The Centre for European Studies was happy to host Dr. Michael Goddard of Goldsmiths, University of London as a visiting scholar and faculty member this year. During his tenure at CES, Dr. Goddard continued his research work on temporality and various forms of media. He was also able to promote his work on an open-access collection, “Media as Time Machines.”
Here’s what Dr. Goddard had to say about his scholarship and his research stay:
What first inspired you to explore the fields of transnational cinema, popular music, and media theory? How do they connect in your work or are they standalone themes of interest in your research?
Essentially, I began my research in cinema studies but soon expanded this due to my wider interests in philosophy, politics and culture. In terms of cinema, I was drawn to cult filmmakers across different cultural contexts from Poland, Eastern Europe, Chile, and North America. At the same time, I was always interested in alternative DIY media such as pirate radio, and punk and industrial music. this led to several projects on popular music ranging from noise and industrial music to music video and film soundtracks. My attitude to popular music has always been to take it as seriously as more privileged media like cinema, and to apply similar methodologies. Alongside these research focal points, I explored a range of theories including media ecologies and archaeologies, as well as Autonomist Marxism, and theories of noise and communication. This has underpinned my research both in analog media practices such as my last monograph Guerrilla Networks, as well as my research into digital media practices including genealogies of Virtual Reality, YouTube reaction videos, and flicker, drone and glitch practices in media arts.
It is mentioned in your CES biography that you are focused on sharing your work Media Art as Time Machine, which has led to an open-access publication. Could you give more details into this project? Where there any highlights?
In 2023, I co-organised a major symposium on media arts as time machines at Goldsmiths which we developed into a special issue of MAST journal in 2025, combining theory and practice outcomes. We were very happy with the range of contributions in the journal issue and the ways theory and practice worked together to explore how media arts can function as time machines, including in art practices, popular music, film, and digital culture. However, it became clear this was a highly productive vein of future research, and through conversations with Dr Roger Whitson (UWS), and subsequently Professor Geoffrey Winthrop Young at CES this developed into the visiting researcher period at UBC coinciding with my research leave.
You mention one of your main research interests is in media archeology. Could you explain this theoretical concept?
Media Archaeology means different things to different scholars, and some of the main media archaeology scholars refuse this description of their research, making any standard definition difficult. However, what can be said is that it encourages a focus on technological processes and practices of invention across technical media, with a special emphasis on minor or lesser-known developments, and a non-linear approach to media and technological change that questions linear ideas of progress, and favours non-linear, cyclical or complex relations between present and past media forms. For me, media archaeology provided a language, or set of languages, for engaging with the relations between media and temporalities that I had already been exploring in the works of philosophers like Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, or Antonio Negri.
You’ve stated that your research complements work already happening within CES. How do/did you envision your project on temporality and media aligning with or expanding those conversations at UBC?
During my time at CES at UBC I had productive conversations with academics as well as graduate students, in particular with Professor Winthrop-Young as well as Dr Katherine Bowers and others. I also engaged with visiting PhD student Mia Wong who conducted an interview with me on my research, and enjoyed discussing her research with her. i also disseminated my research alongside that of Professor Whitson and the symposium that took place in the last week of my visit. I feel that my presence raised perspectives on media that CES colleagues and students found through provoking and original, as well as providing a different take on media archaeology as oriented not only to the past and present but the future.
How did the UBC Centre of European Studies help in advancing and informing your current interest in time machines and the media?
UBC CES definitely helped me to network with other scholars at UBC, and provided a good working space to conduct my research. While there, a lot of the research involved synthesising materials I had already assembled, but this research period was vital for giving me the time and space to actually to this and to begin thinking about future collaborative outputs with scholars at UBC. I also engaged as much as possible with research presentations and other events in UBC and well as in the wider community of Vancouver, especially screenings and discussions at the Cinematheque.
Do you have any advice for junior scholars who are interested in analyzing experimental art, music, and cinema?
My advice would largely be for researchers to follow what they are passionate about, and not limit themselves to existing trends or dominant lines of research in whatever fields they find themselves in- whatever direction you take up, you are sure to encounter likeminded people with whom you can network and collaborate. And secondly that it is vital to find your people, the ones who inspire and appreciate your work, and not to hesitate to develop those connections as they are vital and transformative for pursuing your own research.
