural studies, these spaces for creative intervention are attached to radical aesthetic practices. From the point of view of media studies those impure and heterogeneous forms of interplay in the digital are identified as hybrid because they no longer refer to distinct media but to already mediated elements that can be seamlessly combined in simulation - with the resulting effect that the process of mediation appears veiled and disguised. Both discourses agree that artists are the promoters of radical and critical hybridity that unfolds its processes of intervention and reflects cultural-aesthetic multiplicity and difference in the digital arts. In my upcoming book, I wish in exemplary ways discuss approaches toward aesthetics of the hybrid with a focus on Japanese media arts that reflect Eastern and Western cultural traditions, the modern and the tradition in Japan and the creative use of new technologies. Theses examples shall, however, be related to the larger frame of hybridity in other Asian media cultures that are relevant for the scrutiny of analog and digital.

About the Speaker

Yvonne Spielmann (Ph.D.) is Professor of New Media at Paisley University, Glasgow. She was previously Professor of Visual Media at the Braunschweig School of Art, Germany and Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Siegen, Germany. She is the author of the books "Eine Pfütze in bezug aufs Mehr. Avantgarde" (1991), "Intermedialität. Das System Peter Greenaway" (1998), and "Video. Das reflexive Medium" (2005). The English translation of the book "Video ". The Reflexive Medium" is forthcoming with MIT Press in fall 2007.

She has edited "Kunst und Politik der Avantgarde" (1989), "Image - Media - Art" (German and English, 1999, together with Gundolf Winter), "What is Intermedia?", special issue of Convergence , winter 2002 (together with Jürgen Heinrichs), and is editor of "Hybrid Identities in Digital Media", special issue of Convergence , winter 2005 (together with Kerstin Mey) and the section "Forty Years of Video Art" of Art Journal (2006). Research grants and fellowships include the Getty Center (1989/90), The Society for the Humanities at Cornell University (2000/2001), The Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study & Conference Center (2002), The Daniel Langlois Foundation (2003 and 2004), the Japan Foundation (2005), and the National University of Singapore (2007).
Website: http://www.yvonne-spielmann.com

Convenor:  Dr Ingrid Hoofd
Tel : 65167619 / 6516 4671