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Experimental Film, Video Art, and the Borders of Cinema
A British Society of Aesthetics Synergy Conference May 25-27, 2022 Queen Mary University of London Hitchcock cinema, QMUL Arts One: G19 (ground floor) Mile End Rd, Bethnal Green, London E1 4PA, United Kingdom CONFERENCE PROGRAM Wednesday, May 25 10.30 – 11.00 Breakfast and registration 11.00 – 11.15 Opening: Mario Slugan, Enrico Terrone 11.20 – 12.30 Paul Taberham (Arts University Bournemouth), Room for Error: Speculations on Defining Experimental Film Byron Davies (Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana), Pictorial Metaphor in Experimental Film 12.30 – 14.20 Buffet lunch 14.20 – 15.30 Tomas Koblizek (Czech Academy of Sciences), Moving on the Spot: Representation of Time in Static Cinema Gracia Ramirez (University of Arts London), Funding for Experimental Film, Video and Educational Television: An Enquiry into the Differentiation of Practices in the United States 15.50 – 17.00 Patrícia Castello Branco (IFILNOVA, Lisbon), Experimental Film at the Borders of the Human (online) Malcolm Turvey (Tufts), Cinematic Specificity, Intermediality, and the European Avant-Garde 17.15 – 18.30 Keynote speech: Gregory Currie (York) Art, Achievement and the Experimental Film 19.00 Social dinner Thursday, May 26 9.30 – 10.00 Breakfast and registration 10.00 – 11.10 Hannah Fasnacht (Basel), Missing Stories and Narrative Inducing Images in Experimental Film and Video Art Agostino Cera (Ferrara), Experimental Film as Film Philosophy: The “Qatsi Case” (online) 11.30 – 12.40 Matthew Rowe (The City & Guilds of London Art School), The Temporal Nature of Moving Images: A Common Thread Jiří Anger (Charles University, Prague), Keep That Image Burning: Digital Kříženecký and the Autonomous Creativity of Archival Footage 12.40 – 15.00 Buffet lunch 15.00 – 16.10 Dario Cecchi (Sapienza, Rome), The Transfiguration of Historical Reality: Experimental and Documentary Films as Embodied Meanings Trevor Ponech (McGill), Opening the Borders of the Cinematic Display (online) 17.00 – 19.00 Keynote speech: Péter Forgács (Media Artist and Independent Filmmaker) Attribution of Meaning Friday, May 27 8.30 – 9.00 Breakfast and registration 9.00 – 10.30 Preconstituted panel: Screenings as material and discursive processes (with Nicky Hamlyn, Deniz Johns, Vicky Smith and Andrew Vallance) 10.45 – 12.15 Preconstituted panel: Textile Practice in Experimental and Expanded Cinema (with Mary Stark, Jennifer Nightingale, Amy Dickson and Lilly Husbands) 12.30 – 13.45 Keynote speech: Holly Rogers (Goldsmiths, UL) Re/Sounding Spaces: Resonant Noises in Experimental Film |
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CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
Mario Slugan (Queen Mary University of London)
Enrico Terrone (University of Genoa)
CONFERENCE TOPIC
This conference aims to highlight the contribution of experimental films and video art to contemporary culture. For this purpose, one should emphasize the way in which experimental films and works of video art differ from paradigmatic films, as well as the way in which experimental film and video art, as appreciative categories, differ from one another. The idea is to realize a synergy between, on the one hand, the research carried out in analytic aesthetics on notions such as appreciative category, art form, medium, and genre (cf. Walton 1970, Davies 2004, Gaut 2010, Friend 2012, Lopes 2014, Abell 2015), and, on the other hand, the historical and stylistic research, as well as the artistic and critical practice, in the domains of experimental film and video art (cf. Sitney 2002, Dixon and Foster 2002, Michelson 2017).
