[ecrea] CFP Bodifications: Mapping the Body in Media Culture

CFP: XIV MAGIS - Gorizia International Film Studies Spring School

Bodifications: Mapping the Body in Media Cultures

(Gorizia, 9-14 March 2016)

 From the 2016 edition onwards, the MAGIS - Gorizia International Film
Studies Spring School will promote a long-term research project
dedicated to the historical transformations of the body in media
cultures. This project is based on the premise that the epistemological
understanding of the body has been changing in the Western World
starting from the second half of the 19th century at least. The
body-mind opposition that has traditionally informed Western thought has
been challenged: no longer discarded as a mere “vessel” for the mind –
therefore irrelevant, or even “dangerous”, to reason (Grosz 
1994) – the
body has started to be considered as the very condition through which we
access the knowledge of the world. In a phenomenological perspective,
the body is in fact the vehicle through which our own experience of the
world come into being: in other words, it is ‘our general means of
having a world’ (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 146). The body is therefore
conceived as an object of the world and as point of view on the world, a
space from which exteriority is established and through which
interiority is constructed at the same time (Fabbri and Marrone 2001).
Moreover, the definition of the body as a biologically predetermined
entity, characterized by ahistorical and fixed features, has been
challenged by, amongst other things, the two following ideas. Firstly,
the idea that the body is a discursive construct, informed by a complex
series of regulatory norms and power relations (Mauss [1936] 1973;
Foucault [1976] 1979). Secondly, the idea the body and its evolution
have been influenced by technology, seen as a co-evolutionary partner of
the human being, and thus capable of modifying the biological
determinations of the body itself (Leroi-Gourhan 1993). In this sense,
‘behaviours, morphologies, and even physiologies are the outcome of a
set of processes through which every society acts on the bodies, this
way literally constructing them’ (Borgna 2005, VI).

According to this epistemological perspective, the body is therefore
seen as a fundamental vector (and “filter”) of knowledge and as a
bio-political and techno-cultural artefact in which different
ideological and material tensions meet and collide. In the late
modernity, this perception of the body has reached its full development,
while at the same time being rearticulated by further cultural
processes, such as significant changes in the economic structures, the
atomization of social agencies, the political and theoretical action of
social movements, and the possibilities offered by scientific and
technological innovation. In this context, the body becomes a reflexive
entity, the object of options and choices, a sort of individual project
aimed at the redefinition of the self and of identity (Giddens 1991;
Bauman 1999). This paradigm of the “body-as-project” has developed in at
least two different (though closely interrelated) directions. On the one
hand, the human body (as conceived in modern humanist thought) has been
reconceptualised as an “obsolete” object whose senses and capabilities
need to be enhanced and whose limits need to be overcome. During the
last decades, in fact, different social discourses and practices – such
as those produced by body art, plastic surgery, bodybuilding, cyber
punk, etc. – have all worked towards the definition of a post-human and
post-organic body, freed (at least in part) from biological constraints
and limitations (e.g. Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Stelarc 1994). On
the other, the body is perceived as a “political” project aimed at
manifesting and (re)defining specific social values and lifestyles. It
is in fact primarily through their work on the body that individuals
construct and affirm their identities in order to find their place (and
recognition) in the social world. Of course, this body-project is at the
crossroad of several contradictions and tensions: as also stated by
feminist, queer, and race studies, individual strategies of
self-construction through the body must always engage in a process of
negotiation with (or against) the system of meanings employed by the
social order to make sense of the body itself (e.g. Butler 1993;
Pitts-Taylor 2003; Kaw 1997).

Moreover, the transformations of the body (and of its relationship with
the mind) in contemporary technological landscape do not only affect the
body as an object of study, but also concern the observing subject
(Black 2014). The Humanities are now facing a gradual relocation of
forms and places of knowledge construction, thus undergoing a drastic
change in their theoretical framework. Many scholars in the field have
now left behind an out-dated “Vitruvian” attitude, as they find
themselves involved in ‘endlessly ramified networks’, in which they
constantly rework their fluid identities and environments, they
‘construct, and [are] constructed’, recognizing themselves as 
‘spatially
extended cyborg[s]’ (Mitchell 2003, 39). Contemporary media
relationships in fact ‘[place] scholars in an extended network that
combines minds, bodies, machines, and institutional practices, and [lay]
bare the fiction that scholars are disembodied intellectuals who labor
only with the mind’ (Burgess and Hamming 2011). Therefore, a project
dedicated to the synchronic and diachronic study of the body in
(contemporary) media cultures should also investigate the ways in which
this object is framed, analysed, understood, and disseminated by an
interdisciplinary and “stratified” scientific community that is embedded
in the very same technological and cognitive relations it aims to describe.

