CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
MOVING IMAGE AND INSTITUTION: CINEMA AND THE MUSEUM IN THE 21st CENTURY
Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH),
University of Cambridge, UK 6-8 July 2011
Confirmed plenary speakers:
Professor Angela Dalle Vacche (Professor of Film Studies at the Georgia
Institute of Technology in Atlanta)
Professor Laura U. Marks (Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture
Studies, Simon Fraser University)
Philippe-Alain Michaud (Film Curator at the Musée National d'Art Moderne -
Centre Georges-Pompidou)
Conference Organisers:
Jenny Chamarette
Georgina Evans
Laura McMahon
François Penz
Moving Image and Institution: Cinema and the Museum in the 21st Century
seeks to establish a new international forum for discussion of the physical
and theoretical intersections between cinema, screen media and the moving
image, and the museum and institutional art space. This international,
interdisciplinary conference will run alongside a range of public events in
and around Cambridge in early July, to draw attention to the converging
interests of both Cinema and the Museum.
Attracting academic speakers, museum professionals and artists across the
spectrum of the Arts and Humanities from a range of disciplines and sectors
including film studies, museum studies, architecture, history of art,
modern languages, cultural geography, anthropology, ethnography and
archaeology, the conference will offer an exceptional environment where
cross-connections can be fostered between these fields, in order to
interrogate the future shape of the very cultural institutions in which
they are so heavily invested.
Cinema and the Museum have a shared heritage of historical and
socio-cultural development. Both emergent in the late 19th century as
public institutions, but with very different infrastructures, the public
concerns of the cinema and the museum have established them firmly within
the cultural imaginary of many of the key dynamics of the 20th century -
from popular spectacle to Futurism, from Surrealism to the emergence of the
post-colonial world, from the avant-gardes to the aftermath of total war,
from the information network to the cusp of the virtual world. Both Cinema
and the Museum share an ambivalent relationship between the past and the
future: while safeguarding, documenting and archiving the past is a part of
their shared role, the shifting technologies and modalities of cinema and
the museum are also instantiating fundamental changes to what constitutes
the very concepts of 'Cinema' or 'The Museum'. In the 21st century museums
have become extraordinary 'laboratories of change'; audio-visual media have
permeated the museum space: from handheld devices to large screen
projections, to interactive technologies at the intersections of material
and digital culture. Cinema is entering the Museum, and the Museum is
disseminating itself within the cinematic as a means of expanding its
engagement with the public on multiple levels, including but certainly not
limited to notions of viewing experience, immersion and object-interaction.
The conference organisers welcome the submission of abstracts for a 20
minute paper, or a 10 minute moving image/lens-based media presentation +
10 minute talk. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes in total. The
organisers would also welcome proposals for roundtables or structured
discussion from groups of 2-4 museum professionals, artists or other
practitioners.
The call for submissions is open to academics, curators, museum
professionals, filmmakers and artists and all others with professional
interests in this emerging field. The focus of these papers is not limited
to the contemporary period: presentations may choose to explore earlier
case studies or period with a contemporary methodology, for example. It is
anticipated that a publication will arise from this conference.
Topics may include, but are not limited to the following themes:
Creative geographies
Transformative spaces of the cinematic
Film and moving image installations
Proto-cinematic technologies and the museum
Visual narratives in cultural institutions
Materiality and digital media
Sociological trajectories in cinema and in the museum space
The role of the public institution in moving image practice
Exhibition practices and cinematic exhibition
Curatorial practice in the new museum
Cinema and the new museology
Ethnographic film
Filming the archive and archiving the film
Performative spaces and screen language
The Virtual Museum
Film and user/visitor experience
Audio-visual mediation and the presence of the screen in the museum space
Museums on film
Museums and genre cinema
Period film and questions of authenticity
Museums, memorials and commemoration: display and exposure
Abstracts of not more than 250 words should be directed to jlgc3@cam.ac.uk
with the subject heading "CINEMA AND THE MUSEUM CONFERENCE" no later than
18 February 2011.
Where applicable please include two lines on your institutional affiliation
and details of technical requirements.
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1407/