[ecrea] CFP “But I saw something that others did not see” Philosophical research program around the work of Werner Herzog.

But I saw something that others did not see”
Philosophical research program around the work of Werner Herzog.

The visual and written oeuvre of Werner Herzog carries with it a series 
of contradictions and paradoxes that have been nourished by the author 
since the beginning of the 1960s. For example, Herzog repeatedly 
contested any connection to the German tradition (e.g. romantic 
painting, Weimar cinema) though his films obviously attest of such a 
connection. Similarly, he always refused an interpretive and scholarly 
approach to his work and defended its autonomy and irreducibility 
vis-à-vis discourses other than those found in the films themselves. 
Contrary to some of his contemporaries in the New German Cinema (e.g. A. 
Kluge or R.W. Fassbinder) who explicitly refer to existing systems of 
thought, Herzog never burdened his films with any intellectual 
reference. Instead, he developed himself a rich thought, showing through 
his texts and films that the blurring of limits between fiction and 
documentary is itself paradoxical: the truth of fiction films depends on 
the actors’ exposure to the material character of the filming process, 
while, in documentaries, truth can only emerge through a process of 
rewriting and radical poetization of the real. One of the recurrent 
topics in Conquest of the Useless sums up all the contradictions and 
paradoxes at work in Herzog’s oeuvre: what seems peaceful is illusory. 
The real is turbulent and unstable – it disturbs the senses and leads to 
a crisis of the intelligibility at the very core of perception itself. 
However, the author’s response to this crisis is yet another paradoxical 
gesture for he chooses – similar in this to the protagonists of his 
films – to exacerbate the problem: rather than turning to a raw and 
distantly sober cinema as Straub and Huillet, for example, Herzog 
engages in a cinema of excess – of the excessive character of perception 
–, the only way for him to escape the logic of representation.

Owing to its inherent paradoxes and contradictions, Herzog’s cinema is a 
thinking cinema. It pushes us to scrutinize its unsolved aporia, not in 
order to solve them by identifying the inner logic at work in his films, 
but to open them up to systems of thought which are not a priori 
contained in them. This is why we need to approach Herzog’s work from 
different disciplinary fields (philosophy, anthropology, sociology, 
literature, psychology, cinema studies, etc.). For the only way to think 
with the work is to abstain from remaining strictly inside of it, and 
open it up to different disciplines. The series of working sessions 
proposed in this colloquium constitute a first step on this path.


Modalities
The colloquium “But I saw something that others did not see” is 
organized by the University Paris 8 in collaboration with the University 
of Liège, the New University of Lisbon (IFILNOVA-CinéLab), and the 
Goethe Institute Paris. It will take place in Paris on the 6, 7 and 8 of 
november, 2019.
Each participant will have an hour in order to present a problem arising 
from Herzog’s work. Each will be requested to integrate to their problem 
at least one fictional and one documentary film. The candidates need to 
submit to the organizing committee an abstract (3000 signs max.), 
including a title and a small biography, in English or French, before 
December 1st 2018. The colloquium will be made entirely available on a 
dedicated website.
Submit proposals to : (etudesphilosophiques.herzog /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(etudesphilosophiques.herzog /at/ gmail.com)>

Stefanie BAUMANN, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, IFILNOVA – CineLab
Tadeu CAPISTRANO, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), 
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Artes Visuais (PPGAV)
Grégory CORMANN, Université de Liège, UR MAP - Matérialités de la Politique
Jeremy HAMERS, Université de Liège, Centre de recherche CONTRECHAMP - 
Etudes cinématographiques, photographiques et audiovisuelles
Eric LECERF, Université de Paris 8, Laboratoire d’études et de 
recherches sur les logiques contemporaines de la philosophie (LLCP) EA4008
Jennifer VERRAES, Université Paris 8, Esthétique, Sciences et 
Technologies du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel (ESTCA) EA 2302
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