[ecrea] CFP - Verging: Technologies/Practices/Aesthetics in Contemporary Documentary

Verging: Technologies/Practices/Aesthetics in Contemporary Documentary

Two-day Symposium (March 18th - 19th), Toronto

Added Guests**** Jonathan Harris, Ralph Dfouni, and Ghassan Fayad
Deadline Approaching: Friday, February 19th by 5PM

Keynote Speaker: Jonathan Harris (Network Effect & number27)

The PhD program in Cinema and Media Studies at York University, Toronto, in
conjunction with the Department of Cinema and Media Arts’ Future Documentary
Lab, welcomes papers and panels discussing the current landscape and
changing language of documentary practices across technologies, aesthetics,
and audiences. We invite scholars, practitioners, curators and media worker
to present. The Symposium intends to interrogate the evolution of
documentary in our wired and digital world. We will gather work from
traditional documentary, across interactive storytelling, and through
augmented and virtual realities. We will ask how and if commercial,
artistic, activist, and educational practitioners can and are working 
together.

Jonathan Harris is an award winning interactive artist and computer
scientist, known for his work with data poetics and storytelling. The
co-creator of We Feel Fine, the director of The Whale Hunt, I Love Your
Work, among many others, Harris’s works have redefined documentary
storytelling in the digital age. The winner of three Webby awards, his work
has also been recognized by AIGA and Ars Electronica.

Distinguished multi-media documentarians Ralph Dfouni and Ghassan Fayad will
present their current project  Life on Hold, an interactive documentary that
presents portraits of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon. A Q&A session will
follow.

Additionally, the Symposium welcomes panelists whose collective body of work
intersects across the many proliferating boundaries of contemporary
documentary technologies and aesthetics. We are proud to bring together
writer, filmmaker, and Peabody Award Winner Gerry Flahive and celebrated
filmmaker and virtual reality producer Nyla Innuksuk. Moderated by York
University Professor Caitlin Fisher, the panelists will respond to the
central question of our Symposium: How do we learn, practice, and teach
today’s documentary language?

The conference organizers welcome, and highly encourage, individual papers,
panel suggestions, and alternative presentation formats (workshops and
demonstrations) across all disciplines related to the conference theme and
to the keynote speakers’ research. The project may be completed,
in-progress, or in developmental stages. Presentations will be 20 minutes in
length.

POSSIBLE THEMES INCLUDE [not limited to]:
-Projection spaces and/or spaces onscreen; questions of installation
-Cross-disciplinary use of virtual reality (i.e., sciences, medicine,
artillery technologies) in artistic and cross-artistic practice (i.e., fine
arts, dance, theatre)
-Classical narrative storytelling vs. non-representational forms
-Temporality and spatiality
-Questions of distribution: How do you exhibit for a collective audience?
-Influence/responsibility of private and/or public funding
-Historical events’ effects on the cultural & aesthetic standards of
documentary practice
-The praxis and ethics of documenting refugees across borders
-Addressing the demarcation between documentary filmmaking practices and
pedagogy
-Pedagogical uses, potentials, complexities of VR and/or interactive

Submissions must be sent by Friday, February 19th by 5PM to
(verging2016 /at/ gmail.com), with the required subject line “Proposal [last name]
[first name]”.

Please send the following:
-An abstract (.pdf format) of no more than 300 words (introducing your
research objectives, theoretical framework, and methodology)
-A brief bio of 100 words. Be sure to state your name and affiliation
-Please include a working title and partial bibliography of 2-3 sources
-List equipment needed, if necessary

SUBMITTING A WORKSHOP/DEMONSTRATION PROPOSAL:

Please send the following:
-The workshop/demonstration title, including your name and affiliation
-A 300-word description of the activity you would like to present (the work
may be completed, in-progress, or developmental stages)
-Audio-visual equipment needs (requests for AV equipment must be submitted
with a proposal)

Submissions (.pdf format) must be sent by Friday, February 19th by 5PM to
(verging2016 /at/ gmail.com), with the required subject line “Workshop/Demo
Proposal [last name] [first name]”.

Notification of accepted abstracts/panels will be sent by Friday, February
26th. For further inquiries, please do not hesitate to contact:
(verging2016 /at/ gmail.com) or visit the conference
website verging2016.wordpress.com.

We encourage you to follow our social media accounts:
Twitter @Verging2016
Facebook Verging 2016

---------------
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
Chauss�de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------