Day-to-day programme

On this opening day, students are introduced to media archaeology and performance studies. We will focus on the multifaceted concept of performance and the bodily operations and manual dexterity involved in historical media practices — from operating a lantern to camera obscuras and phenakistoscopes. Students will participate in tactile workshops that foreground the role of gesture, repetition, and material handling in historical knowledge production. In an interactive session, students can introduce themselves and their research by selecting and discussing a ‘dead medium’ of their choice.

• Welcome and introduction by Nele Wynants

• Discussion & lecture sessions by Erkki Huhtamo, Bart G. Moens, and Rod Bantjes on media archaeology, performance and media handling
• Interactive activity "Bring your own dead medium": participants present a media object from their own research
• Magic lantern workshop – Ditmar Bollaert & Bart G. Moens
• Camera obscura workshop – Rod Bantjes
• Welcome reception

The second day is dedicated to the material and manual practices behind nineteenth-century optical media – from stereoscopy to magic lanterns and phenakistiscopes. We explore the cultural and immersive dimensions of early visual technologies, including a VR demonstration of historical viewing devices. In the afternoon, students can either follow a workshop on the (re)production of hand-painted lantern slides, or on building and animating their own phenakistiscope. A visit to FOMU and its restored Kaiserpanorama rounds out the day, offering a rare encounter with stereoscopic viewing as public spectacle.

• Discussion & lecture sessions by Victor Flores and Susana S. Martins
• VR demonstration of historical media environments
• Interactive activity "Bring your own dead medium": participants present a media object from their own research
• Painting lantern slide workshop – Ângela Santos
• Plateau's colour-disc workshop – Deirdre Feeney
• Field Trip I (FOMU): visit Kaiserpanorama

Objects speak. On the third day we focus on how media artifacts themselves embody historical knowledge — not just as tools or images, but as material carriers of meaning. Participants will discuss what it means to ‘read’ or ‘listen to’ an object, how objects function as mediators of the past, and how object-catered learning reshapes historical inquiry. The day will conclude with a performance and social dinner.​

• Discussion & lecture sessions by Kurt Vanhoutte, Tim Overkempe, Hannah Welslau, and Melissa Van Drie on object-based research methods
  

• Interactive activity "Bring your own dead medium": participants present a media object from their own research
  

• Revisiting the Phenakistiscope workshop – Guido Devadder
• Embodied media and performance workshop – Monica van der Haagen-Wulff
• Magic lantern performance – Melissa Ferrari
• Social dinner

The fourth day takes us to the Ghent University Museum (GUM), where we explore how museums shape and stage knowledge. This day engages with shifting borders of knowledge production, where the authority of science meets public interpretation, and where meanings are co-constructed rather than passively received.

Scientific meaning is not fixed, it forms through negotiation between curators, researchers, audiences, and the objects themselves. The programme includes a visit to the museum and temporary exhibition 'Borders'. In the afternoon, participants will take part in a collaborative workshop. Each participant is invited to bring an object/medium/souvenir and, in group settings, explore how its meaning shifts depending on context, perspective, and use.

• Discussion & lecture sessions by Marjan Doom, Gitte Samoy, and Jill Decrop Ernst
• Field Trip II: Guided Museum Visit – GUM, botanical gardens & temporary exhibition 'Borders'
• Interactive workshop on staging knowledge through objects and media

The final day of the summer school turns to media practices beyond the dominant Western canon, foregrounding the local, cultural, and embodied dimensions of media knowledge across different global contexts. We explore how performance, storytelling, and visual media have taken shape in diverse traditions, from Eastern European theatre technologies, colonial representations to Turkish and other forms of puppet theatre and how these situated practices challenge linear, Western narratives of media history. Through lectures, discussions, and a VR-based workshop, we reflect on how place, tradition, and cultural context shape how media are made, experienced, and remembered.

• Discussion & lecture sessions by Leen Engelen, Enes Türkoğlu, and Artur Duda
• Interactive workshop media archaeology and VR: exploring the remnants of modernity and contemporary metropoles around the globe – Benjamin Verhoeven and Kurt Vanhoutte
• Concluding round table and closing drinks