[ecrea] CFP: International Film and Media Conference, Cinema of Sensations

XIV. International Film and Media Studies Conference in Transylvania

THE CINEMA OF SENSATIONS

May 25-26, 2012. Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Conference venue: Sapientia University, Str. Matei Corvin nr. 4.
Deadline for submissions: 15 January 2012.

Website: 
http://film.sapientia.ro/en/conferences/xiv-international-film-and-media-studies-conference-in-transylvania

Confirmed keynote speakers:
* LAURA U. MARKS, Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture
Studies, School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University,
Vancouver (http://www.sfu.ca/~lmarks/)
She is the author of: The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema,
Embodiment, and the Senses, 2000; Touch: Sensuous Theory and
Multisensory Media, 2002; her most recent book is: Enfoldment and
Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. The MIT Press, 2010.
* YVONNE SPIELMANN, Research Professor and Chair of New Media at the
University of the West of Scotland (http://www.yvonne-spielmann.com/)
Milestones of her researches into intermediality, video art and
hybridity in the media are the following: Intermedialität: Das System
Peter Greenaway (Intermediality: The Peter Greenaway System), 1998;
Video: The Reflexive Medium, 2010; Hybridkultur (Hybrid Cultures),
2010.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Ever since its beginnings, cinema has always had a profound
experiential quality: images not only move, but they move our senses.
Whenever we go to the movies we not only “see” the film, and the world
of the screen not only “communicates” a message to us: we get to be
immersed in a unique environment that engages our senses and our minds
on different levels of consciousness and perception. However, in the
past decades we could witness an incredible multiplication of the
technologies through which moving images can be produced, distributed
or received. Reflecting on the process a series of new theories (like
"re-mediation" or "media convergence") emerged to describe the
interconnectivity between different kinds of audio-visual media.
Paradoxically, despite having to deal with the diversification of the
moving images and their new “environments,” in most of these
approaches there has been a marked emphasis on the unifying effect of
digital media as well as the general blurring of traditional media
boundaries and medium specificities in our current post-media
condition. Nevertheless, we might argue that new forms entail new
experiences, and the sensual encounter with the medium still matters,
perhaps more than ever. Some of the latest trends in art cinema have
specifically moved towards a “cinema of the senses” and a “cinema of
the body,” while a great number of popular new technologies have been
devised for the explicit purpose of heightening our sensations while
viewing the moving images. Moreover, cinema has not only found new
outlets and dazzling ways to capture our attention, but it has also
been placed literally into our hands: the domestication of visual
media has brought us “in touch” with images as never before, and
produced new “hands-on” practices and new sensations, new
sensibilities regarding moving images.
In light of these, in our upcoming conference we invite presentations
that offer a closer examination of the sensual aspects of moving
images from a variety of viewpoints, challenging the ideas that might
downplay their relevance in the age of media convergence. We propose
to concentrate on the experience, on the sensations generated by the
diverse forms of moving images and in various styles, genres and
cultural environments throughout the history of cinema and screen
media.
Presentations for our conference might draw inspiration from a large
array of theoretical sources, among others: Thomas Elsaesser’s and
Malte Hagener’s recent handbook Film Theory: An Introduction through
the Senses (2009); the vast literature on the phenomenology of moving
pictures from Vivian Sobchack (e.g. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and
Moving Image Culture, 2004) to Martine Beugnet (Cinema and Sensation:
French Film and the Art of Transgression, 2007); Laura U. Marks’s
books discussing haptic imagery and its connections to representations
of cultural difference (The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema,
Embodiment, and the Senses, 2000; Touch: Sensuous Theory and
Multisensory Media, 2002); as well as Gilles Deleuze’s ideas on the
“logic of sensation,” Jacques Rancière’s philosophical investigations
into the politics of aesthetics and the “distribution of the sensible”
(The Politics of Aesthetics, 2006, The Future of the Image, 2007), or
approaches in visual anthropology in the wake of Paul Stoller’s
“sensuous scholarship” (like: David MacDougall’s The Corporeal Image:
Film, Ethnography, and the Senses, 2005).

Proposals may address (but are not limited to) the following questions
either from a theoretical point of view or through concrete analyses
of films:

• Sensing visual media – sensing the media within media: a) examining
sensations in moving images and new media practices b) re-examining
questions of intermediality, inter-sensuality and interactivity in the
age of media convergence.

• Film history through the senses: paradigms/auteurs of cinema
exploring sensations and emotions in film history. (E.g. Claire Denis,
Wong Kar Wai, Pedro Almodovar, the Quay Brothers, etc.)

• Re-booting the “cinema of attractions:” a) labyrinthine experiences:
sensations in (or versus?) popular mind-games narratives in
contemporary movies or computer games, b) from haptic images to hyper
cinema: sensual encounters in 3D movies.

• Changing sensations of the “real:” a) naturalistic trends in
contemporary cinema (e.g. the Eastern European boom of micro-realism,
the new realism in American independent films, e.g. Ramin Bahrani,
etc.), b) from the medical gaze of “the clinic” to the hyper-real
naturalism of CGI.

• Sensing the difference: identifying “sensual” markers of culture,
ethnicity, gender in films (E.g. “sensible” differences that may
define European, Asian, and diaspora cinemas, etc.)

We invite both proposals for individual papers and pre-con¬stituted
panels. Panels may consist of 3 or 4 speakers.

We address this call for papers not only to university scholars,
researchers but also to students of PhD programs, or even to M.A.
students who wish to engage in a debate on the given topic.

The conference proposes to facilitate academic communication between
existing centres of research specializing in film and media studies
within different universities, and at the same time, it encourages
students on different academic levels to be initiated into scientific
research.

The time for presentations is limited to maximum 20 minutes, followed
by a 10 minute debate.

Deadline for the submission of proposals: 15 January 2012.

We will notify you about the acceptance of your proposals by: 22 January 
2012.

Submission of proposals: please complete the submission form that can
be downoaded from here:
http://film.sapientia.ro/uploads/konferenciak/2012. Submission
form.doc and send it as an attachment to the following address:
(2012.cinema.of.sensations /at/ gmail.com)

The best papers written based on the conference presentations will be
published in English in our department's international, peer reviewed
scientific journal, Acta Universitatis Sapientiae. Film & Media
Studies, see here:
http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-film/film-main.htm

The official language of the conference: English and Hungarian (with
papers presented in parallel sessions).

Conference fee (which includes participation, conference buffet and
banquet): 100 EUR, special fee for MA and PhD-students: 75 EUR. The
fee is to be paid on the occasion of conference registration.

For recommended possibilities of accomodation see website:
http://film.sapientia.ro/en/conferences/xiv-international-film-and-media-studies-conference-in-transylvania

............................................................

Dr. ÁGNES PETHŐ, Head of Department
Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Department of Film, Photography, and Media,
Executive editor: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Film & Media Studies
E-mail: (petho.agnes /at/ gmail.com)
Address: Str. Matei Corvin nr. 4.
400112. Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Tel: +40.726.300.883, +40.722712019
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