[ecrea] Gorizia's MAGIS International Spring School

/_FilmForum 2019_/

/XVII MAGIS International Film Studies Spring School/

_Gorizia (Italy), March 23^rd -26^th  2019_

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We invite the submission of individual paper proposals, workshop 
proposals and panel proposals addressing a specific school’s section. 
Proposals should contain a short CV (10 lines max) and be no longer than 
one page. The deadline for their submission is December 3^rd  2018.

A registration fee (€ 150) will be applied. For more information, please 
contact us at /(goriziafilmforum /at/ gmail.com)/ 
<mailto:(goriziafilmforum /at/ gmail.com)>/./

The XVII MAGIS Spring School will be held in Udine/Gorizia from March 
23^rd to 26^th , 2019. The School is articulated in five different Sections:


Cinema and Contemporary Arts – Practices of Displacement: Mapping 
Migration in Cinema, Contemporary Arts and Cultural Heritage.

In occasion of the XVII edition of the MAGIS Spring School, the Cinema 
and Contemporary Arts section will address the ever topical issue of 
migration and its manifold relationships to art (and film), curatorship 
and exhibition. As suggested by Bourriaud (2007), in a global scenario 
contemporary art can be seen as “a practice of displacement”, for the 
way it transcodes and translates signifying elements from one context to 
another. If interpreted in relation to migration as a social phenomenon, 
“human displacement” can constitute a challenge to artistic practices as 
well as archival and curatorial ones (Ring Petersen, 2017; Johansson, 
Bevelander 2017): whenever dealing with the representations and heritage 
of deterritorialized communities, artworks and art institutions become 
sites to negotiate cultural differences (Durrant, Lord, 2017).

We are interested in investigating how the concept of migration gets 
remodulated in those theories, practices, projects, artworks and 
artefacts situated in between the realms of cinema and contemporary 
arts. With this aim, we will encourage proposals addressing (but not 
limited to) the following research questions:

  * How do contemporary artists deal with migration and displacement?
    How might the notion of mobility be channelled through different
    visual approaches?
  * What role have media technologies played in reshaping the concept of
    human and iconic “displacement” and how have flows of images and
    sounds informed the practices of artistic documentation?
  * What role have digital media and networks played in reshaping the
    concepts of “mobility”, and how have these data flows informed
    practices of artistic documentation?
  * How are migrant identities exhibited and represented in the context
    of museums, art galleries and art institutions? Which displaying
    /displacing strategies are being adopted so as to reject an
    ethnocentric perspective?



The Film and Media Heritage – Performing Media Production

For the 2019 edition of Filmforum, the Film and Media Heritage Section 
will be focused on two pivotal historical periods of media production 
hybridization and transition. They will be aligned through a common 
attention to the performative processes and practices and will involve a 
strong attention to archival sources.


/1. /“A Non-continuity System”: Media Technologies, Production 
Practices, political and Cultural Discourses and Audience Building in 
Germany and Italy (1920s-1930s). //

The first part of the Film and Media Heritage section will be focused on 
cinema industry’s transition between1920s and 1930s in Germany and 
Italy. Through two key-figures as the director and producer Joe May and 
the lead tycoon Stefano Pittaluga, the period will be framed as a 
complex and performative media production environment. On the basis of a 
systematic convergence between different archival, production and 
biographical sources, the two main case studies will be discussed in 
order to:

a) Mine and link together the archival sources available; b) Deconstruct 
institutional and industrial apparatuses, film and other media products 
involved;

c) Understand the discursive network and investigates the plurality of 
practices realized by two very different prismatic figures of the 
period; d) Reconstruct the interdependence between media, industry, 
culture and politics; e) Highlight the presence of a “non-continuity 
system” (Mazzei, 2018) at a political, techno-industrial and cultural level.


2. Mining Italian Non-Theatrical Film and Non-Broadcast Video 
(1965-1995): Excavating a Neglected Media Heritage.

The project aims to increase historical knowledge and to develop new 
tools for studying and valorising Italian non-theatrical film (Streible, 
Roepke, Mebold 2007) and non-broadcast video heritage. With 
non-theatrical and non-broadcast heritage, we mean an overarching domain 
in which we can find small-gauge films, consumer video cassettes, useful 
films (Acland, Wasson 2011) and videos, community films and videos 
(Hetrick 2006), amateur films and videos, experimental films and video 
art, activist films and videos etc. beyond the bounds of theatrical 
cinema or broadcast TV.

We will focus on media transitions (van der Heijden, 2018) in the 
“analogue era”, more specifically on the interrelationships between 
small-gauge film and consumer video in Italy. The project will focus on 
the timespan 1965-1995, because a) at the end of the sixties, we can 
note the emergence of analogue video as a “new medium”; and b) during 
the mid-nineties the digital appeared, imposing new technological 
frameworks and new practices.

