Media Temporalities: Films, Series, Games, Social Media, Music and Books

What do we know and what do we not know about time and temporality?

The course Media Temporalities: Films, Series, Games, Social Media, Music and Books is a theoretical and analytical inquiry into different media temporalities.

"What is time?", Saint Augustine asked in his Confessions. "Who can explain this easily and briefly? Who can comprehend this even in thought so as to articulate the answer in words? Yet what do we speak of, in our familiar everyday conversation, more than of time? We surely know what we mean when we speak of it. We also know what is meant when we hear someone else talking about it. What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know."

These questions and observations made about 1600 years ago are seemingly timeless, still of relevance to our contemporary understanding of time and temporality. In this course, we ask ourselves what kinds of times and temporalities are found in films, series, games, social media, music and books, and explore particular media texts through theoretically informed close analyses.

In order to suggest answers to such questions, we will look at and listen attentively and analytically to media texts, such as a football match, Bob Dylan’s "Brownsville Girl", the standup of Steven Wright, The Simpsons, Joachim Trier’s "Oslo Trilogy", James Benning’s Stemple Pass, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return, the music of Susanne Sundfør, Taylor Swift’s All Too Well,Jon Fosse’s novels, and Solvej Balle’s book septology On the Calculation of Volume.