On May 15 2025, a Masterclass and Public Lecture on Virtual Reality and the Immersive Turn with Prof. Mandy Rose will be organised at Utrecht University.

Masterclass
(9:30h-12:30, for rMA and PhD students)

In this masterclass, we will critically analyze immersive technologies through, amongst others, media, postcolonial, and gender studies lenses, reflecting on their ethical implications. We will also explore the potential of decolonial storytelling to enable new ways of engaging with social realities (Rose 2018). Prof. Rose will explore the challenges and potentials for social critique and new forms of knowledge as documentary makers engage with immersive Virtual Reality.

For more information, please see HERE.

When & where: Utrecht University, May 15 2025

Program:
Masterclass: Janskerkhof 15A, Room 204 – Welcome 9am, Masterclass from 9:30h-12:30h;
Lunch: 12:30-13:30, Kromme Nieuwegracht 80 (room 0.03 Foyer Theaterzaal)
VR Screening All I Know About Teacher Li : 13:30-16:00h, Munstraat 2A, Room 1.11

ECTS: 2 EC, see details below.

Coordinator: Prof. Sandra Ponzanesi (UU)
For:  RMA students and PhD candidates in media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, postcolonial/decolonial studies, literature studies, film studies, media and communications studies, etc., who are a member of RMeS, NOG or any another Dutch Graduate Research School (onderzoekschool).

Registration for Masterclass: via THIS LINK. Please register before May 1, 2025

Public Lecture
(17:15h-19:00h, open to all)

Focusing on immersive media, and the unexpected take-up of Virtual Reality (VR) for nonfiction in the last decade, this lecture considers issues arising for documentary as producers engage the platforms, technologies and types of audience experience enabled by digital. Through case studies of award-winning nonfiction works, I’ll discuss the epistemological ramifications of the frameless media experience of VR and the feelings of embodiment and what’s known as presence which are regarded as VR’s defining characteristics. I’ll discuss tensions between the affordances of immersion and the work of social critique that has been central to documentary’s mission. In these VR projects audiences become immersants – with touch, walking, vibration, even smell and heat becoming part of media experience. I’ll consider these multisensory registers being introduced into VR experiences as an alternative to the visuality that has dominated media since its inception. Might the tactile epistemologies of VR offer an alternative to what Donna Haraway has called the “God trick” of seeing everything from nowhere? Might multisensory registers encourage an attitude that Michael Taussig has called “yielding knowing” in relation to our fellow humans and the more-than-human, providing a new direction for documentary in our age of polycrisis?

For more information, please see HERE.

Date & Time: May 15, 2025 | 17:15h-19:00h

Where: Utrecht University, Drift 25, Room 0.02

Registration for Public Lecture: via THIS LINK. Please register before May 1, 2025