[ecrea] THE CINEMA OF SENSATIONS. XIV. International Film and Media Studies Conference in Transylvania

XIV. International Film and Media Studies Conference in Transylvania

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

Keynote speakers:

LAURA U. MARKS, Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture 
Studies, School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, 
Vancouver.
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.
Milestones of her researches into intermediality, video art and 
hybridity in the media: 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, 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 (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-constituted 
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 this submission form that can 
be downloaded from the conference website ( 
http://film.sapientia.ro/uploads/konferenciak/2012.%20Submission%20form.doc) 
and send it as an attachment to the following address: 
(2012.cinema.of.sensations /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(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).

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.