Deleuze and mobile photography?

Another bit of New Year excitement – I am really pleased to announce that this month sees the publication of ‘Immanent Images’, an essay I put together for D N Rodowick, who is Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and a Director of Graduate Studies at Harvard University.

The collection is called Afterimages of Gilles Deleuze’s Film Philosophy, and is published by the University of Minnesota Press. The collection comes off the back of Time@20, the conference held at Harvard a few years ago.

The books contributors are Raymond Bellour, Ronald Bogue, Ian Buchanan, James K. Chandler,  Tom Conley,  Amy Herzog, András Bálint Kovács, Patricia MacCormack, Timothy Murray, Dorothea Olkowski, John Rajchman, Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, Garrett Stewart, Melinda Szaloky.

My essay spins out quite significantly from PCM, and includes some ideas I was thinking about when speaking at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh on the big Mapplethorpe retrospective. I think that some of Deleuze’s ideas about cinema tell us more about our experience of photography art and in the everyday than I had originally anticipated when I first read them.

Minnesota are a terrific press to work with considering how impersonal some of these prestigious university presses can be, and the editing process (from the contributor’s side!) has been a dream.

Enjoy.

Screening the Past – Trailers

Call for Papers: Screening the Past: Special Issue (2010)

Cinema/Photography: Beyond Representation

Guest Editors: Des O’Rawe and Sam Rohdie

The development of new digital technologies and representational forms has revived interest in the relations between photography and cinema, an interest that is both creative and critical. Independent film-makers are availing themselves of alternative exhibition formats and spaces for their work (e.g. multi-media installations, galleries, the internet, etc.), and moving image experimentation is now commonplace in the fields of contemporary fine art, design, music, and theatre. The writings of Bazin, Barthes, Metz, and Deleuze are being re-read in light of the aesthetic and institutional implications of digitalisation. A substantial body of work is now being devoted to such topics as: the movement of stillness, and vice versa; the expressive significance of still photographs in specific films; films that are about photography and/or particular photographers; photography that takes the cinema, particularly the cinematic apparatus as its subject matter; and, the film-making of photographers, and the photographic work of film-makers.

Screening the Past is seeking original, or substantially revised, and/or newly translated articles on the aesthetic and institutional relations between film, photography, and the visual arts. In particular, we are interested in writing that is attentive to cinematic forms and their reconfiguration within the contemporary visual arts.

Please send 500 word abstracts/outline proposals to both editors by February 15, 2010.

Des O’Rawe: d.orawe@qub.ac.uk

Lecturer in Film Studies, Queen’s University Belfast

Sam Rohdie: srohdie@bellsouth.net

Professor of Cinema Studies, University of Central Florida

via Screening the Past – Trailers.

Transcultural Memory

4 – 6 February 2010

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An interdisciplinary conference jointly organized by the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London, and The Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London

This conference marks the inauguration of The Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory.