Drawing on the rising interest in this kind of collections shown by 
European institutions and frameworks, the project will contribute to the 
international debate focusing on these crucial issues. These objects 
will be described and interpreted so as to attempt to pinpoint specific 
subdomains using the notion of “mode of communication”, and to highlight 
the interrelationships between material culture and visual culture 
within a media-archaeological paradigm. In order to achieve these goals, 
the project will start from the “material evidences” collected in 
specific and selected non-theatrical film and non-broadcast video 
archives: referring to typologies such as the home-, community-, 
counter-, and experimental-mode, we will choose one collection for each 
typology/mode.

In order to interconnect media archaeology, material culture, visual 
culture, non-theatrical films and non-broadcast videos, we will seek new 
methodological tools, mostly referring to the digital humanities.



Media Archaeology – Hands of Time: On Media Temporalities

In the last three years, the Media Archaeology section of the MAGIS 
Spring School has explored the interrelationships between technology and 
the body; the notion of network for media-archaeological and 
media-ecological research; and the links between the media and politics 
from a media-archaeological perspective.

The 2019 edition will pivot on the notion of temporality.

As media scholar Timothy Scott Barker recently put it: “on both the 
micro scale of signal processing and the macro scale of human 
experience, the concept of time has become one of the central topics 
around which critical discussions of media and technology revolve” 
(Barker 2014, 1).

Starting from this assumption, we expect to investigate the 
relationships between historiography and time in film and media studies.

In particular, we are interested in how film and media /histories and 
archaeologies /produce their own “archive”, referring also to the ways 
in which the media historian/archaeologist takes into account the 
specific materiality of her/his research objects and its impact on the 
historical/archaeological temporal dimensions of film and media.

By questioning this wide issue, we want to call attention to the 
“operational scale” while excavating the media: drawing on the notion of 
“radical media-archaeology” developed by Wolfgang Ernst, we want to 
highlight the micro-processes that occur in the domain of film and media 
(Ernst 2011, Ernst 2017).

We are interested in how media technologies process signals, measure 
time and produce temporalities. Moreover, we aim to reflect on the 
“micro-processes happening on a technical level that are very fast and 
very short in scale”, and on the ways to resist “historical time – that 
is, the temptation of putting old technologies into a historical 
context”, in order to “make the medium speak in its radical presence” 
(Ernst 2017, online).

This mostly means to investigate the “operationality” of digital media 
and the role of micro-processing in undermining the notion of linear 
history-telling, though we also intend to extend these lines of 
reasoning to the analogue media: what about the operationality of the 
film grain? Or the wires and cables in a radio? Or the electromagnetic 
fields in the analogue video technologies?

More broadly, how does each micro-process at the core of the different 
media-technologies shape a specific notion of macro-history, which lies 
beyond the linearity of the “traditional” historiographical categories?

Potential proposals might address the following issues, albeit not 
exclusively:

  * The role of historiography in shaping the media-archaeological
    discourse;
  * The influence of the “Ginzburg-White debate” on media archaeology;
  * Historiography, media archaeology and memory studies for historical
    purposes;
  * Micro-histories of media technology;
  * Micro-temporalities and macro-history;
  * Analogue operationalities;
  * Digital operationalities;
  * History and time structures of media technologies;
  * Media micro-processing;
  * The production of history between analogue and digital media
    technologies;
  * Remediation in film and media laboratories;
  * Materiality, temporalities and visual culture: from infrastructures
    to media representations.


Porn Studies – Porn Culture(s) Now

To celebrate its 10^th anniversary, the 2019 edition of the Porn Studies 
section aims to provide an overview of contemporary pornographic 
cultures. During the past ten years the pornosphere has been transformed 
in many respects in terms of the methods of production and distribution, 
the forms of access, consumption and reception, as well as the ways in 
which pornography is understood and conceptualized in media and 
scholarly discourses. More specifically, the section will take into 
account three interrelated aspects:

/1) The Latest Industrial Developments/

In the last few years, the porn industry has undergone a process of 
conglomeration not unlike other creative industries: now a limited 
number of big companies own and control many different types of media 
outlets (such as websites, porn aggregators, as well as more 
“traditional” pornographic studios) according to the principles of 
horizontal integration. Secondly, the more up-to-date pornographic 
players have been able to incorporate grassroots production and digital 
piracy, thus channelling them for corporate goals instead of just trying 
to compete with them on the same ground.

/2) Mainstreaming/

One of the most prominent aspects of this industrial and social 
reconfiguration of the pornographic industry is its attempt to be 
perceived as an ordinary media player that works legitimately in the 
public sphere. In order to do so, many commercial producers have 
appropriated some of the traditional cornerstone values of so-called 
alternative pornographies, such as inclusivity, sustainability, 
transparency, and fair pay. Moreover, in recent years pornography has 
developed a complex relationship with celebrity culture, with a small 
number of porn stars that have successfully crossed the boundary of the 
public arena.

