Thinking Through the Medium Itself Audiovisual Essay as a Research Method and a Result of Academic Trends Thinking Through the Medium Itself Audiovisual Essay as a Research Method and a Result of Academic Trends Thinking Through the Medium Itself : Audiovisual Essay as a Research Method and a Result of Academic Trends
Abstract
This study focuses on the practice and theory of the audiovisual essay form, with particular emphasis on its actual and potential uses in the field of academic film studies. It explores the ways in which the audiovisual essay and the emerging videographic film studies can enrich current research methods, especially how they allow to examine audiovisual phenomena through the means of the audiovision itself, and not just through written texts, and also how the form itself responds to contemporary trends in film and media theory.
Four selected audiovisual essays from the online platform [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic & Moving Image Studies serve as case studies which outline four predominant tensions of the form: between image and word, analysis and sensation, performativity and representation, authorship and spectatorship. The conclusion points out towards possible applications of the form in Czech film studies.