Screen History - Reconstructing the Media Connection of the Art of Projection and Cinematography (1880-1930)

• Applicant: Sabine Lenk, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 501876482

In Germany as well as internationally, audiovisual media are traditionally studied in separate sub-disciplines: Film Studies, Television Studies, New Media, Lantern Studies. Each of them mainly investigates its own field, although all of these media work with mobile and/or stationary screens. Conceiving of the screen as a socio-historical interface would enable transdisciplinary research, exchange, and jointly developed projects with scholars from the other disciplines, as is the case with Digital Humanities. Screen history as a field of research can help to overcome the dominant single-medium-approach; moreover, a media-historical foundation is indispensable for explaining the emerging new media environments. The project focuses on the interactions between art of projection and cinematography in the period from 1880 to 1930. In this period, there is an often overlooked intense connection between both media, with their convergence progressively turning into divergence from 1906/07 onward.In two work packages, the research project examines the discursive construction of this relationship, on the one hand from the perspective of contemporary actors, on the other hand from the perspective of media historians. Subsequently, an empirical micro-study will demonstrate the diachronic and synchronic developments of both screen media on the basis of a specific local context between 1880 and 1930.Thanks to the project’s insights into the historical causes of the single-medium-approach, an increasing collaboration between both fields of research is to be expected. This should lead to an understanding of both media as one research object, to the evaluation of primary sources with a view on both screen media and to common methodologies. The aim is to make media historians aware of the artificial separation in research on cinematography and projection lanterns in order to finally arrive at a synchronic study of both historical mass media.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants