The Fan Studies Network

CFP: New Perspectives on Cinematic Spectatorship, Digital Culture & Space: Re-evaluating Exhibition, Participation and Interaction

Throughout the history of the moving image interrogations of film as text have arguably taken precedence over analysis of cinema as space. The film industry and film academia both assume, and thus assert, a dominant understanding of the environmental architecture of cinema based on a set dynamic between projector, screen and viewer. Ingrained over time from these spatial parameters is an almost taken-for-granted idealisation of the unique experience of film viewing: the ‘cinematic dispositif’. Despite the cultural hegemony of the traditional ‘cinematic dispositif’, in a 2008 article André Parente and Victa de Carvalho suggest that film history is littered with (often overlooked) variations and experimentations in cinema’s spatial parameters. Writing from the context of the binary between cinema and art they suggest that contemporary transformations “call for a reproblematisation of the dispositif and its conceptual, historical and conceptual aspects” (2008: 39). This issue of Networking Knowledge seeks to publish a range of articles that interrogate and problematise the ‘cinematic dispositif’ in light of the transformative effects of digital culture.

A raft of digital, technological advances is affecting viewing practices, which in turn, are challenging the ‘sacrosanct’ space of the cinema auditorium in myriad ways. In the early nineties Thomas Elsaesser postulated a revolutionary time for cinema referencing reactions to the influence of television and VCR and only touching on the future virtual spaces to come. Since then, a host of institutional, technological and cultural transformations has engendered a redefinition of the production, distribution and exhibition landscape. Further than this the spectrum of outcomes and possibilities of cinema metamorphosing as a spatial, experiential, interactive, phenomenological construct have only just begun to be realised. This issue seeks to contextualise and theorise the relationship between bodies, spaces, technologies and screens in the digital age, providing a philosophical interrogation of contemporary cinematic experience. We invite articles in subject areas, which may include but are not limited to:

New theorisations of cinematic spectatorship
New philosophies of bodies/spaces/screens
The effect of new modes of distribution in cinematic viewing
Influence of communications technologies and social media
Forms of interactivity and cinematic immersion
New filmmaking practices and tools
Trans-media effects
Issues for film criticism, journalism and writing
Debates around the future of Film Studies as a discipline
Analysis of practices designed to preserve a ‘traditional’ understanding of cinema.

We invite articles by postgraduate and early career researchers, which are 5,000 to 6,000 words long. Please send abstracts of up to 300 words along with a 50-word biography by April 1st 2014 to Dario Llinares (dario.llinares@falmouth.ac.uk) and Sam Ward (aaxsjw@nottingham.ac.uk). Articles will be due on 1st August 2014. Please contact the editors for any further information.

Dr Dario Llinares and Dr Sarah Arnold, Falmouth University
Guest Editors

Sam Ward
Journal Editor

This entry was posted on January 14, 2014 at 8:46 pm and is filed under CFP, Publications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.