I use the conceptual triangle consisting of the terms brevity – format – program as a basis for discussing short films as objects of analysis that address different questions and hence also warrant different answers than their feature film counterparts do. The fundamental parameters that I subsume under the concept of the short film as a format in the context of this study are its limitation to a maximum duration of 30 minutes and, consequently, its conscious undermining of a historically contingent, but long-lasting dominant duration of film upwards of 90 minutes. It is productive to speak of the short film as a format when emphasizing the efficiency of its production context and the institutional dimensions that most shape its exhibition practices as part of a program. Short films are produced faster, use less material and less time in post-production. This also means that they can be distributed through different channels, faster and more cost-efficient due to their small data files or analog material requirements. As a result of its durational restriction, short films are often compiled into programs. Short films' dependence on a screening context calls for an understanding of the practices involved in film exhibition, one that is especially tailored to the context of the short film festival and its interrelation with other screening contexts (the gallery, the cinema, the internet). This study then places a particular focus on the activities of curating and programming as the two central practices for finding, selecting, presenting and thus valorizing a given work in the larger context of the program.

This approach to what I will come to call a poetics of the short film format does not propose a specific methodology of analysis but rather aims at generating knowledge on film as a cultural product and the conception of film studies as an academic branch by combining various aspects that allows me to consider the short film as a format. For the scope of this study, a poetics of the short film is not rooted in the genealogy of an Aristotelian normative poetics, but rather takes a much broader notion of poetics as a form of creation that allows for a reflection of its own entanglements with cultural, institutional, epistemological and economic contexts.

To bridge the gap between the conceptual considerations offered in the first two chapters and the analytical description of short film examples in the last two chapters, I decided to use my background as curator for a major international short film festival (Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Switzerland). Chapters 3 and 4 present fictional compilations of short films, grouped into a curated program, that deal with the subjects of value (economic, social, cultural) and with the crossing of boundaries (institutional, technological, epistemological), respectively. Essentially a discursive trick, what I propose is a form of film historiography by way of exhibition: The two “programs,” this selection and analysis of films in a particular order, could be presented in an actual, curated festival setting. The first thematic program carries the title “For What It’s Worth” and compounds economic parameters and epistemological concerns as essential constitutes of the short film format, given its peripheral and hybrid position in the cinematic universe and in film studies. The second program, “Foreign Images,” deals with the second major takeaway from the conceptual first two chapters, namely the short format’s effortless crossing of boundaries, be they institutional, technological, social and political.

Das Dissertationsprojekt untersucht zeitgenössische Künstlerpositionen, die sich innerhalb der medialen Konstellation von Film und Textilien mit Formatierungsprozessen im industriellen und postindustriellen Zeitalter, sowie mit Praktiken der Standardisierung, Normierung und Skalierung im Kontext von Handelsbeziehungen auseinandersetzen. Ausgehend von David Summers (Real Spaces), der Formate als Verhältnisbestimmungen zwischen Bildinhalt und Betrachter begreift, und David Joselit (After Art), der Kunstwerke als global zirkulierende Objekte fasst, soll die spezifische Handhabung respektive Inszenierung von Textilien im Film auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen theoretisch verhandelt werden.

Zum einen können Textilien medial im Gebrauch von Messung und Wiedergabe zeitbasierter Vorgänge stehen. So etwa, wenn Frank B. Gilbreths chronozyklegraphische Studien vom richtigen Bügeln eines Herrenhemdes zu «Bildern der Effizienz» (Scott Curtis) werden, die wiederum in Diller+Scofidios multimedialer Installation Bad Press. Dissident Housework Series (USA 1993-1998) durch die subversive Geste des ineffizienten, dysfunktionalen Bügelns als Zeitregime und Körperdressur zurückgewiesen werden.

Zum anderen können Textilien in Katalogen und Musterbüchern nach Logiken des Sammelns und Klassifizierens angeordnet werden. Prägnant verhandelbar wird diese Praktik zum Beispiel in Sascha Regina Reichsteins Kurzfilm Patterns of the Conquerors (A/GB 2017), in dem John Forbes Watsons 1866 kompilierte Textil-Musterbücher The Textile Manufacturers vermessen und kritisch kommentiert werden, womit Watsons Idee eines kleinskalierten «mobilen Museums» (Felix Driver) in Form eines Kurzfilms weitergesponnen wird.

Ferner lässt sich anhand der Herstellung und des Handels von Textilien auch nach der soziopolitischen Wirkmacht von Masstab, Konfektionierung und Muster fragen, was sich beispielsweise in Elizabeth Prices zweikanaliger Filminstallation K (GB 2015) beobachten lässt, in der digital animierte Damenstrümpfe in industrieller Manier rhythmisch verpackt und mit dem programmatischen Bildtitel «woman trying to escape a pattern» konterkariert werden.

Aus diesen drei Perspektiven heraus werden die politischen Implikationen von Formatierungspraktiken untersucht, die den Textilien als Material kultureller Identitäten und dem Film als Instrument der Vermessung und Verbreitung entsprechender Weltentwürfe und Wissensordnungen zugrunde liegen, womit es gleichsam zu fragen gilt, unter welchen Bedingungen eine kritische Reflexion westlicher hegemonialer Praktiken möglich wird.

The dissertation project examines contemporary artistic positions at the intersection of the media of film and textiles that deal with formatting processes in industrial and post-industrial eras as well as with practices of standardization, normalization, and scaling in the context of commercial relationships. Beginning with David Summers (Real Spaces), who understands formats as being determinative of the relationship between image content and viewer, and David Joselit (After Art), who sees works of art as globally circulating objects, the specific way textiles are presented in film will be theoretically discussed on various levels.

For one, textiles, as a medium, can be used to measure and reproduce time-based processes. An example of this is the way in which Frank B. Gilbreth’s chronocyclegraphic studies on the proper way to iron a man’s shirt become «images of efficiency» (Scott Curtis). These images are in turn met with a rebuff in Diller+Scofidio’s multimedia installation Bad Press: Dissident Housework Series (USA 1993–1998) in the form of the subversive gesture of inefficient, dysfunctional ironing as a time regime and a form of bodily dressage.

Second, textiles can be organized in catalogues and swatch books according to the logic of collection and classification. This precise practice is broken down, for example, in Sascha Regina Reichstein’s short film Patterns of the Conquerors (A/GB 2017), in which John Forbes Watson’s books of fabric samples, The Textile Manufacturers, compiled in 1866, are surveyed and critiqued. In the process, Watson’s idea of a small-scale «mobile museum» (Felix Driver) is further developed in the form of a short film.

Moreover, on the basis of the manufacture and trade of textiles, one can inquire as to the socio-political power of scale, assembly-line production, and pattern, which can be observed, for example, in Elizabeth Price’s two-channel video installation K (GB 2015). In this work, the image of digitally animated women’s stockings being rhythmically packaged in an industrial manner is juxtaposed with the programmatic title «woman trying to escape a pattern».

From these three perspectives, the dissertation will examine the political implications and formatting practices on which textiles—as materials of cultural identities—and film—as an instrument used to survey and disseminate relevant world views and knowledge systems—are based. At the same time, one must also inquire as to the conditions under which a critical reflection of Western hegemonic practices could be possible.