[ecrea] CFP: Media Mutations, University of Bologna

MEDIA MUTATIONS 2013



Ephemeral Media: Time, Persistence, and Transience in Contemporary 
Screen Culture

Curated by Sara Pesce, with Paul Grainge and Roberta Pearson



Bologna,

May, 21 and 22, 2013





Considering the variety of paratextual materials that surround 
contemporary film and television shows, including trailers, credit 
sequences, mashups, promos, podcasts, bonus materials and merchandising, 
it has been suggested that ‘off-screen studies' may be needed in order 
to make sense of the wealth of other entities that saturate the media, 
and that construct film and television. This is part of a wider critical 
move to explore the ‘ephemeral’ texts that exist beyond, below and 
between the principal entertainment content of media corporations. This 
symposium looks at the status and significance of paratextual media 
including those associated with ‘primary’ film and television texts but 
also promotional texts associated with corporations or events (e.g. the 
Olympics) and fan produced paratexts related to films, television shows, 
games, media icons and the like. Considering these paratexts raises 
issues ranging from the increasing role that short-form content has 
assumed in media culture to the way that platforms like YouTube have 
enabled paratexts from the past to become more permanent and accessible 
by vastly increasing the opportunities for their distribution and 
remediation.



This focus on paratexts gives rise to broader concerns with the 
temporalities of media within the digital environment, and specifically 
the duration and circulation of media objects. New regimes of memory and 
attention may be arising within the digital mediascape. On the one hand, 
the growth of digital channels and platforms has seen a proliferation of 
temporally compressed media (those lasting seconds or minutes) geared 
towards mobile audiences whose attentions are more fleeting and 
dispersed. On the other hand, the rise of archives like YouTube and 
Google has enabled media images and performances to live on and be 
shared and reworkedindefinitely by viewing communities. By focusing on 
the short, secondary and seemingly insubstantial texts that fill the 
gaps between media, the 2013 Media Mutations conference considers the 
cultural life of paratexts, and the relation of ‘ephemeral,’ 
‘peripheral’ and ‘ancillary’ media to contemporary narrative and 
temporal ecologies.



The conference is interested in, but not limited to, the following 
issues as they relate to paratextual media



·Media environments – What is the relation of paratexts to 
continuities/changes in the media landscape?

- How do paratexts produce changes within media ecosystems? How do they 
work as agents of stability inside media ecosystems?



·Durational temporalities - What is the role of short-form content 
within contemporary media culture?

-How are paratexts linked to corporate, media or audience strategies for 
capturing attention in a world where an increasing abundance of consumer 
goods is part of a cycle of ever shorter renewal and disposal?



·Circulatory temporalities – How do paratexts operate historically 
within media’s circulatory systems? Did they operate differently in the 
past than in the present?

- How do paratexts, from the present and the past, surround and shape 
the meaning of texts, brands and intellectual properties?

- What is the relationship of paratexts to processes of competition and 
authentication of cultural memory, and to the nostalgia for a remembered 
past? How might they relate to the discussion of the categories of the 
dominant, the emergent and the residual as they have been adopted by 
cultural studies andmemory studies?



·Critical methodologies – What are the means and possibilities of 
studying texts that fall outside the analytic focus of film and 
broadcast archives?

- How do these new textual forms raise issues concerning their cultural 
validation?





Keynote speaker Jonathan Gray, University of Wisconsin-Madison





The organizers invite single proposals (length not exceeding 20').

Deadline for paper proposals: January 20, 2013

Proposals should not exceed one page in length. Please make sure to 
attach a short CV (10 line max).

Submit proposals to: (sara.pesce /at/ unibo.it)

Proposals will be blind reviewed

Official languages: Italian and English

Notification of acceptance by: February 20, 2013



Further information about MEDIAMUTATIONS at: www.mediamutations.org








Roberta Pearson
Professor of Film and Television Studies
Head, Department of Culture, Film and Media
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, NG7 2RD
UK
+44(0)1159514250

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Nico Carpentier
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 / B-1050 Brussels / Belgium
T: + 32 (0)2-629.24.45
F: + 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web:http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail:(nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web:http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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