ABSTRACT BY FABIENNE LIPTAY

The lecture approaches production design of films from a conceptual perspective. How can the “ordinary” and the “mundane” be outlined and distinguished from one another with regard to film history? How do they relate, on the one hand, to what Carlo Ginzburg called the “evidentiary paradigm”, the reading of traces according to which everything is meaningful, even the smallest detail, and, on the other hand, to what Roland Barthes described as the “reality effect,” according to which nothing is meaningful beyond its mere relation to reality? Using works by Omer Fast as examples, the lecture also explores the question of how things and bodies that appear ordinary or mundane relate to one another, and under what conditions they lead a life of their own when we are not watching.