Conference organizers: Lucy Bond, Rick Crownshaw and Jessica Rapson (Goldsmiths); Katia Pizzi and Ricarda Vidal (Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies). Venue: Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London Keynote speakers: Astrid Erll (University of Wuppertal) Andrew Hoskins (University of Warwick) Dirk Moses (University of Sydney) Michael Rothberg (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Discussant: Susannah Radstone (University of East London)   Programme Thursday, 4 Feb Friday, 5 Feb Saturday, 6 Feb     Fees: Standard rate: £55 per day/ £135 for all three days Concessionary rate: £25 per day/ £70 for all three days (students, retired, unwaged; staff in IGRS member-departments) Early Bird discount if you register before 15 January 2010 Early Bird Standard rate: £40 per day/ £120 for all three days Early Bird Concessionary rate: £20 per day/ £60 for all three days (students, retired, unwaged; staff in IGRS member-departments) Please click here for Registration form Accommodation How to find us   About the conference Skeptical reactions to the rise of memory studies have focused on the viability of concepts such as “collective” memory. Can societies really remember collectively? More to the point, can individuals really remember what they have not directly witnessed or experienced? Is to speak of collective memory simply to speak of ideology or political fantasy? The concept of cultural memory has overcome this binary opposition between the individual and the collective, attending to their reciprocal relationship and the cultural grounds on which their mediation takes place (Assman). How, though, does memory work when events are remembered across and between cultures? In an age of globalization, is it still possible to speak of local and national memory, or do the local and national always exist in implicit and explicit dialogue with the transnational? Holocaust- and memory studies have begun to address these questions in tracing the globalization of Holocaust memory as a trope by which other modern atrocities are shaped and remembered, and, of course, the Holocaust has been incorporated into national memories in order to forget indigenous genocides and shore up ideals of nation (Huyssen and Patraka). Conversely, theories of vicarious witnessing have posited an ethical dimension to the remembrance of events across cultural boundaries. The ideas of “prosthetic” and “post” memory conceive of the remembrance of events not witnessed by those born afterwards or elsewhere, and of mass- mediated memory as something that does not wholly belong to (and define) the familial, ethnic or national group (Hirsch and Landsberg). (The idea of witnessing across cultural borders has not been without controversy in the academy.) Recent innovations in comparative historiography (Moses, Stone, Moshman), laying vital groundwork for developments in memory studies, have sought to remove the “conceptual blockages” in comparing modern atrocities, moving beyond notions of the Holocaust’s uniqueness that might inscribe a hierarchy of suffering across modernity, eliciting the structural continuities and discontinuities between atrocious events – between genocide and colonialism. Just as Moses has configured modernity in terms of a racial century, so in sociology and literary studies race has constituted an overarching narrative that brings together diverse modern spheres of both culturally creative and violent activity and identification (Cheyette and Gilroy). In postcolonial studies, concepts such as trauma have enabled a spatial rather than linear approach to the experiences of colony and postcolony (Durrant). In philosophy, conceptions of ‘bare life’ have allowed an international consideration of state sovereignties and their biopolitical regimes (Agamben). In architectural and urban studies, city development and its architecture is found to articulate a globalised vernacular, which has implications for spaces and places of memory and memorialisation. All of these disciplines find that it is increasingly difficult and problematic to isolate representations of past, which in turn calls attention to the need for the comparative study of memory as it takes an increasingly transcultural form – as Rothberg’s recent ground-breaking work on the multi-directionality of memory has shown. The conference explores the subject of transcultural memory from across the disciplines – English and Comparative Literary Studies, History, Cultural Studies, Architectural Studies, Cultural Geography, Film Studies, Media Studies, Politics, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, the Visual Arts, etc. Please direct any enquiries to transculturalmemory@gmail.com

The ‘Now’ is in the Past… Nation and the Body without Organs

Thanks to everyone who turned up at Stirling University to see me present one of my latest projects, a look at Deleuze and Guattari’s Body without Organs in: Philosophy, Politics and Homage in Wisit Sasanatieng’s Fa Thalai Jone (Tears of the Black Tiger). The film stars Chartchai Ngamsan, Stella Malucchi, Supakorn Kitsuwon, Arawat Ruangvuth and veteran Thai actor Sombati Medhanee. It is a stunning Thai Western which is understood as two very different films depending on where you hail from: either a postmodern romp or affectionate take on a national cinema.

My presentation was based on a chapter for a forthcoming edited collection which should be out next year, and so was consequently in its early stages of development. Nevertheless, I had great questions and had to make copious notes on the way home. Thanks to Bill for inviting me and everyone for a pretty full 90 minute seminar!

3rd International Deleuze Studies Conference

Date: 12 July 2010 Location: Amsterdam & Utrecht Time: 00:00 – 00:00

3rd International Deleuze Studies Conference

Connect, Continue, Create

Deleuze and Nomadic Methodologies

 

Amsterdam 12-14 July 2010

ASCA / CFH

Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis with the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University

