FIAT/IFTA, the International Federation of Television Archives, organizes a two-day international seminar on television documentary. The seminar is organized by the FIAT/IFTA Television Studies Commission whose aim it is to promote academic research of the holdings of television archives that are a member of the federation. The seminar will take place at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum on 13 and 14 March 2014.

Former and current practitioners, representing different generations and countries, will discuss their work in a witness seminar and extracts from their work will be screened.

The seminar costs € 25-, for one day and € 35-, for both days. Because of the limited seats, we ask you to register as soon as possible. Register at:https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/fiatifta-seminar-television-documentary-tickets-10537101755

More information at: http://www.beeldengeluid.nl/en/TSCSeminar2014

 

 

From March 30 to April 2^nd, 2014 the international Orphan Film Symposium takes place at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam. The ninth edition of this biennial event is organised by NYU Cinema Studies and the University of Amsterdam, and is being held in Europe for the first time. The symposium offers a variety of  screenings and presentations and begins  with a celebratory film concert; the world premiere of the recent preservation of East is West (USA, 1922).

The symposium is a gathering of archivists, curators, scholars, technology experts, librarians, collectors, distributors, preservationists, artists, and advocates devoted to screening and studying orphan films: All manner of films outside the commercial mainstream: amateur, educational, ethnographic, industrial, government, experimental, censored, independent, sponsored, obsolescent, small-gauge, silent, student, medical, unreleased, and underground films, as well as kinescopes, home movies, test reels, newsreels, outtakes, fringe TV, and other ephemeral moving images. Rediscovered and recently preserved films, videos, and digital works from around the world will be projected, each presented with context provided by expert speakers and creative accompanists.

The theme of Orphans 9 is obsolescence, broadly conceived. More than 50 presenters will address the histories and futures of film and other moving image media. The symposium considers not only technological obsolescence, but also the ways audiovisual media have recorded and deployed ideas, genres, representations, narratives, and ideologies deemed obsolete or outdated. What orphan films document these phenomena? What neglected and orphaned media should we re-view to better understand the world? How should archivists and curators deal with obsolete “new media”? How are citizens transforming remaindered film and video material? How do archives, museums, libraries, and sister institutions participate in remix culture?

Events begin on 30^th March, Sunday evening with a celebratory film concert; the world premiere of the recent EYE discovery and preservation of East is West (USA, 1922) starring Constance Talmadge, preceded by the short films by Maarten Visser. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday events run from morning through late evening.

Attendance is open to anyone, but advanced paid registration is required. Seating is limited. Fee of 250$ (125$ for students) gives access to all screenings and presentations; catered meals and breaks, and a registration packet. Please register at www.nyu.edu/orphans.

The Audiovisual and Multimedia Section (AVMS) and the Information Technology Section (IT’S) invite proposals for papers to be presented at the World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) in Lyon, France August 16-22 August 2014.

 

The 59th Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark in May 2013. The Eurovision Song Contest is the oldest continuous television program in the world. Launched by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in 1956 as one of many initiatives to develop live broadcasting technology in Europe and to contribute to peaceful interaction across the European continent the contest which has been broadcast annually ever since, has developed into the most-watched international festival of popular music.

With a TV audience of around 120 million people plus an increasing viewer base on the internet, the popularity of the contest rivals sporting events such as the UEFA Euro and the American Super bowl.

You can watch the final of the 22nd Eurovision Song Contest in London on EUscreen:

Since its inception the Eurovision Song Contest have become a communicative and negotiated space triggering discussions of Europe, its boundaries and identities. Over the years national broadcasters, journalists, audiences, performers and even politicians have promoted their vision of Europe in relation to the Eurovision Song Contest. This Years Eurovision conference, which will take place in Copenhagen during Eurovision week 2014, will as its main theme focus on the multiple visions of Europe in the Eurovision Song Contest. Such visions can take many shapes, be they politically, economically, culturally, sexually and (mental)geographically charged. Visions of Europe link intrinsically to specific comprehensions of Europe in past and present. Visions are always partial, situated, embodied; they have material-discursive implications. Popular culture and performance cultures represented in the Eurovision Song Contest offer distinct opportunities for observing and displaying the contested nature of envisioning Europe.

Visions of Europe in the Eurovision Song Contest conference at Copenhagen University, Faculty of Humanities, will take place on the 5th-7th of May 2014. The organizers announce first call for papers on European visions in the Eurovision Song Contest – with emphasis on empirical, theoretical, analytical and/or methodological dimensions; Other papers presenting research about the Eurovision Song contest is however also welcome.

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to: ceklw@hum.au.dk by February 15th 2014

The conference is co-organized by the research program Modern Europe at Aarhus University and Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES) at Copenhagen University.

