Apresentação

Our memories of the 20th and the 21st centuries are informed by the images and sounds that have recorded and/or fictionalized events during this period of time. And yet, images and sounds are elements that are in, and not simply of, the world. They affect us and create new effects simultaneously, shaping, inviting, and proposing new ways of seeing, hearing and knowing.

From the first actualités through to contemporary 3D cinema and television, our technological and media culture, so spectral in nature, has begun to be disseminated so far and so wide, and has penetrated so deeply into our culture, that it has changed our experience of time.

In part this is because of the globalized nature of electronic networks and the transnational nature of information exchange, which allows for an unparalleled flux of images and sounds. So widespread and fundamental have these changes been that it is urgent to reflect on the aesthetic, cultural, and political consequences of our media in general, not least in terms of how they shape our understanding of time and history.

Given the new regimes of time and space that our screen-saturated and media-dominated culture has encouraged, and perhaps even created, a simple question is therefore raised: how have the diverse media practices affected the temporality of our individual and collective lives?

The multifaceted relationship between individual and collective memory, the interactive globalised, hybrid and fluid mediascape and new communication strategies and/or dispositifs in screen media, affects contemporary dynamics of representation. Consequently, as our comprehension as well as our memories of History and historical events are changing the main concerns are about issues of representation and representability of the moving image, within such a fluid scenario.

At the same time the opposite process seems to take place as well: not only has the medial scenario triggered modification of ways of media participation in users and spectators, but new, unexpected and non-institutional formats create new opportunities to shape the media landscape.

From the point of view of content, such changes and double-directional influence set the trend for increasingly diverse forms of representation of the past, of memories, of identities and – in a more intimate sense – of the Self. Not only the meaning of identity and memory, but also memory and identity itself varies between different cultures and its medial parameters. What exactly is happening when life gets reduced to how limpid one is on the web? Is this permanent competition of images altering only the representation of the Self or also the self-representation of an imagined identity?

To sum up, the result is a renovated panorama, in which new visual media strategies play a central role and give birth to a number of innovative identities in motion. The workshop aims precisely to explore these strategies, focusing on their specificity, their developments and intersections.

New visual media strategies include, but are not limited to:

• Representation strategies
  Alternative ways of introflection/extroflection of memory, identity, Self (in films, FB, Youtube, etc.).
• Aesthetic strategies and format issues
  Experimental cinema, new audiovisual or traditional a/v production for an innovative use or distribution; intersections across the visual arts (examples of convergence, remediation etc. addressing the topic of memory).
• Pragmatic strategies
  Sociocultural everyday practices and processes, including new patterns of production or use/consumption of visual media (home movies inheritance and new forms of auto-production; grassroots practices; implementation of visual documentation with cell phone).
• Political strategies
  Interactive visual media influence democratic processes of communication and sharing medial governance policies, surveillance and video-control. To what extent are the so called ‘participatory’ forms of media productions really democratic (interactive films, collective authorship, etc.)?
  Technological strategies
  Questions linked to dispositives: birth of new devices, alternative use of old devices and platforms.

The conference language is English.

Conference attendance is free, but valid NECS-membership is required to participate.

• Organização: Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem (IFL) - FCSH/NOVA e Universidade de Coimbra
• Comité organizacional do NECS: Melis Behlil, Sofia Bull, Aurore Fossard, Paulo Granja, Olof Hedling, Petr Szczepanik
• Comissão Executiva do NECS: Melis Behlil, Jaap Kooijman, Tarja Laine, Trond Lundemo, Patricia Pisters, Astrid Söderbergh Widding, Malin Wahlberg
  
  Organização Local: António Marques, Sérgio Dias Branco, Susana Viegas, Irene Aparício, Patrícia Castello Branco, André Dias, Susana Nascimento Duarte, Paulo Granja, Liliana Navarra, Barbara Vallera

Programa

Tuesday, 19 June 2012

(I&D Building – Multiusos 2, 4th floor)

16:00 - 16:30

Welcome speech by Susana Viegas (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Introduction to the workshop by the organizing committee: Identities In Motion

• 16:30 - 18:30 Film screening – Les Fleurs du Mal (dir. David Susa, France, 2010, HDcam)
• 18:30 – 19:30 Ali Samadi Ahadi and Arash T. Riahi talk with Alena Strohmaier

19.30 – 20.00 Discussion

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

(I&D Building – Room 1.05, 1st floor)

09:00 – 09:30 Coffee and registration (I&D Building – Room 0.06, ground floor)

09:30 - 11:00 Medium Identity/-ies (Chair: Miriam De Rosa)

• Biljana Mitrovic (Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade) : Identity constitution Strategies in MMORPG Video Games
• Carlos Roos (Centre for Cinema and Media Studies, Ghent University) : The Ontological Dimension of the Mass Media

11.00 - 11.30 Coffee Break

11:30-13:00 Body and Mind: Visual Media Strategies and Phenomenology (Chair: Miriam De Rosa)

• Gavin Wilson (York St. John University) : A Phenomenology of Reciprocal Sensation in the Moving Body Experience of Cell Cinema
• Christopher de Selincourt (Cardiff School of Arts and Design) : Where is the mind of the new media editor?

13:00 - 14:00: Lunch Break

14:00 – 15h30 Representation Strategies of the Self (Chair: Miriam De Rosa)

• Maria Paz-Peirano (University of Kent) : New Mapuche Filmmaking: Political and Aesthetical Strategies of Self-Representation on the Web
• Lorenzo Donghi (University of Turin) : Self-portraits in Contemporary War. Snapshots from Abu Ghraib and Suicide Bombers’ Video-testaments

15:30 - 16.00: Coffee Break

16:00-17:30 Musealize vs Flow: new Challenges for Identities (Chair: Miriam De Rosa)

• Sarah Czerney (Bauhaus Universität, Weimar) : From National to European? Musealization of Trasnational Histories and Identities
• Georgia Aitaki (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) : Digital Filmmaking and non-fixed Identities: the Case of Kim Ki-duk’s Arirang

17:30 - 18:00 Final Remarks / Closing Session by Alena Strohmaier