Hertziana Insights - Art-Historical Research in Video
Our series Hertziana Insights explores the possibilities of a video format for scholarly communication in art history and strives to present the institute's multiple research projects, recently redefined both methodologically and geographically.
How can we vividly convey art-historical research that increasingly addresses interdisciplinary and intermediary issues and places great importance on objects and their materiality? Through Hertziana Insights, structured as concise, twenty-minute online documentaries, we promote direct communication in video format of some of the areas of research from the Institute.
The videos present objects relevant to our research onsite and in their historical contexts, taking into account their materiality, shape, and spatial effect. Interviews with contemporary witnesses and researchers, as well as historical footage from film and television archives, allow for direct and authentic communication that provides an opportunity to present research questions, methodology, and findings directly in contact with the artwork. In this way the viewer can get close to places, people and objects that are otherwise difficult to access, such as archives, artists' studios, historical film material, museum deposits, and private collections.
Given our cooperation with the international scientific community and our multilingual external audiences, especially in Germany and Italy, the videos are usually subtitled in multiple languages. Since in some cases the interviewees are also historical witnesses to the subject matter, the videos are supplemented by more detailed interviews that are archived separately, so that original audiovisual material is also available for future research purposes.