 

 

20-21 November 2013, Filmhuset (Stockholm, Sweden)

 Organizers:

Ib Bondebjerg & Patrick Vonderau

Department for Media Studies (IMS), Stockholm University

Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen

 

Keynote Speakers:

James Bennett (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Bridget Conor (King’s College, London)

Toby Miller (UC Riverside)

 

Television production, distribution and consumption are currently undergoing major changes. While some fear the «end of television», others have praised the advent of «social TV». Bringing together scholars from Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, this seminar invites to discuss the current transformation of broadcast television.

Focusing on the role of public broadcasting services, the seminar addresses issues related to regulatory frameworks and commissioning structures, multiplatform production and digital distribution. It also sheds light on changing conditions for media work, on new forms of content creation and storytelling strategies. How do PBS deal with the challenge of new independent online providers? What strategies for digital content provision and audience interaction are they developing? What implications does the digital landscape hold for creative work and content providers?

In taking up these and related questions, the overall aim of this meeting is to stipulate international collaboration that may lead to collaborative research projects of relevance to Media Studies but even to legislators, commissioners, programmers and practitioners working in the television industries.

 

Registration:

Conference Management:

Chris Baumann & Kit Krogvig

Attendance is free, but registration is required

chris.baumann@ims.su.se

 

 

LUCA School of Arts, Brussels, Belgium

Friday January 10th 2014.

Are you a graduate or doctoral student, post-doc, or young professional currently working on a project in which you engage issues concerning historical film, radio or television or issues in media history? Are you interested in presenting your project to a small group of experts and peers? Then this master-class of the International Association for Media and History may be just what you are looking for. Participants are expected to give a short introduction to their project and to prepare some central questions for discussion. Senior members of IAMHIST will engage with your paper and discuss sources and strategies for developing the project.

The day is designed to be a networking event for emerging scholars and media professionals and an opportunity to engage with leaders in the field in a less formal setting than an academic conference. There is no charge for attendance and lunch is included.

To apply for this event, send a 1-paragraph proposal of your project and a one paragraph bio to IAMIST president Nick Cull <cull @ usc.edu<mailto: cull@usc.edu>> and to IAMHIST secretary-general Leen Engelen <Leen.engelen @ khlim.be>. Deadline is November 20th 2013.

IAMHIST organizes bi-annual conferences and publishes the “Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television”, which examines the history of audio-visual media and its impact on political, social and cultural developments.

ReClaiming Participation | Technology, Mediation & Collectivity Conference, Zurich University of the Arts, May 7 – 9, 2014

DFG-Network “Media of Collective Intelligence” | Institute for Critical Theory, Zurich University of the Arts | Research Initiative “Media and Participation”, University of Konstanz

Participation has become the key issue in popular, economic, and academic notions of New Media. The conference seeks to examine and unravel the debates of the “Participation Age”, rejecting a mere appraisal of the impact of contemporary media on participation. Instead of perpetuating euphoric visions of social “all-inclusion”, web democracy and collaboration as well as pessimistic views of exclusion, top-down hierarchy and the “digital divide”, we aim to reclaim collectivity as an effect of technological, historical and political conditions and practices.

We are seeking papers that offer a wide array of perspectives on the processes of collectivization and individuation in media environments. Topics may range from analyses of participatory objects and technological arrangements to the reciprocity and entanglement of formerly theoretically separated positions. We are welcoming contributions from theoretical considerations to case studies and examinations in the field of the arts. We particularly encourage PhD candidates and early career researchers to submit proposals.

Jean-Luc Nancy (Professor emeritus at Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg, France) and Claus Pias (Professor at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany) have confirmed as two of the three conference’s keynote speakers. The program includes three thematic sessions and closes with a final report by the members of the DFG-Network “Media of Collective Intelligence”:

1. Participation and the Claims of Community

2. Participatory Practices and Digital Media

3. Art and Media: Theory of Partaking

4. Final report and outlook of the DFG-Network “Media of Collective Intelligence”

Session I. Participation and the Claims of Community

As media policy, participation is accompanied by visions of being related or tied to something larger and superior. Claims for participation are often implicitly or explicitly connected to a certain idea of a greater unity: an imagination of collectivity or even collective intelligence. This session will question the claims of community in a double sense: if participation can be staged as a promise and a duty at the same time, what are the utopias of participation and what may be their dark sides? Which desires, attractions, and impositions are implied in requests for participation? Thinking of participatory processes as mediations between disparate human and technical entities also means reconsidering the obstacles of coordinating and matching these entities. What are the interface-processes supporting or impeding the building of communities?

