Işıl Karataş

Işıl Karataş is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for European Ethnology at the University of Vienna and a (multi)media-maker who experiments with different forms and formats of sound and image-making. Her films, soundworks, and live visual performances have been showcased at various music and film festivals and, anthropological and media conferences. She holds a joint degree from the tri-national master’s program in European Film and Media Studies between the Université Lumière Lyon 2/ENS Lyon, the University of Utrecht, and the Bauhaus University Weimar. Her PhD project is an ethnography of the phenomenon of analogue filmmaking in the digital era in Berlin, Vienna, and Istanbul to understand the complex affective, sensory, and ecological relationship between human and nonhuman actors in a rapidly changing media environment.Işıl Karataş is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for European Ethnology at the University of Vienna and a (multi)media-maker who experiments with different forms and formats of sound and image-making. Her films, soundworks, and live visual performances have been showcased at various music and film festivals and, anthropological and media conferences. She holds a joint degree from the tri-national master’s program in European Film and Media Studies between the Université Lumière Lyon 2/ENS Lyon, the University of Utrecht, and the Bauhaus University Weimar. Her PhD project is an ethnography of the phenomenon of analogue filmmaking in the digital era in Berlin, Vienna, and Istanbul to understand the complex affective, sensory, and ecological relationship between human and nonhuman actors in a rapidly changing media environment.

Research interests: Audio-Visual Recording Technologies, Experimental Modes of Media-Making, Sensory Ethnography, Material Culture, Sound Studies

Current research project: My ethnographic project, which started in April 2020, explores the contemporary phenomena of analogue (Super8 and 16mm) filmmaking in Vienna and Berlin and mechanical repair workshops in Istanbul through fieldwork, interviews, and participant observation. In post-digital times, where newer virtual technologies challenge the ideologies of newness of so-called new media, and the meanings of media materiality are constantly redefined within linear progressive ideologies of technology, I explore cultural aspects of media practices with 'outdated' photochemical film technologies. I have interviewed over 30 analogue filmmakers (in German, English, Turkish, and French) and participated in technical workshops ranging from collodion photography to 16mm film. I also broaden ethnographic methods of participation and observation to include my positions as a multimedia practitioner and that of the nonhumans involved in this field of cultural production. Therefore, the material-cultural stories in my research do not include only human discourses on media objects but also investigate the possible ways of perceiving media matter like plastic, water, electricity, and sunlight in their nonhuman complexity. Transcending the centrality of speech and text, I engage with sensory aesthetic experiences and their material-cultural, artistic, and ecological meanings through film, sound, and music-making practices.
I am currently preparing the concept of my dissertation for the writing phase. As I go through the collected interviews, field diaries, audio-visual documentation, and ethnographic notes again, I am working on creating the main structure and content of my thesis.

Publications:

‘Analogue Practices in Digital Landscapes’. TRAJECTORIA 4, Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology Minpaku (31 March 2023). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.51002/trajectoria_023_02.
‘Sonorous Materiality of Analogue Film’. Edited by Josephine Diecke, Bregt Lameris, and Laura Niebling. NECSUS_European Journal of Media Studies Autumn, Amsterdam University Press (12 December 2022). necsus-ejms.org/sonorous-materiality-of-analogue-film/.
with Färber, Alexa. ‘Installative Archive. Zum Potenzial temporärer Veröffentlichungen von und mit Fotografie‘. In: Diekmann, Stefanie / Ruelfs, Esther (Hrsg.): Fotogeschichte Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie, Bd. 167. Marburg: Jonas Verlag, März 2023.