[Commlist] cfp: The Materials of Screen Media

*The Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand 
(SSAAANZ), in association with Massey University, present:*

*The Materials of Screen Media*

*30 November — 2 December 2022*

“Materialism,” “materials,” “materiality,” “matter”: for scholars in 
screen and media studies, is there anything these terms can’t do? They 
shape our common critical vernacular, from references to “source 
material” to discussion of “subject matter.” They also sustain a range 
of approaches to screen media—from cultural materialist frameworks 
(Garnham; Williams) to theories of the cinematic apparatus (Baudry; 
Hanich; Pedulla; Straw; Elsaesser), and from film and TV exhibition 
histories (Friedberg; Griffiths; Schwarz; Spigel; Szczepaniak-Gillece) 
to indigenous approaches to media materiality (Hokowhitu; Miner; Smith) 
and contemporary studies of screen production and distribution (Holt and 
Perrin; Mayer, Banks and Caldwell; Cunningham and Silver; Lobato). In 
fact, across the past two decades, screen and media studies has 
undergone what a number of critics have identified as a full-scale 
“material turn” (Herzogenrath; Mitchell). Among scholars associated with 
this turn, the “material” betokens, variously, the infrastructural 
underpinnings of screen media (Starosielski; Parks and Starosielski), 
the raw geo- and biophysical resources that feed screen media (Bozak; 
Cubitt; Maxwell and Miller; Parikka), the audiovisual technologies 
of screen media (Dourish; Gittelman; Kittler), the material cultures of 
screen media (Benson-Allott), the affective flows of the technologically 
mediated bodies that experience screen media (Kavka; Marks; Sobchack), 
and screen media’s unique ontology (Arsenjuk).**

The SSAAANZ 2022 conference, hosted online by Massey University between 
the 30^th of November and the 2^nd of December 2022, will both take 
stock of existing uses of terms like “materialism,” “materials,” 
“materiality,” and “matter” in screen studies, and open up these terms 
to new applications. We invite contributions that push the rubric of 
“materiality” in novel critical directions, as well as those working 
within existing “materialist” traditions, from media industry studies, 
to affect theory, to infrastructure studies. We especially encourage 
reflexive thinking across these traditions. Why have we returned so 
frequently to a metaphorics of “materialism” and “materiality” in our 
efforts to understand how screen media work, what screen media are and 
why screen media matter to us? What is the relationship between 
Williams’s “cultural materialism” and Latour’s “matter,” or between 
Caldwell’s “material practices” and Sobchack’s material body? And how 
might the rise of digital and algorithmic media transform our 
understanding of the screen media’s “material” base?

*Keynote Speakers:*

Caetlin Benson-Allott (Georgetown University) 
<https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014RWn1AAG/caetlin-bensonallott>

Olivia Khoo (Monash University) 
<https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/olivia-khoo>

Alice Lovejoy (University of Minnesota) 
<https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/alovejoy>

*Guest Filmmakers:*

Sari Braithwaite, director of /[CENSORED]/ (2018) 
<https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/-censored--2018/37122>

CIRCUIT <https://www.circuit.org.nz/>artists and curator Mark Williams

Heperi Mita, director of /Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen/ (2018) 
<https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/merata-how-mum-decolonised-the-screen-2018>

Tiriki Onus 
<https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/233294-tiriki-onus>and Alec 
Morgan <https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/alec-morgan/>, 
co-directors of /Ablaze/ (2020) 
<https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/ablaze-2020/38245>

*Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:*

  * Materials on screen/the matter of images
  * Screen media agencies, industries and institutions
  * Production studies and media industry studies in Australia, New
    Zealand and beyond
  * The crafts of film and television production and their materials:
    production design, costume design, set and props construction.
  * The materiality of the production and post-production workflow:
    shooting, editing, animation, effects
  * The material cultures of screen media consumption
  * Film preservation and archiving
  * Screens and the built environment
  * Indigenous approaches to and perspectives on media and materiality
  * Sizes, shapes, textures of screens
  * Film stock: histories, politics, aesthetics
  * The practices, spaces and networks of media distribution and exhibition
  * “Old” materialisms: Marx, Adorno, Williams
  * Class and stuff/the stuff of class
  * Media archaeology
  * Film and television affect
  * Resource media: carbon, sunlight, plastic
  * Materialisms “old” and “new” in critical conversation
  * Media and/as the environment: cloud media, rain media, stone media
  * Dead media, media waste
  * Film and media infrastructures: server farms to undersea networks
  * The “stuff of bits”: spreadsheets, databases, networks
  * “German” media theory in Australasia
  * New materialism and media: speculative media, object-oriented media
  * Digital materialisms

*We are inviting proposals for sessions of four kinds:*

**

  * *Individual presentations*: we ask that presenters pre-record
    presentations of 7-15 minutes long so that they can be made
    available online ahead of the panel session itself, which will be
    dedicated to discussion and Q&A.
  * *Pre-constituted panels*: these proposals should include an
    overarching rationale as well as proposals for 3-4 individual
    presentations (of 7-15 minutes long). Again, we ask that presenters
    re-record their presentations so that they can be made available
    online ahead of the panel session itself, which will be dedicated to
    discussion and Q&A.
  * *Roundtables:* discussions on a scholarly topic led by a chair and
    3-5 speakers. This format involves each speaker presenting for up to
    5 minutes on the topic in order to kick off a roundtable
    conversation, and then engaging in further discussion with the 
audience.
  * *Seminars*: participatory sessions led by 1-2 seminar leaders with
    up to 8 participants and an audience of auditors. Seminar leaders
    will invite participants to undertake preparatory tasks that will be
    shared prior to the conference.

*Please visit the conference website at **www.ssaaanz2022.com/* 
<https://www.ssaaanz2022.com/>*to submit your proposal. Proposals for 
presentations at the conference must be submitted by midnight (NZT), 30 
May 2022.*

Please note that this conference will take place primarily online to 
ensure accessibility and provide certainty in the current climate.

While the main conference will take place between the 30^th of November 
and the 2^nd of December, we will be holding an online pre-fix event for 
postgraduate students and early career researchers on the 29th^th  of 
November. More details regarding this event will be announced nearer the 
date.

Organising Committee: Pansy Duncan, Claire Henry, Ian Huffer, and Kyra 
Clarke

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