Seminar/Lecture, Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Reading India in Goethe’s Sati Ballad: Orientalist and Enlightenment Discourses in "Der Gott und die Bajadere, Columbia University, New York, 12.2.2004

In the long-term project “S/L,” Rainer Ganahl documents seminars and lectures by wellknown intellectuals at international universities. The visual archive shows beside the lectures and their visual material also the space and the student audience. In so doing, the camera takes the role of a listening participant that records how academic knowledge is reproduced. While the lectures in terms of context usually have alternative social models, multiculturalism, and critique of Eurocentrism as their theme, the unfair distribution of social resources that is regulated by high costs and structural selectivity is reflected in the transmission of knowledge to a small, privileged circle. The photographic presentation of academic stars here corresponds to their role as figureheads of elite universities for attracting well-heeled students.