The Real of Reality | International Conference on Philosophy and Film

Wed, 02.11.2016 – Sun, 06.11.2016

ZKM_Media Theater, ZKM_Lecture Hall, ZKM_Media Lounge, ZKM_Cube

Thirteen lives affected by the global arms trade converge in a warehouse in Berlin. From around the world, they have come to dramatize and record their personal stories for “Situation Rooms,” a show by Berlin-based theatre legends, “Rimini Protokoll.”

Director Christine Cynn continues the exploration of performance and violence begun in “The Act of Killing” (which she co-directed), juxtaposing dramatic re-enactments with unscripted moments of private reflection and backstage conversation between the protagonists, from heated exchanges on “collateral damage” to banter about diplomatic picnics at Osama Bin Laden’s abandoned compound.

Each protagonist acts out their story, filming from their own perspective with a handheld device, creating an uncanny environment where everyone is filming all the time. The set is both real and surreal, a maze of factories, battlefields, and boardrooms, where each room simulates a real place in the life of each protagonist. Step through one door and you’re in a street demonstration in Homs, Syria. The next door leads you to a cubicle in San Diego where a drone operator drops bombs on villagers in Waziristan, Pakistan. Go past the Russian engineer in the Iranian nuclear lab and turn left to witness a nine-year old boy in a classroom in Democratic Republic of Congo being kidnapped to train as a child soldier. “Shooting Ourselves” captures the idiosyncratic atmosphere behind the scenes of this futuristic production, where total strangers from across the globe—and the political spectrum—submit themselves to a theatrical world order where all perspectives are equal.

International Conference on Philosophy and Film

Photography and film in particular paved the way for complex philosophical questions regarding the nature of reality and its mechanical reproduction. What does film reproduce and how can we grasp this element, which has the transactive ability to form reality although originating in reality? This shaping takes palce through a complex interaction of image, action and narration and tends to permeate reality completely. It is an inconspicuous process that already affects our everyday life profoundly and is based on a revolution of the real. What does film show? Do we have access to reality that is not based on images or narrations? And what can film and its analysis contribute to philosophical debates on the real?

These are questions we are asking to engage in a dialogue between philosophy and film. For five days, one hundred and fifty philosophers, media scholars and filmmakers will connect philosophical theory with cinematic practice and open up new ideas and concepts. To accompany the program, there will be film screenings of documentaries of the invited filmmakers.

The participation at the conference is also possible without the presentation of a paper.

The conference will be held in English.