The research project promoted by the MAGIS - Gorizia International Film
Studies Spring School investigates the role performed by the media in
this complex scenario where the body and its cultural perception are
constantly transformed and redefined. We aim to address the following
issues: 1. The function of media representations in the social
(re)definition of the body; that is, the ways in which media texts and
discourses produce repertories, iconographies, images, perceptions,
models, and meanings that influence the construction of the body and its
transformations; 2. The role of media technologies in the physical
transformation and enhancement of the body; that is, the ways in which
the intersection of body and technology contributes to overcome the
biological, neurological, and psychological limits of the (human) body;
3. The role of media technologies in the epistemological
reconceptualization of the body as a cultural and scientific object
during the last two centuries, and their influence on the concurrent
transformation of the observing subject – from external and “detached”
to embodied and embedded in the object itself. Drawing on their own
specific disciplinary interests and methodological perspectives, the
five sections of the School – Post-Cinema, Porn Studies, Visual Arts,
Media Archaeology, and Film Heritage – will focus on different
configurations of the body:

Post Cinema. The digital/post-organic body

This section investigates the status of the body in the realm of new
media, with particular attention to videogames, transmedia platforms,
social networks, and other Internet features. The main focus of the 2016
edition will be on the processes through which new technological devices
develop the condition of immersiveness, and how this condition affects
the uses of the body. We invite proposals on: 1. The strategies through
which specific technological devices (such as Virtual Reality headsets,
Smart Glasses, Augmented Reality games and applications, etc.) create
immersiveness; 2. How immersiveness impacts on the relationship between
subjectivity, politics, and power, and on the definition of the borders
between human and not human, organic and post-organic; 3. How
immersiveness shapes contemporary non-linear narratives and interactive
storytelling. 3. The developments of spectatorship in the digital age,
and more specifically the ways in which new forms of media consumption
engage the body of the viewer; 5. The ways in which the body itself is
represented and addressed by new media texts and products (webseries,
YouTube videos, grassroots productions, 3D and high definition cinema,
videogames, etc.).

Porn Studies. The pornographic/sexualized body

According to Linda Williams’s classic definition, pornography can be
described as a “body genre”, that is as a film genre essentially aimed
at eliciting bodily reactions in the viewer through the “spectacle” of
bodily excess. More recent studies have further developed this idea,
starting to investigate the social production of the pornographic body
and the affective relationships between pornography and its audiences.
On this basis, the section aims to address the following topics:
typologies and morphologies of the pornographic body; articulations of
the pornographic body in terms of gender, ethnicity, age, ability, and
class; pornographic sub-genres, body types, and the pleasures of
categorization; sexual hyperbole, excess, and the grotesque in the
pornographic body; porn as standardization and porn as subversion of the
body; porn star bodies as (cultural) commodities; industrial and social
constraints in the construction of performers’ bodies; medicalization of
the pornographic body; ways of engaging the viewer: body affects,
feelings, and visceral reactions.

Visual Arts. The artistic/performative body

In recent times, the long-standing tradition of Performance Art seems to
be changing its course: several artists are turning their attention back
to the “outside world”, using their own bodies (as well as the bodies of
the audience) as tools to create aesthetic evolutions or even
socio-political transformations. Therefore, the Visual Arts section aims
to investigate the human body as a transforming factor and a subject of
mutation, capable of activating processes of change in contemporary
media cultures. The section invites scholars and researchers to explore:
1. The ways in which artistic performances attempt to involve the
spectator as a “relational” subject (as Nicolas Bourriaud would say),
taking into account performance as well as video art and other
audio-visual productions; 2. The strategies and techniques with which
these artistic performances engage both the artist and the viewer’s
bodies, also considering the possibilities offered by digital
technologies and online networks.

Film Heritage. The body and shape of film history: forms of presentation

For its 2016 edition, the section will organize interactive workshops in
which former, current, and future ways of (and dispositifs for)
presenting film history will be discussed. The digital turn within
humanities has increased the interest in e-research and e-presentation,
opening up new possibilities for presenting the “body” and the
“artefacts” of film history. In this context, growing communities are
building new collaborative environments, characterized by interactive
access, re-uses, shared tools, and a combination of different archival
resources. A similar ethos informs and strengthens the strategies
enacted by museums and theatres in the organization of exhibitions aimed
at preserving “original” presentations and creating haptic (or
archaeological) relationships with films and related materials. In this
case as well, the form of presentation defines the content and corpus of
what is understood as film history. In order to understand present and
future ways of presentation, the section will extensively investigate
the “historical” ones, with the aim of building bridges and
(re)discovering common issues among former, current, and future forms of
presentation. The section is organized by the University of Udine - La
Camera Ottica, CineGraph/Hamburg, University of Applied Sciences Potsdam
& University of Potsdam (European Media Studies).

Media Archaeology. The archaeological/technological body

This brand new section of the MAGIS Spring School is devoted to the
multifaceted scholarly approach that goes under the label of Media
Archaeology. Drawing on the outcomes of the XXI Udine Filmforum
Conference “At the Borders of (Film) History”, in the next few years
this section will undertake a project dedicated to the archaeology of
the “technological body” – i.e. the body as constructed by 
technology –
in the analog era. This edition will be focused on the body produced by
non-theatrical films and videos. More specifically, we will investigate
how film and video technologies have contributed to establish
“interrelationships” in the non-theatrical realm, in terms of social
identities, technological “gestures”, cognitive processes, and
environments. Based on these premises, we invite proposals on: 1.
Non-theatrical films and videos as the “material ground” through which
cultural discourses and human agency have constructed social identities;
2. How the human body has incorporated technology and how technology has
moulded new bodily frameworks, in particular taking into account the
non-theatrical realm; 3. How this technological embodiment has created
new ways of perceiving and thinking; 4. How the technological body
shaped by non-theatrical films and videos has interacted with its own
environment, modifying and technologizing its inner structures.

The organizers invite single papers and panel proposals
Deadline for proposals: November 15, 2015
Authors will be notified by November 30, 2015 if their proposals have
been accepted.

Proposals should not exceed one page in length. Please make sure to
attach a short CV (10 lines max).

Submit proposals to: (goriziafilmforum /at/ gmail.com)
<mailto:(goriziafilmforum /at/ gmail.com)>

Further information at: http://www.filmforumfestival.it







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