Inaugural lecture December 1: Found in Translation

Most who know me will already know the news that since 1 January 2017, I have been appointed for one day a week as Bijzonder Hoogleraar (endowed professor) of Transnational Media the Department of Art and Culture, History, Antiquity at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, attached to the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Now I have the pleasure of announcing my inaugural lecture, which will take place this coming Friday, 1 December 15:45 CET in the Aula of the Vrije Universiteit.

The title is:

Found in translation: transnational media and the national archive

(perhaps we could call it: How Dutch is Beeld en Geluid?)

Radio and television have long stood in the service of the nation, as institutions, technology, and as purveyors of shared moments great and small.  National audiovisual archives can serve a similar role, especially in the digital age as their content becomes available for sharing, re-use and re-collection as national memory.   But from their earliest days, these media have also involved flows of people, things, and ideas beyond national borders, often translating them for domestic use.  Now, as archive content is ‘translated’ from the archive into the digital sphere, it enters again into transnational circulation. Taking a transnational view of the archive allows us to see how these past and present processes of circulation and translation can speak to each other.  Looking at rich examples from Sound and Vision’s collection and beyond, we see how by looking more closely at the technical and cultural points of translation we can open up our view both of the nation and the world.

  The lecture is public, please see the official invitation for details.

In addition it will be available to view as livestream at 15:45 or as recording here.