Association of Architecture Schools in Australasia

"Techniques and Technologies: Transfer and Transformation", proceedings of the 2007 AASA Conference held September 27-29, 2007, at the School of Architecture, UTS

The Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia

The Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia. Each paper in the Proceedings has been double refereed by members of an independent panel of academic peers appointed by the Conference Committee. Papers were matched, where possible, to referees in the same field and with similar interests to the authors

Weimar Slapstick: American Eccentrics, German Grotesques

In Weimar Slapstick: American Eccentrics, German Grotesques I examine the wide-ranging popularity of American slapstick film in Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-1933). With its gag-driven narratives, mechanically energized stars and urban, industrial mise-en-scène, slapstick spoke directly to the fears and desires of Germany's first democracy. Using this uniquely American, uniquely cinematic response to modernity as a lens, I offer a transnational account of Weimar culture, with slapstick refracting sites ranging from the film palace to the cabaret, Bauhaus design to modernist text. For those who celebrated the genre, slapstick's shocking, playfully curious humor challenged the traumas and cynicisms that would consume the Republic and which, moreover, still dominate scholarship on this era and its legacy. I approach slapstick cinema against the background of both Weimar Germany's obsession with all things American as well as grotesque traditions in European arts and letters. These films were more than simply received-they were also, to use playwright Bertolt Brecht's term, re-functioned, transformed by context and appropriation. Brecht himself adapted the lumpenproletarian gestures of Charlie Chaplin for developing his epic theater. Aside from this meeting of Tramp and Marxist dramaturge, I analyze a series of American-German constellations: Buster Keaton's androgynous deadpan through Dadaist Raoul Hausmann, white-collar employee Harold Lloyd   iii   through comic schlemihl Curt Bois and uncanny cartoon Felix the Cat through the animated, feline guide of Paul Leni and Guido Seeber's interactive crossword films. I situate these meetings within a broader historical circuit, with exiles from Hitler's Third Reich returning slapstick's favor by transforming American culture, even influencing heroes like Chaplin. Given the continued interest in the thought and culture of the Weimar era, I offer a case study for reevaluating its legacy vis-à-vis transnational cinemas, the relationship between avant-garde and mass media and modern theories of humor.   i

European cinema: face to face with Hollywood

In the face of renewed competition from Hollywood since the early 1980s and the challenges posed to Europe's national cinemas by the fall of the Wall in 1989, independent filmmaking in Europe has begun to re-invent itself. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood re-assesses the different debates and presents a broader framework for understanding the forces at work since the 1960s. These include the interface of "world cinema" and the rise of Asian cinemas, the importance of the international film festival circuit, the role of television, as well as the changing aesthetics of auteur cinema. New audiences have different allegiances, and new technologies enable networks to reshape identities, but European cinema still has an important function in setting critical and creative agendas, even as its economic and institutional bases are in transition