[ecrea] Conference call - drilling through the screen: modern imaginaries and the oil industry

DRILLING THROUGH THE SCREEN: MODERN IMAGINARIES AND THE OIL INDUSTRY

Call for Papers

Stockholm, 1-2 October,  2015, organized by

Cinema Studies, Stockholm University

 The history of cinema is inextricably embedded in 20th century’s 
hydrocarbon culture.  In its dependence on fossil fuels and their 
photochemical derivatives, and thus on resources and technologies 
exploited by the first Industrial Revolution, cinema came to play a 
vital part in the production of industrial modernity. Celluloid, being 
composed of petroleum byproducts, offered experiences in the “form of 
captured, organized, and released light-heat-energy-movement” (Adrian J. 
Ivakhiv), forms that were closely linked to what Nadia Boziak has termed 
the “hydrocarbon imagination.” While recent eco-criticism has spurred an 
interest in dissecting both the conventional aesthetic forms such 
celluloid imaginations may take, and the dirty footprint they leave 
behind, the more direct relation of cinema to the history of petroleum 
extraction has remained largely uncharted. With the exception of a few 
pioneering studies, as those conducted by Mona Damluij or Rudmer 
Canjels, the corollary of the relationship between moving images and 
petroleum has not been recognized. This conference invites to explore 
this relationship through the lens of sponsored film.

Since the early 1920s, oil extracting companies such as Standard Oil, 
Royal Dutch/Shell, ConocoPhilips, or Statoil have been producing and 
circulating moving images for various purposes including research and 
training, safety, process observation, or promotion. Such industrial and 
sponsored films include educationals, commercials, and documentaries 
that formed part of a larger cultural project to transform the image of 
oil exploitation, creating media interfaces that would allow 
corporations to coordinate their goals with broader cultural and 
societal concerns. Falling outside of the domain of conventional cinema, 
such films firmly belong to an emerging canon of nontheatrical film and 
media that has developed over the past decade in the wake of numerous 
publications. Such publications and public fora include, among others, 
the edited volumes Useful Cinema (2011) and Films that Work: Industrial 
Film and the Productivity of Media (2009), three special issues of Film 
History, a SCMS scholarly interest group, and the Orphans Film Festival. 
Contributing to this burgeoning field of nontheatrical film scholarship, 
we invite research proposals bearing on the intersecting cultural 
histories of oil extraction and media history by looking closely at 
moving image imaginaries of the oil industry, from the earliest origins 
or “spills” in the 20th century to today’s post-industrial 
“petromelancholia.”

How has film been used to promote petroleum extraction? How 
petroleum-specific are the aesthetics and rhetorics of oil-related 
non-theatrical films? How has the oil crisis and consecutive shifts to 
alternative energy resources affected how audiovisual media are used for 
mediating oil? To what extent did oil-related film and video activities 
contribute to stimulate national genre production in fields such as 
documentary or advertising? How was gender and social context negotiated 
in educational as well as oil promoting films? Which were the 
programming praxis for this wide conglomerate of films and genres? Which 
was the expected audience?

We encourage participants to incorporate examples of interesting moving 
images as part of their presentations. Each presenters will have 20 
minutes followed by a discussion. The papers presented at the conference 
will be considered for publication. The conference is open to archivists 
and scholars from all disciplines. Please send a 250-400 word abstract 
outlining your paper ideas, a list of 2-5 references, and a brief CV via 
e-mail to:

(marina.dahlquist /at/ ims.su.se) or (patrick.vonderau /at/ ims.su.se)

no later than 1 April 2015.

Patrick Vonderau
Professor in Cinema Studies
Department of Media Studies
Stockholm University, Box 27062, S-10251 Stockholm, Sweden






---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chaussée de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------