The “Discussions on Video Essay/Article in Academic Studies” Workshop, the first of which was held on December 26, 2022, was held on January 23, 2023, in three sessions under the project “Creating Content and Index Criteria for Scientific and Artistic Video Articles” supported by Prof. Dr. Hülya Önal within the scope of Tubitak 3005. In the workshop, Prof. Dr. Hasan Akbulut, Assoc. Prof. Elif Akçalı, Asst. Prof. Murad Özdemir, Asst. Prof. İpek Gürkan, Asst. Prof. Kıvanç Türkgeldi, Asst. Prof. Ersan Ocak were the speakers.
Hasan Akbulut said, “In order for video article/essay studies to gain academic legitimacy, it should be taken into account that these studies have an academic value as well. The first thing that would make the discussion on this subject possible is that such content needs to be produced and discussed in the academy and the way to achieve this is through Workshops, Seminars, producing content, and discussing this content.”
Elif Akçalı said, “I prefer to refer to the form we are talking about a video essay because the video essay has a form that does not contain argumentation due to its structure, and even raises more questions than the question asked.”
“I want students to approach this work from a place that has no boundaries, that allows them to produce different things through trial and error, almost like listening to music, instead of trying to make it look like something or struggling with the text and trying to find out what it means there.”
Özdemir said, “In any academic evaluation, it is the research that is important, not the medium, I think the main issue here is the consistency of the Video Essay itself within itself. I consider the Video Essay as something complementary and transformative. Carrying out this work through video provides a very distinctive experience than publishing and disseminating it through writing.”
Gürkan, “It is very important to talk about the content of the Video Essay, but what is essential is the change that videographic film works create in our way of thinking; it is a matter of methodological placement.”
“Video Essay is an output, a result within videographic studies and with reference to Agamben, therefore, Video Essay itself is irreducible to Video Essay itself and does something more valuable than it does.”
Ocak said, “Although it is no longer the case in the world, in Turkey articles continue to be written in passive form by omitting the subject like it was done, it was seen, etc. We are faced with the institutional structure established by the mind that could not say “I”. We have an institutional structure that acts with the assumption that being scientific is possible by removing the subject. This structure is shaking in the world.”
“The essay has a highly critical existence. The heretical characteristic of this existence would always defeat it against the dominant one.”
Türkgeldi, “You could write pages and pages of text on how fast the media is changing, how much the media is in a state of becoming, and publish it as an article, but when you do something using this, there is no place to publish it, which seems very ironic to me.”
“It is a challenging process to get the student into the habit of actually asking questions, or thinking about it, rather than making a definition.”
“Discussing different modes and variations of video essay studies is of great importance in terms of discussing the criteria in the future.”