/3) Porn as an Institution/

Closely related to this process is also the development of an 
unprecedented understanding of pornography as a cultural institution. 
First of all, pornography has now become a legitimate (yet still 
controversial) object of study, both academic and critical in a broader 
sense. Similarly, increasing attention is being paid to pornography as 
cultural and artistic heritage: while a number of archives and film 
institutions are beginning to work on the preservation and restoration 
of sexually explicit materials, other forms of pornographic “memory” 
(such as oral histories and personal accounts) are collected and 
valorised in film festivals, documentaries, web series, and online 
experiences.

We invite proposals that explore, but are not restricted to, the 
following topics:

· MindGeek and other porn conglomerates

·Strategies of horizontal integration (i.e. relationship between Pornhub 
and Brazzers)

·Repositioning of “traditional” pornographic studios

·Streaming, VOD, porn on television

·Pornhub and the other porn aggregators

·Incorporation of amateur practices in corporate enterprises

·Dis-intermediation, re-intermediation, new pro-am practices (i.e. the 
case of Modelhub)

·New frontiers of the vision (VR, Holographic Porn, etc.)

·Forms of white/pink washing

·Pornography and transparency (i.e. Pornhub Insights)

·Ethics and corporate porn

·Porn and celebrity cultures

·Pornographic fandoms

·Pornographic self-narratives (autobiographies, social media, etc.)

·Porn stars as sexperts and cultural intermediaries

·Porn in the academia

·Critical approaches to pornography

·Porn archives

·Pornography and film restoration

·Porn documentaries

·Forms of pornographic cinephilia and collection

·Porn festivals and exhibitions

·Porn awards (industry awards vs. “independent” awards, etc.)



Post-Cinema – Exploring the Concept of “Agency” Between Experimental 
Cinema and Interactive Contemporary Storytelling

For the 2019 edition of Filmforum, the Post-cinema and Videogames 
section is aims to set the field in relation to the concept of agency, 
within the current development of interactive storytelling, including 
interactive fiction and factual projects, VR, AR and mixed reality 
projects, as well as new innovative forms of serial content which 
include a cross-media dimension.

The digital media, immersed in a cross- and trans-media landscape, are 
now embracing a stronger focus on non-linearity and the redefinition of 
the relationship between story and audience. Through embodiment, haptic 
enablers and 360° immersive storytelling, digital storytellers are 
exploring new and innovative applications that may well become part of 
the conventions of the future.

  The objective of this section is to explore the concept /per se/, but 
also to contextualise its evolution within the history of experimental 
cinema and installation art. In particular, we aim to build bridges with 
the history of experimental film and video (including moving image and 
artist films) and art installation projects, in order to explore how 
some of the current non linear features used by interactive storytelling 
forms, which are becoming the convention of our times, were explored by 
European and American avant-garde filmmakers and artists during the XX 
century, as well as by some transnational and postcolonial movements 
with a political and revolutionary dimension (i.e. Third cinema, African 
cinema etc.).

Current research has focused on the evolution of the role of the author, 
and consequently of the position of the audience, and on the concept of 
agency as an ability to make choices and, therefore, to make changes, as 
a transition from “viewer” to “inter-actor” (Gaudenzi, 2019). This 
position is changing especially in relation to 1) the position of the 
user-audience 2) the space of action 3) the freedom to act in relation 
to the rules of action.

Many current interactive experiences are designed in relation to the 
user’s ability to perform a form of agency in relation for which they 
control certain actions, how they interact with the space and structure 
of the experience and how this affects its overall flow.

We would like to explore the sources of this epistemological turn by 
accepting proposals that bridge contemporary interactive and immersive 
audiovisual projects with audiovisual experiences from the traditions of 
experimental film, video and installation art, in order to identify a 
shift in the positioning of the relationship between user and audience, 
and their ability to operate changes within the audiovisual environment 
– which finds its roots in philosophical movements that preceded the 
digital turn. How is the current concept of agency related to change? Is 
there still a political and social dimension connected to the employment 
of non-linear features?

In addition to these artistic expressions, we would like to analyse, 
from a more sociological or media studies perspective, what is happening 
on the web, studying how digital cultures work on the definition of 
agency on audiovisual /dispositifs /such as YouTube, Instagram Stories, 
Facebook Live, and other SNS, streaming sites and video archives. How is 
the relation between creator and audience established? What connections 
can we find with the redefinition of the concept of agency? What are the 
most interesting experiments, phenomena, practices?

We are accepting proposals which explore the concept of agency, 
comparatively or analytically, within the fields of:

  * experimental film and video projects, moving image and artist films;
  * postcolonial and transnational audiovisual projects;
  * digital art projects;
  * literature, theatre and performance art;
  * VR, AR, mixed reality fiction and factual projects;
  * social media and interactive platforms, as well an online
    interactive archives;
  * wearable technologies as applied to art, music, entertainment and
    social issues;
  * interactive serial online and TV content, cross-media projects
    including radio content;
  * video games.

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