Themen der Lehrveranstaltung
Durch praktische Übungen, theoretische Inputs und Gruppendiskussionen entwickeln die Teilnehmer*innen eigene Foto- und Videoprojekte, die sich kritisch mit den Themen des Studios auseinandersetzen. Der Kurs fördert eine experimentelle und reflektierte Arbeit mit visuellen Medien und betont die Verbindung zwischen persönlicher Perspektive und gesellschaftlicher Analyse.

Unterrichtsform
Gruppendiskussionen, partizipative Vorlesungen, Workshops, Studierenden-Präsentationen, Kleingruppen- und Einzelgespräche

Themen der Lehrveranstaltung
Throughout this semester, visual communication will be approached as a political and relational practice to forge bonds, activate conversations, and cultivate networks of resistance. The course will examine historical and contemporary socio-political practices in which publishing, graphic design, and visual communication have functioned as instruments of militancy, collective organization, and counter-narration. These include, for example, the publishing practices of political movements starting in the 1960s and 1970s as well as contemporary projects by groups and collectives operating at the intersection of design, politics, and activism, including Futuress, Archive Books, Terminal Beach, and Forensic Architecture, among many others. During the first month of the semester, students will be asked to respond to a series of short assignments aimed at exploring publishing as a collective practice. In the second part of the course, students will individually develop a publication conceived both as a response to and an extension of the themes and questions explored through the main project.

Unterrichtsform
Assignments, group discussions, single meetings, presentations and frontal lectures

Themen der Lehrveranstaltung
This theoretical module investigates the tension between individual subjectivity and the construction of collective forms of life, asking how a “we” can emerge in societies increasingly shaped by individualization, self-optimization, and competitive models of social existence. Rather than understanding community as a stable or homogeneous entity, the course approaches it as a fragile and conflictual process, continuously negotiated through encounters with others, shared practices, symbolic forms, and regimes of representation. The course begins by revisiting philosophical critiques of the autonomous subject, drawing on authors such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze, whose reflections on alterity, relationality, and desubjectivation challenge the self-sufficient model of the individual inherited from modernity. These perspectives provide a framework for examining how subjectivity is always constituted through relations, dependencies, and forms of exposure to others. A central component of the module engages anthropology as a privileged field for questioning the boundaries between self and collective life. Particular attention will be given to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, understood not only as an ethnographic text but also as a profound reflection on cultural difference, modernity, and the crisis of Western subjectivity. The course will also explore Victor Turner’s theories of ritual, liminality, communitas, and social performance, focusing on how collective identities emerge through shared symbolic actions, transitional states, and performative processes. Cinema and visual culture constitute another key area of investigation. Through selected films such as Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July and Steven Soderbergh’s Che, the course will examine the relationship between individual experience and collective history, exploring how political communities, social movements, and national imaginaries are constructed, contested, and represented through visual narratives. More broadly, the module considers images as active agents in the production of contemporary subjectivities, capable both of reinforcing processes of individualization and of opening spaces for collective recognition, solidarity, and resistance. The course concludes by examining contemporary artistic and visual practices that address questions of community, participation, shared vulnerability, and political belonging. Students will be encouraged to critically reflect on their own position within contemporary social realities and to explore how artistic practices can contribute to imagining alternative forms of living together and constructing new configurations of the “we.” - The critique of the autonomous subject and the limits of modern individualism - Alterity, relationality, and the ethical constitution of the self (Emmanuel Lévinas) - Difference, hospitality, and the unstable boundaries of identity (Jacques Derrida) - Desubjectivation, becoming, and impersonal forms of life (Gilles Deleuze) - The construction of the “we”: community beyond identity and consensus - Individualization, self-optimization, and the crisis of collective belonging in contemporary societies - Anthropology as a critique of Western subjectivity and modernity - Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques: cultural difference, ethnographic encounter, and the displacement of the observer - Victor Turner: ritual, liminality, communitas, and social performance - Collective identities as performative processes: symbols, rites, and social dramas - Images, visibility, and the production of contemporary subjectivities - Cinema and collective imaginaries: individual trajectories within historical processes - Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July: nationalism, trauma, and political belonging - Steven Soderbergh’s Che: revolution, collective struggle, and the construction of political communities - Visual culture between individualization and collective recognition

Unterrichtsform
The course combines frontal lectures with a participatory and inclusive teaching approach. Weekly sessions will alternate between theoretical introductions and collective discussions based on assigned readings and visual materials. Students are expected to actively contribute to in-class conversations, and to engage critically with the topics through individual or group assignments. The format also includes student presentations, which offer opportunities to deepen specific case studies and foster peer-to-peer learning. This dynamic structure is designed to support both critical reflection and collaborative exchange.