Amie siegel's recursive GDR documentary DDR/DDR: In and beyond the wake of friedrich kittler

On the surface, Amie Siegel's 2008 documentary DDR/DDR focuses on Stasi victims and perpetrators, psychoanalysis in East Germany, Stasi training videos, DEFA westerns, and East German Native American hobbyists. Though never mentioning Friedrich Kittler explicitly, Siegel examines themes of media studies in Kittler's wake. In particular, her film encounters recursions in its exploration of surveillance media and features the technique of recursion in its own making. Employing the same technology the Stasi used, Siegel reflects on herself in the place of the surveillant and also puts herself in front of the camera, in the position of the observed. Exercising multiple role reversals, she takes on the role of the Stasi workers she interviews and puts herself on the psychoanalyst's couch, to name two examples. Contextualizing the film in recent discussions on recursion in media studies and cultural studies, this article discusses how the film utilizes recursion, but also questions it and challenges its boundaries. Ultimately, Siegel's film is critical of the exclusion of the subject in media-centric approaches, so that the film becomes a plea for the return of the individual and the author.