CfP Cinematographic Objects (II): Things and Operations

From: Susanne Wagner [[email protected]]

Call for Papers
Cinematographic Objects (II): Things and Operations

International Conference of the Junior Fellow Program “Theory and History of
Cinematographic Objects,” July 11-13, 2012
IKKM, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

In recent years, studies in the history of science, social sciences, and
ethnology have prompted cultural theorists to return to the realm of things.
However, the potential contributions of film and the study of film to our
understanding of what constitutes a thing or object, and how they operate
for and within film, remains an open question. One may ask, for instance:
“What do things do in or to film?” And conversely: “How do film and media
theory affect objects and existing concepts of objecthood?”

Films are assemblages of things: suitcases, revolvers, cars, shower
curtains, bones that turn into spaceships within a split second. Insofar as
these “things” make their peculiar appearance on film, they can be called
cinematographic objects. The complexity of cinematographic objects resides
in the fact that their very definition is always implicated in an
ever-evolving network of associations with: 1) things on film, 2) the
materiality of filmic images, and 3) the mechanical and operational
relationships between the apparatuses necessary for their production (i.e.
cameras, editing equipment, projectors, microphones, etc.)

“Cinematographic objects” are characterized by a specific relationship
between thing and operation. The screen is full of props, artifacts,
material objects either made explicitly for the cinematographic apparatus or
merely picked up and recorded by it. Yet these things and objects only
acquire certain cinematic qualities once the lights in the theater dim and
their visual and temporal configurations unfold. It is only here that they
begin to move, change shape, emerge, then vanish through zooms, tracking
shots, pans, cuts, and editing. It is only here that they are enlarged and
isolated in close-ups, arranged and gathered in ensemble-staging medium
shots, and rendered landscapes and scenery with the long-shot. Likewise,
things find a particular form of expression in filmic diegesis and narration
when they align the various looks and gazes, motivate the development of the
plot, distinguish characters, and circulate between protagonists. And not
least of all, the film seems to chart the extra-filmic routes along which a
cinematographic object as an artifact will migrate—as a piece of cinephilic
memorabilia or in an exhibition in a film museum, or as iconic gestures
associated with six-shooters, sunglasses, and cars—as visual motifs in art,
as archival objects, or as fetishized images.

Following the “Cinematographic Objects” workshop in 2011, the conference
“Cinematographic Objects (II): Things and Operations” is organized around
precisely these relations between artifact and operation. On the one hand,
it seeks to closely interrogate the specificities of film and cinema
according to film and media theoretical concerns with the cinematographic
operations of object construction, as well as the peculiar nature and
properties of things, objects, and artifacts in film. And on the other hand,
it also welcomes discourses on the transformations and migrations of things
between film and other disciplines and areas of study such as art history,
natural sciences, politics, and the everyday.

Potential topics may include:

What can historical concepts of “thingness” in film theory, and particularly
those from the silent era (Balazs, Epstein, Vertov) contribute to
contemporary understandings of cinematographic objects? How can
cinematographic objects be located in relation to current conceptions, such
as the “epistemisches Ding” (Hans-Jörg Rheinberger), “non-human actors”
(Bruno Latour), or the “quasi-object” (Michel Serres)?

What ontological and epistemological status do things (costumes, props,
sets) have within the space of the pro-filmic? What kind of access or
insight can we have to them (production notes, rumors and gossip, stills and
photographs, behind-the-scenes, etc.), and how is this access regulated
(film museums, private collections, etc.)?

How can the effects of digital image production and circulation on the
material character of cinematographic objects be described?

Are there objects, operations, relations, and corresponding
conceptualizations from fields beyond film and media studies that are
detectable in cinema? Such as traceable elements from landscape painting in
westerns? Or echoes of Donald Judd’s minimalistic “specific objects” in the
monolith of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001?

What can be claimed about things on the basis of their difference from other
media practices and art forms? What differentiates sets, props, and stage
design in theater from props in cinema?

Is cinema particularly well-suited to the task of negotiating the status of
“hybrid objects,” as outlined, for instance, by Donna Haraway (writing on
the cyborg, which is itself both technological and natural, fragmented and
unified)?

Formalities:

Presentations should not be longer than 45 minutes. The conference will be
conducted in English and German; presentations can be given in either
language. We ask that all contributions in German also include an English
abstract. Submissions should be sent to [email protected] no
later that January 15, 2012. For the purposes of blind review please send
the following two documents in PDF format:
1) A one-page abstract of the intended presentation without further information
2) A separate document with your name, address, and institutional affiliation

Please direct your questions to the conference organizers, who will gladly
respond to your inquiries.

Concept and Organization: Junior Fellow-Program “Theory and History of
Cinematographic Objects” at the “Internationales Kolleg für
Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie,” IKKM Weimar |
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