“Philosophy needs a nonphilosophy that comprehends it; it needs a nonphilosophical comprehension just as art needs nonart and science needs nonscience”, Deleuze and Guattari argue in What is Philosophy? The third annual International Deleuze Studies Conference will address the relevance of nomadic thought for contemporary scientific, critical and artistic practices. More specifically, it will explore the fast-growing new inter-connections among the three domains of art, science and philosophy, by mapping out and exploring the complex ways in which transdisciplinary encounters can be engendered. Combining critique with creation, the conference will focus on issues of methodology by positioning Deleuze’s philosophical work as the missing link among different domains of scientific enquiry, philosophical and artistic practice today. Central questions are: what are the different ways of interference among these different areas?  What kind of methodological implications do their dynamic encounters entail?  What are the limits of transdisciplinary connections, relations and fields?  What kind of research is art practice? In a world that is increasingly technologically linked and globally mediated, how can scientific disciplines connect in distinctive and productive ways both among themselves and with practices located in the world of art and thought? The conference rests on the assumption that rhizomatic growth and inter-relations are unpredictable but this does not mean that they proceed randomly. Connections may be broken but will always continue to grow in other directions and create new encounters, new thoughts and new affects. Accounting for the unexpected patterns of both sustainable and unsustainable inter-connections is one of the challenges of nomadic methodology. Parallel to the conference several art events and film screenings will take place in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Eindhoven.

Conference Organizers: Prof. Patricia Pisters, University of Amsterdam; Prof. Rosi Braidotti, University of Utrecht. For information asca@uva.nl and cfh@uu.nl. See also the conference link at www.hum.uva.nl/asca and at www.hum.uu.nl/cfh.

Deleuze Camp

Preceding the conference students can participate in the Deleuze camp Mille Gilles which will take place from 5-9 July 2010 in Amsterdam. In intensive sessions participants will read texts by Deleuze and Deleuze scholars with the help of experienced scholars from different fields. The Deleuze camp also includes a student forum in which participants can launch their own ideas and questions. Places are limited. Application details will be announced from September 2009 onwards.

Screen Conference 2010

Screen Studies Conference 2010

2-4 July 2010
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Screen Performance

The 20th International Screen Studies Conference will be programmed by Screen editor Karen Lury.

Confirmed plenary speakers:

• Chris Holmlund, University of Tennessee
• Andrew Klevan, University of Oxford
• Jacob Smith, University of Nottingham
• Lesley Stern, UC San Diego

“Screen performance” will be the subject of the plenaries and will form a strand running throughout the Conference. However, papers on any topic in screen studies, ie cinema, television and digital media, are welcome. Submissions for pre-formed, three-person panels will be considered but not prioritised.

Please send your 200-word proposal to arrive no later than Friday 8 January 2010, marking the subject box ‘Conference 2010′, to screen@arts.gla.ac.uk.

University of Glasgow :: Screen :: Conference 2010.

Photography, Cinema, Memory: The Crystal Image of Time

“This book adds an important dimension to the contemporary study of photography. As the oldest of our new media technologies takes new forms and enters a complex phase, our traditional theories of photography, the photograph, and the ‘photographic’ are being tested. Firmly based in a consummate grasp of photographic culture and theory, as well as its limits and challenges, Damian Sutton explores how Deleuze’s influential philosophy of the cinematic image can also illuminate our understanding of its foundational element: the photographic image itself. Photography, Cinema, Memory should take a place on the short shelf of new and significant thinking about photography.” — Martin Lister, University of the West of England, Bristol

I am delighted to announce the publication of Photography, Cinema, Memory: The Crystal Image of Time which is out from August 12th from University of Minnesota Press in hardback and softback. The book’s historical view spans the 170 years since photography’s invention to consider (and reconsider) our relationship to time. This is a complex relationship both reflected and shaped by our technologies, and especially technologies of vision. The philosophy of the book is profoundly influenced by the work of Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson, and takes in (along the way) new and recent thought by Alain Badiou, Vilém Flusser, Bruno Latour and Jacques Rancière. Readers will find chapters devoted to the work of Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol, as well as new appraisals of early cinema – especially the Lumières, and Mitchell and Kenyon. Wider visual culture is never far from the thoughts expressed in the book, with the early comic strips of Winsor McCay providing a powerful background to our understanding of modernity and the moving (and still) image, whilst Dick Tracy lurks behind Alain Resnais’ beautiful L’Année dernière à Marienbad. The idea of cinema is more important here than any one film, so I have tried to include films which allow me to interrogate to a certain extent the conceptual framework of time and memory presented by Western film and philosophy. Case studies include Vidocq, kids, Funny Face, Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Chicago, Amélie, and Morvern Callar.

