[Commlist] i-Docs 2020 call for participation

*i-Docs 2020 – Call for Participation DEADLINE EXTENDED*

Submissions now close *midnight GMT, Sunday 3 November*

There’s still time – a week and a half to go until submissions close for 
i-Docs 2020!

Following the success of five previous i-Docs Symposia, we are pleased 
to announce the call for participation for i-Docs 2020 
<http://i-docs.org/2019/09/19/i-docs-2020-call-for-participation/>. 
Convened by Judith Aston, Sandra Gaudenzi, Mandy Rose and Julia 
Scott-Stevenson, and hosted by UWE Bristol’s Digital Cultures Research 
Centre <https://www.dcrc.org.uk/>, i-Docs 2020 will be held at Watershed 
in Bristol’s Harbourside on Wednesday to Friday 25-27 March. We invite 
proposals for papers, pre-constituted panels, case studies, posters and 
projects to showcase. In addition, this time we also want to encourage 
alternative and remote forms of participation – both to reduce the 
carbon footprint of the event and to include delegates otherwise unable 
to take part.

At a moment when we face urgent political, social and environmental 
challenges, we want to address the potential of evolving documentary 
forms as a means of creative response, as well as for place-making, 
convening and way-finding. Donna Haraway speaks of staying with the 
trouble. We imagine the i-Docs symposium as a space to do just that; to 
articulate, critically engage with and interrogate how i-docs – which we 
understand broadly as any project that starts with the intention to 
engage with the real, and that uses digital interactive technology to 
realise this intention – can be harnessed to respond to complex 
challenges at a variety of scales.

At the last i-Docs Symposium in 2018, we expanded the definition of the 
‘i’ in i-Docs to encompass not just interactive, but also immersive, and 
in second order – intervention, impact, and innovation. These frames 
continue to underpin our explorations of the form. As in previous 
editions, we welcome proposals on any aspect of i-doc theory and 
practice. This year we also highlight three content-based themes around 
which we are keen to convene debate and support the development of 
innovative thinking.

*Climate and Ecological Emergency *

Any number of deadlines have come and gone, and global carbon emissions 
are still rising. Meanwhile, deforestation and species depletion are 
reaching unprecedented levels. From /An Inconvenient Truth/ and /The Age 
of Stupid/ to BBC’s recent /Climate Change: the facts/, linear 
documentary has had a significant role in describing these problems and 
sounding the alarm.

• How are interactive and immersive documentaries engaging with these 
urgent challenges?
• What formal and textual strategies are artists adopting to engage with 
post-human perspectives and non-Western temporalities, to make visible, 
for example, the Slow Violence (Nixon) wrought by environmental collapse 
on the poor?
• How can networked and interactive media be employed to assist in the 
work of pressuring governments and corporate interests to take 
meaningful action?
• If documentary’s authority rests on a claim on the real, what role can 
it play in speculating on desirable futures?

*Platform Politics and Responsible Tech*

The field of i-docs is predicated on an engagement with emerging 
creative media technologies – as tools for production, as platforms and 
modes of distribution and exhibition, and as portals to participation 
and co-creation. These technologies, though, are increasingly implicated 
in a number of problematic practices – from surveillance and algorithmic 
profiling to the energy impacts of vast digital processing. i-doc makers 
have been exploring resistance through reflexive creative practice – 
projects like Do Not Track <https://donottrack-doc.com/> on extractive 
data practices, Porton Down <https://porton-down.com/> on the profiling 
potential of VR and Spectre <https://sheffdocfest.com/films/6861> on the 
affordances of deep fakes and AI for population manipulation all 
highlight the possibilities and risks, while simultaneously illuminating 
the role of i-docs in critical reflection and action.

• How can we disentangle these complex threads critically and 
practically? How do we ethically and responsibly think through the 
implications?
• How can the audience remain informed and even in control? How does 
scale inform our approach here – from data collection of a single 
audience member or participant, to potential manipulation of entire 
demographics and populations?
• How do we respond critically to the ceaseless emergence of new 
creative media technology, and as makers to commissioners’ preference 
for cutting-edge innovation? What is the interplay between interactivity 
and immersion within i-docs?
• With interactive work being lost as proprietary platforms continue to 
evolve, what might open, alternative and DIY platforms offer?

*Bonding and Bridging: Making locally, thinking globally *

It is now clear that the untethered nature of cyberspace is implicated 
in some of the problematic forms of online behaviour. i-docs practice, 
however, has seen many innovations over time which have strongly evoked 
connections with place – from /Gaza/Sderot/ through /Bear 71/ to recent 
work like Darren Emerson’s /Common Ground/. At the same time, i-docs 
practice has been a site of co-creative experimentation – projects 
become both hyper-local and connected to global communities through 
shared practice and shared commitment to community ownership.

• What new explorations of place are occurring in current and emerging 
i-docs practice?
• What do the affordances of immersive and interactive media – such as 
embodiment, a sense of presence, participation and polyvocality – offer 
for projects aiming to evoke a sense of place?
• In what ways are sites of exhibition being experimented with, for 
instance as ‘out of home’ VR (OOH) and location-based experiences (LBE) 
emerge as popular forms?
• What tensions operate between localism and globalism in immersive and 
interactive media practice and politics, and how might we navigate these?
• How can co-creative i-doc methodologies connect communities at a range 
of scales? Or, might co-creative approaches have a particular relevance 
when interrogating place? **

*A climate-aware conference *

Here at i-Docs we recognise the potential contradiction between making 
climate emergency a core theme, yet hosting an event involving a 
significant amount of air travel. We firmly believe that there is value 
in the face-to-face encounters allowed by a conference in a physical 
location. At the same time, we see the flight-intensive conference as an 
unsustainable model that is increasingly difficult to justify. For these 
reasons, i-Docs 2020 will engage in a number of experiments in order to 
help reduce the negative environmental impact associated with flying. 
Concessions will be available for delegates from outside England and 
Wales who travel overland to the conference, and we will also consider 
proposals that can be presented remotely. We encourage attendees who fly 
to the symposium to offset their emissions through a recommended offset 
programme. We are keen to explore how such changes can bring about 
positive impacts in shaping the conference, and will be exploring a 
range of possibilities in the lead-up to the event.

Further reading on academic flying:
• Trying to Stay Grounded 
<https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/resilient/trying-stay-grounded>
• Climate ethicists flying to conferences? The middle ground regarding 
voluntarily offsetting emissions 
<http://justice-everywhere.org/duties/climate-ethicists-flying-to-conferences-the-middle-ground-regarding-voluntarily-offsetting-emissions/> 

• We Have to Stop Meeting Like This: The Climate Cost of Conferences 
<https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/07/22/Climate-Cost-Conferences/>

*SUBMISSION DETAILS *

Proposals of not more than 400 words should be submitted via this online 
form <https://gecko.fm/fwfqc>, by midnight GMT, Sunday 3 November 2019. 
We welcome proposals for papers, pre-constituted panels, case studies, 
posters and projects to showcase – please specify what form your 
submission will take. Please note that due to limited space, we cannot 
guarantee that all projects submitted for the showcase will be accepted, 
and we strongly recommend submitting an accompanying paper presentation. 
Please include a brief bio (max 160 words). Proposals for alternate 
formats are welcome, and please specify if you are proposing a remote 
presentation. Please address any queries to (i.docs /at/ uwe.ac.uk)

See the call online: 
http://i-docs.org/2019/09/19/i-docs-2020-call-for-participation/


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