Session II. Participatory Practices and Digital Media

New apps, internet platforms and software codes seem to enhance forms of distributed productivity and to open new possibilities to share ideas. Simultaneously, these media conditions, and hence the knowledge of (non-)participation, are inscribed in media and technical objects or devices. Based on this, the session will explore to what extent digital media and the rise of networks re-conceptualize user practices and vice versa. How can we address the reciprocal relations and transformational processes between technical objects predetermining socio-cultural practices in the same way as they are shaped by them? The aim of this session is thus to critically rethink digital participation. In addition to analyzing displays and interface designs, it aims to scrutinize the operations of software agents, bots, and hardware components, which contribute to and determine the possibilities of participation. Consequently, the central question to be discussed is, how can participation be thought of as a socio-technological process?

Session III. Art and Media: Theory of Partaking

This session will focus on theoretical and experimental approaches to the media conditions of participation. This concerns technological prerequisites, practices and techniques, as well as fundamental outlines of participatory being while anticipating a media theory of partaking. Considerations that focus on relational thinking have gained new urgency regarding the fundamentally relational concept of participation. This includes ecological approaches, relational ontology, and postulates of a technological milieu of individuation. By questioning the interconnection of technology, aesthetics, and philosophy, art has become a favored field for experiments with participation. Art and techniques thereby shall be considered in a wider sense as skills, tactics, and practices that might provide a possibility to subvert ideologies of inclusion and exclusion, demonstrating alternatives to the claims and impositions of participation.

We accept abstracts up to 500 words that should address topics and questions relating to one of the sessions. Please add a short CV to your proposal. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 31 December 2013. Please send abstract and CV to cfp@reclaimingparticipation.com. If you have any questions please refer to our Blog at http://reclaimingparticipation.com or send an email toinfo@reclaimingparticipation.com.

All presenters chosen for the conference are welcome to apply for a travel grant. Please fill out the form regarding refunding, also available on our Blog, to apply for a grant.

Call for Papers
Université Paris 8 (Centre d’études sur les médias les technologies et l’internationalisation) Institut National de l’Audiovisuel

International Conference
From One Screen to Another: The Mutations of the Spectator

1.
Throughout the last century, the movie screen has changed (in size, in format), which has fundamentally changed the art of mise-en-scene, and with it, the relationship of the spectator to the representation. When television appeared, the potential and the limits of the “small screen” were questioned, and the art of film, especially fictional film, was redefined by taking the context of reception into account. Today, productions created for even newer screens experiment with both mise-en-scene and forms of narration and seem largely dictated by novel contexts of reception (the ways of addressing the Internet user-viewer in a web series, for example). Furthermore, in a museum, some films are exhibited to the gaze of a mobile visitor-viewer.

This gives rise to some potential questions:

What does it mean to be a spectator/viewer of movies, of television, or of the web? (Simultaneously, what does it mean to be spectator of a particular genre: fiction, documentary, etc.)?
How can the spectatorial postures implied by each of these formats –themselves variable– be categorized?
How can we, in each case, think about the articulation between the position of the spectator and narrative or aesthetic invention.

2.
Our experience as spectator changes depending on whether we see a film projected on a big screen, broadcast on television, or shown from the web, whether streamed from an Internet subscription site, or downloaded to be watched on a TV, computer, or tablet screen. Similarly, watching a web series that is being shown on television or projected on a big screen at a première creates a new perspective from which to view the production. In this movement between platforms, the border between the producer and broadcaster and the spectator is blurred to the point that their respective roles are merged. The spectator’s role is transformed in the new map of viewing experience, whether it be by uploading movies pirated from the theatre or from a Blu-Ray disk, by being invited to try watching a new network (or Netflix) show, by reading comments on social media that try and predict the content of future episodes, or by the alteration of a show’s dialogue or setting. With this migration of films, televised series, or web series, the relationships that spectators create and maintain with the works and their creators change: they become cult objects that fans collect, explain, or comment on. However, they are also objects that are at risk of losing their aura when they change platforms.

This provides a second line of questioning:
How, beyond the “convergence of screens”, can we think about the concurrence and divergence of devices?
What does this movement between platforms change in the experience of the cinema, of television, and of the web?
More generally: from one screen to another, what is the role of the spectator?

Scientific Committee :

Jean Châteauvert (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi), Gilles Delavaud (Université Paris 8), Jean-Pierre Esquenazi (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3), André Gaudreault (Université de Montréal), Marie-Françoise Grange (Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne), Jacques Guyot (Université Paris 8), François Jost (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3), Denis Maréchal (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel), Roger Odin (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3), Jean-Michel Rodes (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel), Maria Tortajada (Université de Lausanne).

Date and Location:
Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, Paris, May 21-23, 2014

Proposals (title, 20 lines/300 words, brief bio-bibliography) should be sent, before November 30, 2013, to:
Jean Châteauvert Jean_Chateauvert@uqac.ca
et Gilles Delavaud gilles.delavaud@univ-paris8.fr