Above all, I have taken to task our everyday understanding of photography and time, and a great pleasure of working on the book has been in looking at work by Nan Goldin, Hannah Starkey, Hiroshi Sugimoto, David Claerbout, Steve Pippin, Sherman and Warhol, and of course Helen Levitt, who sadly passed away in March. I’m also very pleased to be able to use some of these images in the book, as lasting reminders sometimes of that complexity of our relationship to time that the two media explore.

Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies : 2009 Conference: Humanising Photography – Durham University

Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies : 2009 Conference: Humanising Photography – Durham University.

2009 Conference: Humanising Photography

The third DCAPS international conference takes place in Durham on 25-27 September 2009, in collaboration with ABP-Autograph (London). Entitled ‘Humanising Photography’, it explores the relationship between photography, humanism, human rights and humanitarianism. It features papers from a range of international scholars, including Thomas Keenan and Sharon Sliwinski, as well as contributions from photographers Marcelo Brodsky, Bruno Boudjelal and Luis Sinco (TBC). The full conference programme can be found below. The programme and a conference registration form can also be downloaded at the bottom of the page. For further information, contact Prof. Andrea Noble (andrea.noble@dur.ac.uk)

Friday 25 September 2009

3.00-5.00 Arrival and Registration, St. John’s College, Durham

5.30-7.30 Practitioner Dialogue Panel 1

Luis Sinco (Photographer, Los Angeles Times) in dialogue with Thomas Keenan (Bard College, USA)

7.30 Welcome address

Prof. Tom McLeish (Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research, University of Durham)

Buffet Reception

Saturday 26 September 2009

9.15-11.15

Benjamin Chesterton (Photographer, Creative Director, duckrabbit)

Tiffany Fairey (PhD candidate Goldsmiths’ College, UK/Founder of charity PhotoVoice), ‘Is it Possible to Empower through Photography?’

Coffee

11.45 – 1.15

Sharon Sliwinski (University of Western Ontario, Canada), ‘Rolleiflex Witness: Picturing the Nazi Camps’

Mark Reinhardt (Williams College, Mass., USA), ‘Sensational Images, Or: The Aesthetics-Politics Relation’

Lunch

2.30-4.00

Darren Newbury (Birmingham City University, UK), ‘That Was Apartheid, Thank God It’s All Over’: researching the history of photography in South Africa’

Patricia Hayes (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), ‘John Liebenberg’s “bush of ghosts”: photography and the Namibian-South African War, 1984-1990′

Tea

4.30-6.00

Douglas Smith (University College, Dublin), ‘Gridlocked: Robert Frank’s Critique of Humanism’

Michelle L. Woodward (Photo Editor, Middle East Report Magazine, USA), ‘Historicizing Humanitarian Photography: the case of Magnum Photos’ visual style’

7.30 Dinner, followed by film screening and roundtable with Bruno Boudjelal (Agence VU)

Sunday 27 September 2007

9.30-11.00

Zachary R. Hagins (PhD candidate, The Pennsylvania State University, USA), ‘Criminal Photography and the Police Municipale in Fin-de-Siècle France, Or: Dehumanising Alphonse Bertillon’s Humanist Photography’

Christopher Morton (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK), ‘Humanism and the Comparative Method: the construction of an anthropological archive’

Coffee

11.30-1.00

Eugenie Shinkle (University of Westminster, UK), ‘Landscapes of Suffering’

Ruthie Ginsberg (PhD candidate, Bar-Ilan University, Israel), ‘Taking Pictures over Soldiers’ Shoulders: reporting on human rights abuse from the Palestinian Occupied Territories’

Lunch

2.00-3.30

Dr Paul Lowe (University of the Arts, London), ‘Bearing Witness’

Marta Zarzycka (Utrecht University, Netherlands), ‘Truths and Travels of Photographs, Or: Do Galleries Permit Humanitarian Interventions?’

