[ecrea] Call for Essays: Avant-garde and Popular Forms Between Music and Visual Media (Transhistorical and Intermedial Investigations)

  CfE 33_Avant-garde and Popular Forms Between Music and Visual
  Media. Transhistorical and Intermedial Investigations

Editors: *
*

**Simone Dotto (University of Udine)*; *François Mouillot (School of 
Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong); Maria Teresa Soldani 
(Università di Pisa)*
*


In 1987, Simon Frith and Howard Horne’s /Art into Pop/ questioned the 
rise of British Post-War popular music within the context of art 
schools, employing cross-terms such as “rock bohemians” and “pop 
situationists”. The authors focused on the 1970s and the aftermath of 
punk, finding a close relation between popular music forms and art forms 
in the contexts of several British cities as well as in New York City. 
More recently, Simon Reynolds traced the genealogy of an “artistic bias” 
in popular music back to the post-punk period of the late 1970s, when 
“art ideas affected actual musical practices” (2009: 365) due to the 
influence of not musically trained artists coming from the NYC 
experimental scene such as Yoko Ono and Brian Eno.

So far, scholarly investigations on the intersections between popular 
music and culture and avant-garde arts have been mostly limited to the 
social cultural milieu of only two decades (1960s/1970s) and two 
countries (U.S.A./U.K.). Essay such as Bernard Gendron’s /Between 
Montmartre and the Mudd Club/ (2002) and Sytze Seenstra’s /We are the 
noise between the stations/ (2003) constitute two notable exceptions 
through their reframing of the American punk scene and of David Byrne’s 
work through a diachronical comparison with French modernism and 
conceptual romanticism, respectively. They do not only reassess the 
collapse of hierarchical distinction between the social function played 
by high arts and mass culture with the advent of late 
modernity/postmodernity, but also take into serious consideration the 
relationships between different media domains.

Drawing on a similar methodological approach, this special issue of 
/Cinéma&Cie/ aims to address the context made up of works of art in 
music, film and video by tracing the ongoing exchange between 
avant-garde and popular forms from trans-historical and intermedial 
perspectives. We are interested, for instance, in how art groups as the 
No Wave in NYC between 1970s and 1980s represented a ‘turn’ in cinema, 
media, and performing arts through their connection to the East Village 
art scene and by working contemporaneously with several media and art 
forms. Mainly inspired by fellow musicians, No Wave created mixed 
media-productions blending performance, music, film, and video. Its 
originality stemmed out of its concern with the presence of the TV in 
daily life, the rise of the videoclip form, the codes of film genres, 
and the symbols of pop/rock disseminated in mass media that functioned 
as a fertile common ground of popular culture. Such independent art 
projects have transformed traditional forms of film, TV format, and 
music into performative acts taking the form of fictional films, TV 
shows, or pop-rock songs.

We invite theoretical comparisons as well as analyses of case studies 
that challenge the limits of such strategies, forms, and contents shared 
by avant-garde and popular forms. In other words, this special issue 
aims to analyze recurring “motifs” among aesthetic formats, artistic 
practices, production strategies, cultural uses, and theoretical 
understandings of visual and sound media that took place in different 
times and within different cultural contexts. How is this relation 
between avant-garde and popular forms articulated today in past and 
present cinema, popular music, and video examples? Which case studies 
make such a relation emblematic?

Article proposals may involve (but are not limited to) the following topics:

– examples of intersections of avant-garde and popular music and visual 
media aesthetics in the 1970s/80s/90s period;

– the relation between avant-garde and popular forms in specific fiction 
films or videoclips;

– the influence of avant-garde music within fiction films and, vice 
versa, the presence of popular music genres within avant-garde films, 
using distinct case studies;

– analyses of production strategies blending both traditional and 
disruptive strategies, avant-garde and popular forms, experimental and 
established forms (e.g. the song, the fictional film, the videoclip). 
These analyses could specify the nature of such a relation (e.g. is it a 
dialectic, a tribute to, a critique?) and the aims of such strategies;

– the hidden and intervolved relations between avant-garde and popular 
media artistic practices: in which ways do they inform each other? Is it 
a reciprocal relationship?

– tools and strategies adopted in the audiovisual storytelling to 
represent or self-represent avant-garde musicians (e.g. how does a 
documentary visual form articulate the representation of an avant-garde 
phenomenon? In such audiovisual works, which is the relation between 
avant-garde musicians and a codified documentary storytelling?);

– the uses and misuses of specific technologies and media to map 
possible continuities and similitaries between avant-garde and popular 
cultural contexts;

– the historical and theoretical tension between live and mediated 
performance in avant-garde and popular contexts, plus their implications 
on the actual preservation and historicization of the artworks (e.g. are 
our documental mediated sources limiting or affecting our historical 
awareness of these artistic phenomena in any sense?);

– the convergence between popular music and video (e.g. videoclip, 
mono-channel video) and their interaction in “performative” contexts 
(e.g. multi-channels installations, live visuals), as well as how these 
case studies are influenced by avant-garde forms and practices;

– how this relation may be revisited and articulated today in the 
post-medial panorama.

*Submission details*

Please send your abstract (300–500 words in English + bibliographical 
references) and a short biographical note to (submissions /at/ cinemaetcie.net) 
<mailto:(submissions /at/ cinemaetcie.net)> by *September 15, 2018*.

All notifications of acceptance will be emailed no later than *September 
30, 2018*. If accepted, 5,000/6,000-word essays will then be required 
for peer review by *December 1, 2018*.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any further questions.


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