[ecrea] CFP -- Spiral Film and Philosophy Conference 2018: “Thinking Space”

*CALL FOR PAPERS:***

**

*Spiral Film and Philosophy Conference 2018:***

*“**Thinking Space**”***

**

*Toronto, Canada*

*May 11-12, 2018*

Since Muybridge’s chronophotographic experiments, the relationship 
between cinema and time has been well documented. Less obvious, perhaps, 
is the relationship of cinema with space. Following the so-called 
digital mutation of recording and viewing technologies, this issue has 
nonetheless made its way to the forefront of cinema and media studies. 
It is not only that moviegoing is being decentered by the rise of 
portable viewing platforms —as cinema happens more and more outside of 
traditional theatres —, but also that the usual medium of inscription of 
film —the celluloid base —has been radically opened by new media.

This recent dislocation of film represents a unique opportunity to 
examine the relationship between space, philosophy and film. What does 
it mean for film-philosophy to happen—to take place—as a theoretical 
event in the gaps opened by this disruption? In what ways can thinking 
be informed by this spatial turn going on in film and media studies? 
What kind of possibilities arise when the spatiality of the /medium/ is 
being considered from a cinematic perspective? All these questions 
require that we carry over Foucault’s intuition into film-philosophy: 
“[t]hepresent epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space”(1986).

We specifically seek papers that engage space and cinema beyond both the 
static and the merely representational. The focus should instead be on 
the dynamic way in which the visual tracing of movement allows both for 
the creation of space and the opening of new paths for thought. Topics 
and issues to cover may include (but are not limited to):

-not merely the cinema of architecture, but the architecture of movement;

-immersive experience involving sight, sound and other senses;

-aesthetic and critical approaches to developments in virtual reality 
and “total cinema”;

-mediations allowed by the cinematic experience;

-cinematic and mediatized tracing and mapping of space (gesture, 
projection, etc.);

-dislocation of the filmgoing experience (cinematic experience 
decentered: GIF, iPhone);

-cinematic space less as object of representation, but as process of 
thought-making;

-cinematic questioning of traditional space (i.e. space-folding in 
/Inception/, deconstruction of classical spatial grammar in post-WWII 
European cinema)

-topological approaches to thinking the axes of space and time in the 
creation of cinematic worlds;

-innovative cinematic treatment of specific typologies of space: 
interstellar space (/Gravity/), place, location, zone (/Stalker), /area, 
ambiance, environment and ecology (first space footage of Earth), 
globalization;

-phenomenological and affective inquiries into living spaces, 
lifeworlds, etc.;

-posthuman, object-oriented, and speculative realist inquiries into 
non-, post-, and para-human space (hyperobjects, anthropocene, 
chthulucene, capitalocene, etc.);

-space and (in)visibilities in cinema and media (sites of appearance and 
disappearance, scenes of light and darkness, staging, audition, etc.);

-biopolitical engagements with space and place (i.e. the camp, logics of 
capture, everyday life)

-fragmentation of space (Shaviro’s post-continuity)

We welcome papers that engage with the work of specific philosophers and 
theorists who think about space and philosophy from a variety of 
perspectives and further relate them to questions of cinema and media 
studies. We also welcome filmmakers, media practitioners, and activists 
to present and discuss their work.

The confirmed Keynote Speaker is Andrew Culp, Assistant Professor in the 
Faculty of Aesthetics and Politics at California Institute of the Arts. 
He is the author of /Dark Deleuze/ (University of Minnesota Press, 
2016), and has published articles and interviews in /boundary 2/, 
/Quarterly Journal of Speech/, /Communication and Critical/Cultural 
Studies/, /parallax/, /Angelaki/, /Affinities/, and /Radical 
Philosophy/. He is currently working on a book project entitled /Persona 
Obscura/.

The conference will be held in Toronto, Canada May 11-12, 2018.

Please send a 300-350-word abstract, brief bibliography, and bio (with 
institutional affiliation, if applicable) in one document as an email 
attachment to (spiralfilmphilosophy /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(spiralfilmphilosophy /at/ gmail.com)>by Friday, March 2, 2018. 
Notifications about acceptance or rejection of proposal will be sent 
promptly.

*Conference Registration Fee:*

Conference Attendance: $100 (Canadian)

Graduate Students and Underemployed: $50 (Canadian)

Conference website: spiralfilmphilosophy.ca <http://spiralfilmphilosophy.ca>

Organized by the Spiral Film and Philosophy Collective in collaboration 
with the department of Cinema and Media Studies, York University.


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