[ecrea] CFP: Poetics and Politics of Documentary

Poetics and Politics of Documentary Attenborough Centre for the Creative 
Arts
University of Sussex Falmer/Brighton
2 – 4 June 2017

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Please submit an abstract of 200-300 words, a brief bio and indicative 
bibliography to:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=polpoe17
EXTENDED Deadline for abstracts: January 31, 2017

The 3rd edition of Poetics and Politics of Documentary: A Documentary 
Practice-led Research Symposium will be held at University of Sussex. 
This symposium provides a rare and valuable opportunity to theorise 
documentary practice and to engage in dynamic discussion about 
documentary at the intersections between technology, aesthetics and 
ideology. Following on from the first two successful gatherings of 
practitioner-scholars in this field at Aalto University Helsinki (2013) 
and UC Santa Cruz, (2015) the symposium invites participants whose 
practice-based work frames, historicizes, or embodies questions about 
the various possible relations of theory to practice in documentary 
research. The symposium reflects a variety of approaches to documentary 
from a range of fields including film, video and new media, art 
practice, including photography and sound arts, media and visual culture 
studies, visual anthropology and ethnography. The emphasis of the event 
is critical reflection by practice-based researchers concerning the 
forms, aesthetics and politics with which their work engages.

This third edition of Poetics and Politics of Documentary will continue 
to explore the key themes of poetic praxis, with a particular emphasis 
this year on the theme “Beyond Empathy.” The recent affective turn in 
critical theory has not bypassed documentary and indeed has seemed to 
justify a whole host of strategies and funding streams that emphasize 
documentary’s emotive potential. Character driven story lines complete 
with dramatic arcs reign supreme in today’s documentary landscape, and 
with the rise in VR experiments the discourses of empathy and 
experiential transference have never been higher. While documentary has 
always incorporated a range of methods to reach and move its viewers, 
and the current hybridity of documentary modes and platforms results in 
new configurations of affective and cognitive experience for 
viewers/users, there seems to be an uncritical embrace of the sensory 
and affective register that may or may not take account of questions of 
the political and/or the poetic. It also tends to foreclose many of the 
more experimental and creative practices that have distinguished 
documentary practice from the start. The proliferation of alternative 
realist media (such as expanded cinema, live cinema, i-docs) and virtual 
reality with their funding intensive requirements has only further 
pressured this case.

•	How might the call for empathy be justified in relation to debates 
from Brecht onwards          about the political and ideological 
limitations of such an approach? •	How do we move between eliciting 
empathy to creating analysis and how can the         affective dimension 
of visual and aural languages be best deployed to achieve this? • 
Conversely how might works which are not explicitly ‘political’ in their 
address utilize documentary forms in unexpected ways to mobilize social 
engagement in viewers and users? •	What innovative practices are 
documentary practitioners using to counter this empathic trend?
•	To what extent do the immersive or interactive affordances of these 
newer documentary practices succeed in encouraging political agency? • 
What is the relation between immersion, action and political engagement?
In addition to this theme, we encourage proposals on the full range of 
topics related to the broader theme of poetics and politics of 
documentary practice. We will consider all relevant proposals. We hope 
to attract speakers working in and across moving image, digital media, 
photography, installation and writing. The symposium aims to foster 
critical communities of practice and productive debate around examples 
of work.
Presentations can be on completed works or works-in progress and are 
welcome to take up any question with regard to the intersections between 
the practice, politics, and poetics of documentary, broadly conceived.

There will be an opportunity to screen/present works alongside the panel 
presentations but space for installation work will be limited. If you 
wish to exhibit/make available work outside of your presentation, please 
indicate this in your proposal with any technical/space requirements. 
However presentations should not depend on your work being exhibited 
i.e., they should be free-standing.


Lizzie Thynne
Reader in Film
School of Media, Film and Music
University of Sussex
Silverstone Building
Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RG
Latest feature doc:
http://brightonsymphony.com/
http://lizziethynne.co.uk/
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/107668

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