PhD student in museology
I’m a PhD student in museology and work on a project about the musealization of film. In the project, I look at how film was changed as it became an archival or museal object—that is, something that ought to be collected, preserved and exhibited rather than discarded.
A central question concerns the aura of film. Walter Benjamin famously suggested that film (as a mechanically reproducible art form) was non-auratic. One could however argue that one consequence of its musealization was that film became auratic, and today this has become very apparent with film screenings that are marketed using terms such as “vintage print”. The principal aim for this project is to describe this process of auratization, and to suggest what some of its cultural and political implications might be.
I’ll try to answer these questions by gathering terms and tools from disciplines such as cinema and media studies, art history, and of course museology. The project also includes a case study in which I look at one film archive and how its activities relate to international praxis. Last but not least, I am also very interested in looking at specific films that challenge the ideas of what a cinematographic aura could be.