Archive for December 2016

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[ecrea] CFP: Gorizia Spring School 2017 - Porn Studies Section - Video (R)Evolutions

Sat Dec 17 09:40:29 GMT 2016





CALL FOR PAPERS / DEADLINE EXTENSION!
Gorizia Spring School 2017
29 March – 1 April, Gorizia
PORN STUDIES SECTION

Video (R)Evolutions

The aim of the section is to explore the historical impact of video technologies on pornographic production, representation and consumption. Starting from the second half of the 1980s, the video revolution dramatically hit the adult business, changing forever the way in which audio-visual pornography was created and experienced. This process implied first of all the gradual and relatively quick shift from a mostly public form of porn consumption (in movie theatres and arcades) to the privacy of home video viewing, and the subsequent total and irreversible reconversion to video of the major Western porn companies. The expressive possibilities allowed by video technologies also had important consequences on the development of new forms of pornographic production and representation. The lower production costs and the enhanced user-friendliness of such technologies created an unprecedented spread of amateur pornography, “in which (presumably) ordinary folks originally exchange video-taped sexual performance” (Williams 1999: 303). Moreover, the necessity to renovate and diversify the pornographic market – dominated by repetitive films “that featured plumbers, pizza delivery boys and other tissue-paper thin plots” (Pipe 2004) – brought some directors and producers to a more sophisticated use of video technologies in so-called gonzo pornography. According to Peter Alilunas, in fact, “gonzo films creatively incorporate[d] the economic and technological characteristics of video production and reception to turn them into an aesthetic practice” (2016: 206) demonstrating the “internalization of the conditions of production” (James 1989: 12). Pornography was also heavily influenced by the aesthetics of television sub-genres such as video-clip and advertising: authors like Andrew Blake and Michael Ninn produced high budget features, “enhanced by a dreamlike and elegant style of direction that enclose[d] the sex act in a composition dominated by visual elements, similar to the style of computer graphic” (Adamo 2004: 13). Finally, the simplification and “domestication” (Juffer 1998) of pornographic production and distribution paved the way for a multiplication and differentiation of pornography in relation to different market niches. This process of sectorization allowed new, militant subjects into the market, with their different set of pornographic discourses targeting previously “neglected” audiences – especially heterosexual and homosexual women.
Drawing on these premises, we invite papers that reflect on:
− the pornographic video era, from its origins to its developments in the digital era − transformations of the feature-length narrative hard-core film during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s
− new pornographic video genres and subgenres
− pornography and television, music, fashion
− arty porn (Andrew Blake, Michael Ninn, Gregory Dark, …)
− from film loop to video vignette
− from wall-to-wall to gonzo
− gonzo pioneers (Jamie Gillis, John Stagliano, Rodney Moore, Ed Powers, Ben Dover…)
− gonzo evolutions, from Buttman to Bang Bros
− from polaroid and 8mm to the birth of the “video amateur”
− the birth of alternative pornographies during the 1980s
− new bodies, races, genders in video and early digital pornography
− the pioneers of feminist pornography (Femme Productions, Fatale Video, …
− from the arcade to the video rental shop: changes in pornographic consumption and distribution

References
Adamo, Pietro. 2004. Ιl porno di massa. Percorsi nell’hard contemporaneo. Milan: Raffaello Cortina. Alilunas, Peter. 2016. Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video. Berkeley: California University Press. James, David. 1989. Allegories of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Juffer, Jane. 1998. At Home with Pornography: Women, Sex and Everyday Life. New York: New York University Press. Pipe, Roger T. 2004. “Adventures of Buttman, The.” Rogreviews, February 22. Accessed 15 April 2016. Williams, Linda. 1999. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible”. Berkeley: University of California Press.
The organizers invite single papers and panel proposals

New Deadline for proposals: January 8, 2017

Authors will be notified by January 10, 2017 if their proposals have been accepted. Proposals should not exceed one page in length. Please make sure to attach a short CV (10 lines max).
A registration fee (€ 150) will be applied.
Submit proposals to: (goriziafilmforum /at/ gmail.com)

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