Citational Media: Counter-Archives and Technology in Contemporary Visual Culture

Citational Media foregrounds the potential of a body of counter-archival practices that have emerged in contem-porary visual media outside the traditional space of the cinema. Each chapter focuses on examples of visual or performance culture that appropriate, re-use and so progressively ’archive’ other media or footage, as they critique dominant ideologies in an age of new technologies and ongoing global turbulence. The resulting case studies, drawn from the late twentieth century to the present day, range from critical re-uses of television footage that undercut the medium’s original meanings, to popular videos screened on social media platforms, that performatively cite smart technologies and their software interfaces. Such citational media practices, while ambivalent in their meanings, have the potential to recast narratives and archives that have governed - and if left unquestioned, risk further constricting and exploiting - contemporary life.

Annie Ring is Associate Professor of German and Film and Lucy Bollington is Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Film. Both are based in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society and the Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry, University College London.