RECORD AND REFLECT A Questionnaire on (Video) Lectures by Julia Scher

Julia Scher, „Security Straps“

Unlike the direct encounter between a speaker and an audience, styles of online lectures are inevitably closely linked to their media conditions. As a practical extension of our discussion around the topic of “Lecture,” we invited artists and scholars to reflect in a short video lecture on a subject of their choice on their own presentational approaches, structures, rhetorics, and methodologies. Julia Scher directly recites the project’s editorial briefing, conveying its premises to the audience in a humorous style. The following Q&A makes reference to her video.

QUESTION: You were free to choose the topic of your contribution. What did you decide on in connection with the theme of this issue and why?

ANSWER: topic was coming on the back of working with owls and owl eyes – the idea of vision where their eyes don’t move in the socket, they have to turn their whole head around to see the world (aka their prey). this was in computer animation. so moving along with this vision system notion comes along yes google but also attempts by apple, apple vision pro. so apple, from my home state, california, and apple comes to germany and myself also here, an import, an ausländeramt, making a way in a new land, so vision and california and seeing more … you can consider the song “west coast” about someone dreaming about the west coast, being in the east, so all this reciprocity went into the thinking. video (my thing) uses the material of glass – at least in these early forms – to get its image and its messages across. so the lecture is about a moment of absorbency. and of an alternative world that one can enter. (some teachers call this learning by doing after they saw others doing it.) in the song “west coast” there is a line about something warmer. thus i’m wearing a warm colored shawl.

Q: This issue makes a distinction between lecture and lecture performance. Do you? Where and how do you draw the line?

A: no. it depends on whether assisted by AI or other beings or humans

Q: What specific forms of knowledge do academic or artistic lecture formats offer?

A: to relate relevance with oral accompaniment

Q: Which aspects of embodiment are important to you when giving a lecture/performance?

A: it depends on how time and vibration are used. eternal music between the speaker and the audience

Q: How do you find your rhythm?

A: the sequence of ideas finds its rhythm

Q: Where is your focus during the lecture/performance?

A: the audience

Q: What motivates you to attend a lecture/performance in person, given the constant surplus of information and art and the shortage of time that characterize our everyday lives?

A: curiosity

Q: Which lecture/performance was particularly memorable for you and why? (If the answer is Robert Morris’s 21.3 from 1964, please give another example.)

A: around 1981 laurie anderson northrop auditorium university of minnesota. perry hoberman sequenced and projected the instrumentation of the visuals to accompany laurie.

Q: Who was your (real or imagined) audience when you recorded this video lecture?

A: nikolai meierjohann and walter salon

Q: What shoes were you wearing?

A: adidas sandals

Julia Scher was born in 1954 in Hollywood, California. For the last 40 years, Scher’s research has explored social control dynamics in the public sphere, focusing especially on themes of surveillance. Her art projects have taken the form of interactive installations, reformulated surveillance, site tours, interventions, performances, photography, writing, online projects, linear video, and sound. From 2006 to 2021 Scher was a professor of multimedia performance/surveillant architectures at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She currently lives and works in Cologne.

Cookies disclaimer