[Commlist] cfp And Yet it Moves! On Cinema, Media, and Mobility

  And Yet It Moves! On Cinema, Media, and Mobility

XXVIII International Film and Media Studies Conference.
November 2nd–5th 2021
On-line/Udine – Gorizia (IT)

Extended Deadline: September 10th, 2021

(udineconference /at/ gmail.it) <mailto:(udineconference /at/ gmail.it)>

The covid pandemic has dramatically revealed the high level of mobility 
in our contemporary society by, paradoxically, reducing human movement 
to almost zero, even if images, data, news, financial flows, material 
goods, and the virus itself have continued to circulate at full speed 
around the globe. The pandemic has provoked new configurations of the 
media system, pushing media adaptability and pervasiveness into 
unexpected scenarios, and accelerating technological and socio-cultural 
processes already underway (Keidl, Melamed, Hediger and Somaini 2021).
As we seem to slowly regain our mobility, it seems fitting to reflect at 
large on the role historically played by cinema and media in shaping 
movement and space. The 28th edition of the Udine International Film and 
Media Studies Conference will focus on the current relationship between 
image, mobility, and spatiality by locating examples of past and present 
technologies’ interactions with places and environments. At the 
crossroads between film and media studies, material cultures, and 
mobility studies, the conference invites papers that examine the 
entangled relationship between film and media production and regimes of 
mobility. How do material affordances, contingencies and constraints in 
mobility affect and shape the production of media content? Which role do 
media play within broader social histories and sociological theories of 
human movements? How do the interrelations between media and mobility 
shape new forms of subjectivity?
Departing from these general premises, the conference will primarily 
focus on the three following areas:

In the picture. (Cinematic) movement and the mobile gaze
As Anne Friedberg stated, “the mobilized gaze has a history […] rooted 
in other cultural activities that involve walking and travel” (1994: 2). 
“As an apparatus that combined the ‘mobile’ with the ‘virtual’” (3) 
cinema and other forms of moving images and gazes have been often 
associated with traveling, exploration, conquest, and other forms of 
crossing and wandering through space. They systematize “imaginary 
geographies” of actual locations (Roan 2010), and, at the same time, 
contributing to the entwined production of knowledge and power over space.
Mobile media devices play a major role in building a “surveillance 
gaze”: they are increasingly involved in the process of mapping and 
monitoring our geographical movements (travels, everyday commuting, 
etc.) through augmented reality applications, helping us to navigate 
space (Fast et al. 2018), allowing institutions to control territories 
and borders (Abeele 2018), and taking part in the process of economic 
exchange and value production. Proceeding from these premises, we will 
ask ourselves: How do media and cinematic practices intertwine with 
routes and infrastructures of mobility? To what extent may their 
networks and patterns of mobility be related to the ones outlined by 
means of transportation? What are the historical, cultural and technical 
conditions under which cinema and audiovisual media apparatuses 
construct their virtual mobility? How are the interconnections between 
mobile media, labor and energy crucial for these processes?


Locative media and the making of space
Through the cultural practices of relocation (Casetti 2008, 2016), 
visual media reconfigure urban spaces. As real and imaginary landscapes 
have been shaped by cinematic images along the XX century, data 
infrastructures and screens are now crucial for the contemporary 
landscape. Architects use digital media as a new construction material, 
bridging interface, information medium, and architecture helping to 
generate a postcinematic media experience of the city (Wiethoff and 
Hussmann 2017). Artists refer to urban spaces as screening sites – see, 
for instance, the media façade phenomenon – and ordinary people 
tactically draw their physical and virtual trajectories (Cresswell 2006; 
de Certeau 1980) while inhabiting a mediatized space.
Drawing on this last issue, we aim to observe how portable screens 
mediate the experience of cities through a GPS trajectory on maps (Parks 
2001) or other locative media practices such as mobile gaming, 
place-based storytelling, the use of augmented reality apps, spatial 
annotation, and the creation of ephemeral cinema spaces in which 
city-dwelling becomes a fully-fledged media experience. From this point 
of view, a “digital urban geography” allows reflection upon the impact 
of media designing on the experience of urban environments. How do media 
reinforce and disassemble identities, memories, and conflicts at play 
within the everyday life of cities? How do media act as tools to call 
for action, assembly, protest, and for the increased urban visibility of 
marginal, minority, and fringe social groups? How do forms of vernacular 
and experimental media practices impact on the real-world media 
laboratory that is the current “smart”, digital city (Scott 2016)?

Geopolitics of media (environments) through movement
Cinematic media have played a major geopolitical role in tracing the 
flow of people’s movements all around the world. From early moving 
panoramas and exploration cinema to the current mobile technologies, 
media had been playing a key role in representing and consolidating 
colonial politics during the twentieth century, serving as 
infrastructures for monitoring forced displacement in the twenty-first 
century or as tools for elaborating and reinforcing postcolonial 
subjectivities and communities. We aim to outline these processes, 
including how visual media ecologies and assemblages-apparatuses 
(Montani, Cecchi and Feyles 2018; Goddard 2018) took part in the 
colonial explorations of the first half of the twentieth century and, 
later, in the national liberation movements in its second half.
Historically, how did media participate in the exploration of 
non-western lands and in the consequent epistemological expansion as 
well as in the processes of destruction and extraction that came with it 
(Cahill and Caminati 2020)? How did media mobility contribute and how 
does it still contribute to designing, shaping, and governing patterns 
for the flow of bodies, information and material goods across 
international, colonial and post-colonial domains? To what extent does 
the mediation of everyday mobility (or immobility) shape new 
postcolonial identities, and more broadly, how does it shape human 
interactions and relationships (Katz 1999, Green and Haddon 2009)? How 
do mobility and media help to apprehend, establish and maintain 
configurations of humans, technologies, and nature (Grusin 2010; Bauman 
and Lyon 2013) in a globalized world?

/We encourage contributions addressing any of these areas or the 
interrelations between them. We invite proposals for papers or panels of 
up to 700 characters with spaces. Please make sure to attach a short 
biographical note (up to 400 characters for each contribution). The 
deadline for submission is //September 10th, 2021./

/The conference will be held in a hybrid form, with pre-recorded panels, 
online discussion and presentations, “live” events, and screenings in 
Udine and Gorizia. Selected speakers will be asked to provide a //15 
minutes-long video presentation by October 10th./

/For more information, please contact us at //(udineconference /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(udineconference /at/ gmail.com)>/

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