24th SERCIA Conference, 6-8 September 2018, Växjö, Sweden

Hosted by Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, campus Växjö [link]

The field:

As early as 1911, Ricciotto Canudo coined the term “Seventh Art,” bringing aesthetic considerations to bear into the realm of entertainment. Walter Benjamin, on the other hand, rejected cinema for being a mass medium devoid of artistic aura, which, according to him, was forever lost in the process of mechanical reproduction (1936). No matter how one looks at cinema, its appreciation or criticism is entirely dependent upon its physical and technical nature as a medium, especially since its technical properties and consumption platform(s) affect the form and content of specific products (i.e. films). Since cinema/film is a medium that evolves in time and is anchored in space during the viewing process, it has always, from its inception, shared properties with other media. Some films or television series are self-reflexive and use these confluences as a discursive trait where the linkages may become the subject and/or a shared method.

“Intermediality” is the word that defines these junctures and the research field within which these confluences take place. Such a relationship may occur on a one-on-one basis, in which a media form or a media product is transposed to another media form or product, or it can occur in a more multimedial basis, in which a complex transposition involving several media takes place at once. The result is something which is different from the original and yet possesses some of the same properties. It can either be a transformation in the characteristics of the medium being transposed, i.e. an adaptation, or a different representation of the media in other media, i.e. ekphrasis. The advent of new media opened another field of inquiry within intermediality, namely digital cinema and its properties. Advocates pro and against the emerging computational technologies helped shed some light on matters of relative chronology and hybridity/media fusion in a more diversified environment. Both positions differ only in focus and degree, since cinema, from a technical perspective, has undeniably changed. The concept of “post-cinema” addresses the new technological forms and sites of consumption, which, in turn, results in new ways of film viewing, more or less immersive; as well as in new types of products, more or less fragmented and pushed towards the museum.       

Suggested topics:

 

The present Film and Television conference, calls for rationale and analysis that bears on cinema/television as technical media and its characteristics. Proponents are invited to establish connections with other media, within English-speaking countries. Both theoretical and practical analysis of film and other media are accepted. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

  • Definition of media, intermediality, intramediality.
  • Mediation, remediation, transmediation processes.
  • Narrative adaptation, cinematic ekphrasis.
  • Media characteristics and/or essence.
  • Pure and impure media/cinema.
  • Cinema as a limited or superior medium.
  • “Old”, new, and residual media.
  • Digital cinema.
  • Post-cinema.
  • Hybridity and media borders.
  • New perspectives on the history/archaeology of cinema and other media.
  • The aesthetics of cinema and other media technologies.
  • Cinema/television and art forms: new artistic languages.
  • Cinema/television and society: social uses of media.
  • Cinema/television and ideology: the politics of media.
  • Cinema/television as communication.
  • Immersive qualities and spectatorial adhesion.
  • The invisible and the virtual.
  • Different products, different spectators.

Keynote speakers:

François Jost – Professor Emeritus at Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, France.

Lúcia Nagib – University of Reading, Department of Film, Media and Television, UK.

Miriam De Rosa – Coventry University, School of Media and Performing Arts, UK.

 

Submission:

The language of the conference is English. Individual presentations must not exceed 20 minutes. Please send your proposal containing an abstract (500 words max.), 5 key-words, and a short bio (120 max.) until 15th February 2018 to the two following email addresses: chinita.estc@gmail.com and ims@lnu.se Notification of acceptance will be sent until 15th March 2018.

Upon acceptance, speakers will be required to become SERCIA members for 2017. For information on how to become a member, click here. Visit the conference website.

Conference fees:

600 SEK (65 €) for lecturers / professors / independent scholars; 300 SEK (35 €) for students / retired colleagues, which cover meals and other arrangements.

Contact:

Fátima Chinita (chinita.estc@gmail.com) and Eva Larsson (ims@lnu.se).

 

Scientific committee:

Jean-François Baillon, Jørgen Bruhn, Dagmar Brunow, Fátima Chinita, Annelie Ekelin, Lars Elleström, Liviu Lutas, David Roche, Anna-Sofia Rossholm, Niklas Salmose.

 

Selected Bibliography:

Acland, Charles R. (ed.). Residual Media : Residual Technologies and Culture. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

Bellour, Raymond. La querelle des dispositifs. Cinéma – Installations, Expositions. Paris: POL, 2012.

Brefer, Hans and Klaus Peter Busse (eds). Intermedia: Enacting the Liminal. Dortmund: Books on Demand, 2005.

Denson, Shane and Julia Leyda (eds.). Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st Century Film. Falmer: REFRAME Books, 2016.  

De Rosa, Miriam and Vinzenz Hediger. Cinéma & Cie. International Film Studies Journal, Vol. 26/27, No. 16 (2017).

Elleström, Lars. Media Transformation: The Transfer of Media Characteristics among Media. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Gaudreault, André and Philippe Marion. The End of Cinema? A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Herzogenrath, Bernd (ed.). Travels in Intermedia[lity]: Reblurring the Boundaries. Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouh College Press, 2012.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York and London: Routledge, 2006.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Collide. New York and London: New York University Press, 2006.

Jost, François. Pour une éthique des médias: Les images sont aussi des actes. Nouvelles Éditions de l’Aube, 2016.

Mannoni, Laurent. The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archeology of the Cinema. Translated by Richard Crangle. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000.

Nagib, Lúcia and Anne Jerslev (eds). Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film. London and New York: I.I. Tauris, 2014.

Natale, Simone. “There are no Old Media,” Journal of Communication (2016). doi:10.1111/jcom.12235

Oddley, Alison and Christine White. Modes of Spectating. Bristol, UK; Chicago, USA: Intellect, 2009.

Packer, Randall and Ken Jordan, eds. From Wagner to Virtual Reality. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001.

Pethö, Ágnes. Cinema and Intermediality: The Passion for the In-Between. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.

Sager Eidt, Laura M. Writing and Filming the Painting: Ekphrasis in Literature and Film. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008.

Schröter, Jens. “The Politics of Intermediality”, Film and Media Studies”, nº 2 (2010), pp. 107-124.

Uroskie, Andrew V. Between the Black Box and the White Cube: Expanded Cinema and Postwar Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

 

Welcome to Sweden!

The organizing committee