

Ulrich Meurer
Visiting Fellow, Fall 2018
Ulrich Meurer teaches film & media studies at the University of Vienna. After receiving his Ph.D. in Film and American Studies from the University of Konstanz, Germany, in 2005, he became Assistant Professor at the Department of Classics and Comparative Literary Studies at the
The project ‘Gold Ground / Silver Screen’ explores the potential of ‘Byzantium’, both as an aesthetic reference point and a figure of thought, for contemporary media & film studies. As pre/cinema is mostly correlated with Western Renaissance (monocularity, linearity, subjectivity) ‘Byzantium’ outlines a vision that has been neglected in the history and theory of moving images. In this context, research at Princeton and the exchange with scholars in Art History, Media Theory and Cultural Studies laid the groundwork for exploring the conceptual, formal, and technological traits of Byzantine visuality (gold ground / mosaic / luminosity / tactility / faciality) and transferring them to a wide range of contemporary photographic or pixilated digital images – where the Byzantine mode becomes an operator in the shifting sphere of screen media at the closure of the cinematographic era.