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 volker.pantenburg (at) uni-weimar.de 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