TOPICS: RECLAIM YOUR INTERNET! in Spring 2027 (FM1910A)

In this highly creative, practice-oriented Digital Research Lab, students experiment critically with cinematic and other art practices to analyze, reflect on, deconstruct and reinvent their relationship to online images. Week after week, students are introduced to one or more films and texts related to a specific aspect of digital visual cultures: online intimacy, screen addiction and doom scrolling, self-exposure and privacy, visual ecologies, image ownership, AI politics, etc. After discussing the assigned materials, students receive a creative prompt that allows them to engage reflexively with the week’s theme through various analogue and digital mediums, from creative writing to paper collage, screenshots, digital photography and video production. The class alternates between two types of sessions: 1) lectures that allow students to develop their critical thinking skills by watching and discussing films that interrogate the history, economics and politics underlying their own everyday online activities; and 2) art studio sessions that introduce them to the practice of artistic research while ensuring they all acquire the basic digital skills essential for a successful higher education. The class culminates in a collective art exhibition exploring speculative futures for online images, for which each student will research, design and produce an original contribution.