The “presence” associated with electronic media, from telegraphy to digital computing, has made these technologies a continuing source of fascination for supernaturalists and a worthy adversary for the psychotic. This seminar examines the history of occult electronics in both paranormal and psychiatric discourse. Our final session will feature a dialogue with artist Tony Oursler on the centrality of electronic media in contemporary cult and conspiracy cultures.
For the public talk portion of this seminar on haunted media, Professor Jeffrey Sconce will be in conversation with multimedia and installation artist Tony Oursler. Sconce and Oursler will discuss the artist’s longstanding interest in the uncanny phenomena in his art.
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Seminar 1
Mon, Oct 28, 202411:30 am to 1:30 pm -
Seminar 2
Tue, Oct 29, 202411:30 am to 1:30 pm -
Seminar 3
Wed, Oct 30, 202411:30 am to 1:30 pm -
Public Talk: "An Uncanny Exchange with Tony Oursler"
Thu, Oct 31, 202412:00 pm
Jeffrey Sconce is Professor in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. He is the author of Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (Duke UP, 2000) and The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity (Duke UP, 2019), and the editor of Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Financing (Duke UP, 2007). A 2021 Guggenheim fellow, his current work focuses on the relationship between fantasy and fictional spaces.
Tony Oursler (American, b.1957) is a multimedia and installation artist. Born in Manhattan, he attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he completed his BA in 1979. In the early 1980s, Oursler returned to the East Coast, and eventually opened his own studio in New York City. Known for his mass-media-inspired and consumer-driven work, Oursler explores the psychological and social relationships between individuals and visual technologies. Applying humor and irony to his wide range of work, which has included painting, installation, performance, and sculpture, Oursler elevates everyday things above their mere objectivity to solidify their impact on contemporary culture. As his art has progressed, Oursler repeatedly questions visual technologies’ affect on the way we view the world, and how images are construed for public consumption.
Oursler has had numerous exhibitions around the world, including at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; documenta VIII, IX, Kassel, Germany; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the D.O.P. Foundation, Caracas, Venezuela; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Skulptur Projekte Münster; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Tate, Liverpool, UK.