Watching the Media - Censorship, Limits and Control in Creative Practice
Call for Papers
A one day research symposium at Edge Hill University, in collaboration
with the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA)
The Media Department at Edge Hill University and the Practice Section of
MeCCSA invite you to submit a paper for a one day research symposium on
15 April 2011, investigating the role of censorship in media creative
practice.
Practitioners in media and the arts face numerous limits and forms of
censorship and control and the main aim of the symposium is to explore
how are these limits delineated/negotiated and by whom. Specifically the
symposium wishes to investigate how artists and media practitioners
respond to social, cultural and political contexts, how practice is
often politicised in relation to power and how practitioners themselves
envisage the pressures and limitations affecting thinking, production
and performance. Censorship can be regarded as a moral issue (expected
ethical and professional dilemmas faced by the media industry; the power
shift towards the consumer who is now also a producer of content; the
resurgence of religious/scientific debates), a political issue
(financing; management of the cultural industries; security and military
concerns; manipulation but also instances of resistance from within the
system) and corporate censorship (the media product as a cultural
commodity; the simulacrum of competition; the fluid nature of the
practitionerâ??s role within the industry). Many of these debates are now
held in relation to new technologies and their potential for disrupting
once clearly delineated boundaries, producing a hiatus in regulation
frameworks, renegotiating the role of the consumer-practitioner and
bringing new subjectivities into the creative process.
The symposium aims to produce a framework for understanding the limits
of contemporary practice in Britain and elsewhere and offer the industry
and governmental bodies some recommendations for the future.
Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the journal
Transgressive Culture.
Confirmed keynote speakers: Professor Julian Petley, Brunel University
School of Arts, Film and TV, and Media Watch.
Paper proposal of 300 words could investigate the following questions,
although alternative approaches are strongly encouraged:
Does censorship still exist?
Does creative practice face any limits and what are they?
How are they negotiated?
Who should decide what is censored and regulated?
What impact does regulation produce?
Does censorship necessarily hamper creativity or can it be an enhancing
device?
What is self-censorship in the context of creative practice and how does
it impact on practitionersâ?? work?
How can we contextualize the pressures put on contemporary media and
creative practice?
How is the issue of censorship framed by professional concerns versus
government priorities?
Please submit your proposals by 6 December 2010 concomitantly to Dr
Jason Lee, Chair of the MeCCSA Practice Section - (j.lee /at/ derby.ac.uk) and
Dr Ruxandra Trandafoiu - (trandar /at/ edgehill.ac.uk), symposium co-organizer.
Notification of acceptance (via e-mail) by 28 February. Registration by
21 March 2011.
The symposium will take place at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, West
Lancashire. Arrival and registration at 9.30 a.m.; departure by 4.30
p.m. on 15 April 2011. Costing and accommodation details will follow.
Dr Elke Weissmann
Edge Hill University
Media Department
Ormskirk, L39 4QP
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