Most often, the starting point for film historians and theorists is that experimental film should be primarily construed as oppositional to the mainstream fiction film. However, it would be worthwhile to push our understanding of experimental cinema by overcoming negations: instead of speaking of experimental cinema in “non” terms (non-narrative, non-mainstream, non-commercial…), finding terms which says something substantive about it. One suggestion is to think of these films as challenging cognition and providing lessons in perception (Peterson 1994, Michelson 2017, Taberham 2018) or even providing maximal imaginative engagement.
In analytic aesthetics, experimental film, video art, and their connection have been mainly discussed in the debates concerning the ontological nature and the definition of film. Scholars such as Gregory Currie (1995), Noël Carroll (1996, 2008), Trevor Ponech (2006) and Berys Gaut (2010) have proposed accounts of the moving image that are aimed to be broad enough to include experimental films and even works of video art. Yet, some of these seem still capable of challenging these attempts to capture the ontology and the definition of film (cf. Walley 2007, Wartenberg 2010). All this indicates that it might be worth relating the ontological investigation on film to the research on the nature and the variety of appreciative categories, especially those of experimental film and video art. This means combining philosophical analysis of abstract notions such as form of art, medium, and genre with the study of the concrete historical development of experimental film and video art. This is what this interdisciplinary conference aims to do.
Topics for papers and pre-constituted panels may include but are not limited to:
- What distinguishes experimental films and works of video art from paradigmatic films?
- What distinguishes experimental film from video art?
- How are experimental film and video art are related to domains of contemporary art such as conceptual art, performance art, installation art?
- Where should we appreciate experimental films and works of video art? In movie theaters or in art galleries? How does the screening-location bear upon appreciation?
- Experimental film and video art as challenges to film definitions
- The effects of the transition from analogical to digital technologies in experimental film and video art
- The role of sound and music in experimental film and video art
- Abstract moving images in experimental film and video art
- The (missing) place of narrative in experimental film and video art
- Paradigmatic experimental films and works of video art that help us to better understand the categories to which they belong.
- The role of perception, imagination, and emotions in experimental film and video art
- Which categories of art (e.g. genre, subgenre, medium, artform), are the most appropriate to conceptualize experimental film and video art?
- Possible intersections with other genres/art forms: documentary, amateur film, advertising, videoclip, videogames.
- Specific movements in experimental film and video art.
- Notable artists in experimental film and video art (e.g. Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Malcolm Le Grice, Péter Forgács, Bill Viola, Shirin Neshat, Nam June Paik, Richard Serra, Matthew Barney).
- National traditions in experimental film and video art.
- The relevance of gender/race/class/ethnicity/sexuality in experimental filmmaking and video art.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Please submit proposals at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aefis20
Submissions should be done as PDF files prepared for blind review. Thus, please just indicate "see PDF" in the "Title" and "Abstract" fields of the EasyChair form.
Questions about submissions can be emailed to: aesthetics.film.studies@gmail.com
The deadline for receipt is Friday July 3, 2020.
Speakers will be notified of decisions Friday July 31. There will be no conference fees. Upon selection, it will be possible to apply for bursaries for early career researchers.
The conference is open to both individual papers or pre-constituted panels (with 3 speakers each and a chair).
In the case of individual papers, please submit abstracts between 500 and 1000 words (references included) together with a title and 5 keywords.
In the case of pre-constituted panels, the conveners are asked to submit a panel proposal including the title, a 300- to 500-word justification for the panel and 300- to 500-word abstracts (references included) for each of the three presentations making up the panel accompanied by a title and 5 keywords. Also included should be names and institutional affiliation for the three presenters and the name, institutional affiliation, contact details, and institutional affiliation for the chair. Panel conveners will be also requested to conform to the Good Practice Policy making sure that at least two of the panelists (including the convener/chair) are female.
In line with the Good Practice Policy of the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy, the conference organizers have already ensured gender parity among keynotes and will do their best to do so for the other conference delegates. To offset unconscious biases against accepting female work demonstrated in different fields in recent studies, the papers will be blind-reviewed.
We hope for an edited volume to result from the conference. In case of publication the organizers as editors will also ensure that women are well represented.
