desktop horror – medieninitiative

“The Horror of Discorrelation” — JCMS 60.1 (Fall 2020)

My article “The Horror of Discorrelation” is coming out in the Fall 2020 issue of JCMS, and it offers a preview of some of my arguments in Discorrelated Images. Since a preview is supposed to come out before the main attraction, I’ve gone ahead and posted the PDF of the article on my website: https://shanedenson.com/articles.html. (The JCMS issue is delayed due to the journal moving to a new press and a new website, to be unveiled soon.)

If you’ve already picked up a copy of my book or are about to, you’ll see that Chapter 5 expands this article, which deals with the fictional “desktop horror” of UNFRIENDED, to include a long section on the real-world horrors of terrorism-related videos not included in the JCMS article.

Desktop Horror: Screening Fear/Fearing Screens — JFK Institute, Freie Universität Berlin

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On June 26, 2019, I’ll be giving a talk titled “Desktop Horror: Screening Fear/Fearing Screens” at the Culture/Literature Research Colloquium at the JFK Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. Thanks to Frank Kelleter, Alexander Starre, and everyone else involved for inviting me and making this happen!

The Horror of Discorrelation—Kristiansand, Norway

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This week, thanks to a kind invitation from Julia Leyda, I have been in Trondheim, Norway, where I’ve led two workshops on videographic scholarship and pedagogy with Kathleen Loock and, today, gave a talk on “Screen Time.” Tomorrow, March 29, 2019, I will head down south, where I will be speaking on “The Horror of Discorrelation” at University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. Thanks to Ahmet Gürata for inviting me!

Video: Desktop Horror at Merz-Akademie Stuttgart

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On December 18, 2018, I gave a talk titled “Desktop Horror” at the Merz-Akademie in Stuttgart. The talk was live-streamed, and a video is now available on the Merz-Akademie website. Thanks again to Kevin B. Lee for the kind invitation, and to his students Jasmin Rahman and Nik König for the entertaining intro video, which you’ll see at the beginning of the video. (Note that there are some sound problems — fittingly, audio glitches and feedback — at the beginning of my talk, but they clear up after about three minutes.)

Desktop Horror at Merz Akademie, Stuttgart — Dec.18, 2018

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On December 18, 2018, I will be giving a public lecture titled “Desktop Horror” at the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, as part of the Welcome to the Real World lecture series organized by Kevin B. Lee. I’m very excited to share this work, and hope to see friends in Germany!

Desktop Horror

Shane Denson

The shift from a cinematic to a post-cinematic media regime has occasioned a great deal of anxiety for theorists and spectators alike, and the horror genre has been adept at channeling this unease for its own purposes, as is evidenced in movies that revolve around the proliferation of digital devices and networks as new media for ghosts, demons, and other forms of evil. In this presentation, I focus on “desktop horror” in particular and argue that the fears elicited in post-cinematic horror are deeply rooted in the upheaval that viewers experience in the face of a thoroughly computational lifeworld.