[ecrea] Media Fields Journal - CFP: VIDEO STORES (August 15, 2010)

>Media Fields Journal
>http://www.mediafieldsjournal.org/
>Inaugural Issue: Video Stores Call for Papers / Projects:
>
>Please submit by August 15, 2010
>
>This special issue pays overdue attention to the space of the video store as
>a site of inquiry for media and cultural studies.
>
>We seek a wide range of works (medium­length essays of 1500­2500 words,
>digital art projects, audio/video interviews) that explore the significance
>of video stores  how they have (or have not) figured in film and media
>cultures, histories, and theories. In short this issue of Media Fields seeks
>contributions that write the video store into film and media studies.
>
>Video stores have been an overwhelmingly neglected topic in film and media
>studies. Yet for the past three decades, they have played crucial roles in
>shaping the uses, developments, and failures of media technologies; in
>sustaining the film industry through the home video market; and in the very
>cultivation and distribution of knowledge about cinema itself.
>
>In the past five years, due to a confluence of factors­the Internets
>emergence as the dominant medium through which we watch media, the
>increasing popularity of rental kiosks such as Redbox and online rental
>delivery and streaming services such as Netflix, and a troubled economic
>climate in which many institutions can no longer afford competitive prices
>for rent­video stores have been closing at an alarming rate. The widespread
>closures of video stores present an opportunity to consider their social and
>cultural significance for a wide range of communities.
>
>We are open to a variety of approaches and topics, which might focus on
>industry, technology, globalization, aesthetics, or historiography. Works
>might draw on ethnography, anthropology, visual studies, cultural studies,
>film studies, media studies, art history, textual analysis, critical theory,
>history, sociology, photography, and so forth. We especially welcome works
>that engage the role of the video store outside of the dominant media
>industries in the United States.
>
>Questions to consider:
>
>    - Is the video store an archive? How does consideration of the
>videostore as a space contribute to or alter any of the many
>conversations in
>    media studies about the archive?
>    - Has the era of the video rental store passed? What legacies has it
>    left? What fallacies might such a claim risk? In what forms do
>storesremain or even flourish?
>    - What is the significance of renting in terms of how we perceive media
>    as commodity, in how we perceive various media technologies, or in how we
>    perceive the space of the video store?
>    - How do renting practices connect with old and new forms of distribution
>    and consumer practices?
>    - What kinds of knowledges about cinema has the video store as a space
>    shaped? How might consideration of the video store revise film canons,
>    film histories, video histories, cultural histories, media histories?
>    - To what extent is the video store, as some media scholars have claimed,
>    a model for the Internet, in its bringing into contact, and keeping alive
>    networks of cultural commodities? How does 
> the Internet represent the end of
>    or the continuation of the video store?
>    - What relationships exist between piracy and the video rental store?
>    - How has the video store functioned in relation to other media practices
>    and cultural formsfrom music and gaming to fan clubs, snacks and
>    collectibles?
>    - To what extent can particular video rental stores be read as marking
>    and traversing regional, national, and global boundaries and flows?
>
>Feel free to contact issue co­editors, Joshua Neves and Jeff Scheible, with
>proposals and inquiries.
>
>(submissions /at/ mediafieldsjournal.org)
>

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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