Tea

4.00-6.00 Practitioner Dialogue Panel 2

Marcelo Brodsky (Photographer, Argentina) in dialogue with DCAPS

Close and conference dinner

Resources

• Humanisingprogramme.doc (last modified: 14 July 2009)
• RegHuman.doc (last modified: 14 July 2009)

• Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies
• Centre Members
• Activities and Events
  • Current Events
  • Previous Activities and Events
  • 2009 Conference
• Postgraduate

no lady would wear most of Miss Rogers costumes…

I have finally put the finishing touches to my page for ‘Form Follows Fiction; Designing Fred and Ginger‘, my AHRC-funded project on production cultures of 1930s Hollywood. I have been looking at the series of musicals Astaire and Rogers made with RKO.  Completing the page is timely because I have just presented some of the material at Screen this year, and the project now feels like it has really achieved something after a few months of me wondering where the research stood.

In this project I used archive material and secondary sources to look at how creative decisions – including how they were communicated to fans – were instrumental in the mythology of the series.

Some of the things I found were amazing – archival material in particular was useful. I found out that Irving Berlin was worried about copyright infringement for some of the series’ terrific numbers, for example. I also found out how hard Ginger Rogers had it – from the studio bosses and even from the fans! No wonder she went on strike in 1937.

Some of the material has made it into print – with more to come.

The research has now moved on to look at contemporary production cultures, including some time spent on the recent James Bond reboot and Doctor Who.

MeCCSA Conference 2010

MeCCSA Conference 2010.

MeCCSA 2010 Conference Wednesday 6th – Friday 8th January 2010 MeCCSA is the UK subject association for those teaching and researching in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies. The organisation holds its next conference from 6-8 January 2010, hosted by the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science and held at LSE. It includes a reception and conference dinner at LSE. In keeping with the commitment of LSE’s Department of Media and Communications to policy-relevance and to the highest ethical standards of practice in our field, the overall theme of the 2010 conference is Media, Communication, Policy and Practice. • Delegate fees can be found here • Registration for the conference will open on 15th September 2009	Contents Abstract Submission Panel Submission Poster Submission Practice Session Submission Delegate Fees Accommodation Location Confirmed speakers: Prof Tony Bennett, Western Sydney Prof Georgina Born, Cambridge Prof Paul du Gay, Warwick Business School Prof Sylvia Harvey, Lincoln Prof Adam Joinson, Bath Dr Jason Lee, Derby Prof Eileen Munro, LSE Dr Kieron O’Hara, Southampton Prof Charles Raab, Edinburgh Ed Richards, Ofcom Prof Karen Ross, Liverpool Dr Katharine Sarikakis, Leeds Prof Philip Schlesinger, Glasgow Dr Gillian Youngs, Leicester. Address and contacts MeCSSA Conference Planning: Dr. Anita Biressi, Dr. Heather Nunn; Dr. Jason Lee; Paul Kerr; Janey Gordon LSE Conference Planning: Chair, Prof Robin Mansell; Cath Bennett, Dr. Bart Cammaerts, Prof Lilie Chouliaraki, Dr. Myria Georgiou, Maria Kyriakidou, Frédérik Lesage, and Prof Sonia Livingstone. Media@lse Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE United Kingdom Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 7248 Tel: Who’s Who Email: Media.MeCCSAconference@lse.ac.uk LSE Department of Media and Communications Join the Media@lse mailing list
Call for Abstracts We invite papers, panels, presentations of practice and posters across the range of interests represented by the Association and its networks (www.MeCCSA.org.uk). Some sessions will weave together ‘practice’ and ‘research’ and there will be separate screenings, in full, of this material.
Poster Competition The MeCCSA Executive Committee is offering a  poster competition prize of £100.  The academic poster is highly valued by MeCCSA as an indicator of current research and there will be a good space set aside at the 2010 conference for this activity. Online poster design tutorial.
Competition for Best Paper on Art, Design and Media for Higher Education The Art Design Media – Higher Education Academy Subject Centre (ADM-HEA) is offering a £500 prize and publication for the best paper analysing key issues impacting on media, communications and cultural studies in higher education.  More information here.
Competition for Best Paper on Media and Communications Policy LSE’s Department of Media and Communications is offering a £300 prize and publication in its Media@LSE Electronic Working Paper Series (subject to final revisions by the conference organisers), for the best paper addressing critical perspectives on key issues of policy relevance in a convergent media and communications industry. More information here.
Submission Procedures Please use the links at the top right of this page, submission deadline is 18th September 2009.  Proposers will be notified of acceptance no later than 23rd October 2009.
We look forward to welcoming you to LSE!