Framing Attention : Windows on Modern German Culture

by Koepnick, Lutz P.

• ISBN13: 9780801884894
• ISBN10: 0801884896
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-13
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

In Framing Attention, Lutz Koepnick explores different concepts of the window -- in both a literal and a figurative sense -- as manifested in various visual forms in German culture from the nineteenth century to the present. He offers a new interpretation of how evolving ways of seeing have characterized and defined modernity. Koepnick examines the role and representation of window frames in modern German culture -- in painting, photography, architecture, and literature, on the stage and in public transportation systems, on the film screen and on television. He presents such frames as interfaces that negotiate competing visions of past and present, body and community, attentiveness and distraction. From Adolph Menzel's window paintings of the 1840s to Nam June Paik's experiments with television screens, from Richard Wagner's retooling of the proscenium stage to Adolf Hitler's use of a window as a means of political self-promotion, Framing Attention offers a theoretically incisive understanding of how windows shape and reframe the way we see the world around us and our place within it.

Author Biography

Lutz Koepnick is a professor of German, film, and media studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Framing Attention	p. 1
Menzel's Rear Window	p. 27
Richard Wagner and the Framing of Modern Empathy	p. 62
Early Cinema and the Windows of Empire	p. 95
Underground Visions	p. 127
Windows 33/45	p. 163
Fluxus Television	p. 200
The Nation's New Windows	p. 240
Epilogue: "Berliner Fenster"	p. 263
Notes	p. 269
Index	p. 289
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