"Mandatory training": Online teaching, and dialectical space

Abstract

In this piece I reflect on my video essay “Mandatory Training” (Patrick Tarrant, 2021), produced during the COVID-19 lockdown, which juxtaposes online filmmaking pedagogy with compulsory institutional e-learning modules on “Fire Safety” and “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion”. Through the pairing of recorded audio from the training with images sourced from mid-twentieth-century Bolex magazines, the work critiques the bureaucratisation of discourses on equality. Central to the essay’s formal approach is the productive role of software-generated auto-translation errors, which introduce disruptions that destabilise managerial language. Drawing on concepts of interpassivity and Deleuzian deterritorialisation, the reflection contends that these glitches create a dialectical space not achievable through simple juxtaposition alone. Rather than offering corrective commentary, the errors operate sensorially, exposing the ideological poverty of corporate training discourse and its colonisation of collective political s