The International Association for Media and History
and
Centre national de l’audiovisuel du Luxembourg & Université du Luxembourg
One-day symposium
STANDING IN THE WAY OF WHITE NOISE: PRESERVING TELEVISION HISTORY
Location: Friday, 25 January 2019. Centre national de l’audiovisuel (Luxembourg)
1b, rue du Centenaire, L-3475 Dudelange
PROGRAMME:
09.30 – 10.00: Registration & Welcome
10.00 – 11.15: Session 1
1. 10.00 – 10.10: Lightning talk: CNA and its collections, Alessandra Luciano, Digital Curator, CNA
A brief overview of CNA’s archival treasures. With an emphasis on our television heritage.
2. 10.10 – 10.30: The Commerce of Knowledge: Creating Historical DVD Bonus Features in the US Context, Brett Bowles, Indiana University, Bloomington
Though including bonus features to provide explanation, context, and analysis is a common practice for most companies that produce and distribute historical films on DVD, the form and technological parameters of those features vary widely, as does the financial investment that companies are willing to make in compensating academic consultants and supporting our expectations for content. Drawing on my experience generating bonus features for two companies with very different business models and production standards—International Historic Films in Chicago and The Criterion Collection in New York / Los Angeles—this paper outlines the challenges of crafting intellectually satisfying bonus material under the financial and technological constraints imposed by a commercial logic that is typical of knowledge production and public intellectual engagement in the United States.
3. 10.30 – 10.50: 208 Radio Luxembourg: The Station of the Stars, Bernard Michaux, producer, SAMSA Film
In 1933, “Radio Luxembourg” began broadcasting in England, despite fierce opposition from the BBC, and became Europe’s most powerful commercial radio station. During the 1950s and 1960s, “208” was THE radio of the rock ‘n’ roll and pop revolution, and represented the voice of freedom throughout Europe, even beyond the “Iron Curtin”, leaving its mark on an entire generation. This talk will retrace this unique history, and how the archives have allowed to turn this research into a documentary film using television, radio and photographic archival collections.
10.50 – 11.10: Break
11.10 – 12.30: Session 2: Television archives and access to their collections
1. 11.10 – 11.50: FIAT/FIAT Media Studies Commission: Herbert Hayduck and Dana Mustata
2. 11.50 – 12.30: EUscreen – open, smart and connected access to Europe’s audiovisual heritage, Maja Drabczyk and Johan Oomen, EUscreen
12.30- 14.00: Lunch on site
14.00 – 15.30: Session 3 – best practices in alternative (academic) publishing on media history I
1. 14.00 – 14.45: Producing a binaural radio play on the history of 3D sound recording, Ass. Prof. Stefan Krebs, University of Luxembourg, C²DH
November 2016 a group of media historians, actors, retired and active sound engineers came together in studio 9 of Bavarian Broadcasting Munich to produce a radio play with old 3D sound recording equipment of the 1970s. The radio play “Splendor and misery of dummy head stereo” explains why 3D sound reproduction failed to revolutionise radio listening in the 1970s and early 80s, and, at the same time, lets listeners intuitively experience the fascination of 3D sound reproduction. The paper will briefly describe the historical background of binaural stereo, the hands-on production process, and the radio play as a new means of telling media history to academic and non-academic audiences.
2. 14.45 – 15.30: “A Colônia Luxemburguesa” – Trajectories made of Steel, PhD Dominique Santana, University of Luxembourg, C²DH
This PhD project consists in studying the migration paths from Luxembourg to Brazil between 1920 and the mid-1960s, deeply intertwined with the activities of the Luxembourg-based steelmaker ARBED – today ArcelorMittal – in Brazil since the inauguration of its subsidiary in 1921 in the State of Minas Gerais.
Besides the dissertation, this research project aims at providing an unconventional way of “writing” history with the making of an interactive web-documentary, documenting Luxembourg’s industrial history overseas and the past of a transnational migrants’ community, the so-called “Colônia Luxemburguesa”.
15.30 – 15.45: Break
15.45 – 17.15: Session 4 – best practices in alternative (academic) publishing on media history II
1. 15.45 – 16.30: How Television used to be made: The adapt project and Hands On History, Prof. Dr. John Ellis, Royal Holloway University of London
By reuniting old technologies with the professionals who used to use them, the ERC funded ADAPT project pioneered a new combination of hands on history and reminiscence practice. The project invited these professionals to try to make television programmes in the way that they once did, towards the beginning of their careers. The combination of immediate haptic recall, reflection on historical distance and response to the challenge to ‘make things work’ produces a distinctive form of historical reconstruction. The results are available in the form of over 160 videos made using the contemporary ‘fixed rig’ multiple camera filming adapted from current television practice at www.adapttvhistory.org.uk
2. 16.30-17.15: On the road again: A video essay on an experimental media archaeology journey, Prof. Dr. Andreas Fickers, Mr. Andy O’Dwyer, University of Luxembourg, C²DH
This presentation reflects on the production of a scholarly video essay dealing with an experiment in television archeology. The essay documents our journey to the origins of the first transnational transmissions in television in the early 1950’s. Original sources, oral history interviews and new video footage have been used to produce a new online narrative in the field of European television history.
17.15 – 17.30: Closing remarks
17.30 – 18.30: Guided tour of the CNA
18.45: Travel to Luxembourg-City by bus
20.00: Dinner at own expenses at Independent Café
Attending the symposium is free. Please register before 20 January 2019 : https://goo.gl/forms/8vq6UriIsbHyzCUh2
