Franklin Cason (Temple University)
"Avant-Garde Jazz as a Model for Cinema Studies"
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
12:00pm
330 Fisher-Bennett Hall
University of Pennsylvania
My current research considers that pragmatist philosophy offers a productive way through the impasse between traditional film theory and “post-theoretical” or cognitive approaches to film scholarship; a debate that had relatively little interest in, or effect on, the development of African American film practice or black film studies. To make this pragmatic inquiry address African American cinema with some specificity, I suggest an experimental approach to researching and writing about black cinema. Responding to both recent calls for a black cinema studies rooted in African-American cultural practices, and David Bordwell’s claim that film studies has much in common with musicology, I will argue that avant-garde jazz suggests several research and theoretical approaches. But unlike Bordwell’s musical analogies of film form, my target is film theory itself. Black cinema thus becomes an important case study for theorizing aesthetics and politics in cinema, generally. By exploring jazz, pragmatism, and black cultural practices, while following Richard Rorty’s lead in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1981), and Michael Magee’s Emancipating Pragmatism: Emerson, Jazz, and Experimental Writing (2004), I take seriously the possibilities offered by bridging the unique interests between black film analysis, cognitive film theory, screen theory, critical race theory, musicology, deconstruction, and pragmatism.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Two talks: Galloway and McGonigal
Center for Humanities at Temple
Digitial Humanities in Theory
Lecture: "The Unworkable Interface"
by Alex Galloway
Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
Tuesday, November 13
4:00–5:30 pm,
CHAT Lounge (10th flr Gladfelter)
Interfaces are back, or perhaps they never left. The familiar Socratic conceit from the “Phaedrus” of communication as the process of writing directly on the soul of the other has, since the 1980s and ‘90s, returned to center stage in the discourse around culture and media. Windows, doors, airport gates and other thresholds are those transparent devices that achieve more the less they do: for every moment of virtuosic immersion and connectivity, for every moment of inopacity, the threshold becomes one notch more invisible, one notch more inoperable. This lecture examines the interface, what Gérard Genette called a “zone of indecision” between the inside and outside of media. What is a computer interface and how does it structure interaction, work, and play?
Swarthmore College
Talk: "Games to Change the World"
by Jane McGonigal
November 14th, 2012
7:30 PM
LPAC Pearson-Hall Theater
Swarthmore College
Game designer Jane McGonigal is harnessing the power of Internet games in new ways to help solve some of the biggest challenges facing our world. Her public talk is based on her book Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How They Can Change the World, as well as recent game designs. She asks her audience to imagine a world in which every great challenge we face is a quest; where the harder a task is, the more people want to do it; where people take pleasure in failing and come back invigorated; and where they communicate spontaneously with their collaborators to pool their knowledge toward shared solutions. It turns out that world already exists-in games.
Digitial Humanities in Theory
Lecture: "The Unworkable Interface"
by Alex Galloway
Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
Tuesday, November 13
4:00–5:30 pm,
CHAT Lounge (10th flr Gladfelter)
Interfaces are back, or perhaps they never left. The familiar Socratic conceit from the “Phaedrus” of communication as the process of writing directly on the soul of the other has, since the 1980s and ‘90s, returned to center stage in the discourse around culture and media. Windows, doors, airport gates and other thresholds are those transparent devices that achieve more the less they do: for every moment of virtuosic immersion and connectivity, for every moment of inopacity, the threshold becomes one notch more invisible, one notch more inoperable. This lecture examines the interface, what Gérard Genette called a “zone of indecision” between the inside and outside of media. What is a computer interface and how does it structure interaction, work, and play?
Swarthmore College
Talk: "Games to Change the World"
by Jane McGonigal
November 14th, 2012
7:30 PM
LPAC Pearson-Hall Theater
Swarthmore College
Game designer Jane McGonigal is harnessing the power of Internet games in new ways to help solve some of the biggest challenges facing our world. Her public talk is based on her book Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How They Can Change the World, as well as recent game designs. She asks her audience to imagine a world in which every great challenge we face is a quest; where the harder a task is, the more people want to do it; where people take pleasure in failing and come back invigorated; and where they communicate spontaneously with their collaborators to pool their knowledge toward shared solutions. It turns out that world already exists-in games.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Penn Colloquium: Adam Lowenstein
Adam Lowenstein
Surrealism, Spectatorship, and Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart
Penn Cinema Studies Colloquium
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
12:00pm
330 Fisher-Bennett Hall
University of Pennsylvania
The explosion of scholarship in recent years devoted to Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) has elevated this once marginal artist and avant-garde filmmaker to the center of modern art history. But something curious has happened along the way. Cornell’s ties to surrealism, the very movement that provided him with crucial inspiration and the first meaningful critical context for his art, have been minimized or erased. I will argue that Cornell’s most famous film, Rose Hobart (1936), presents vital opportunities for rethinking how spectatorship functions in surrealist cinema. Where Un Chien andalou (1929) never relinquishes the aura of violence around its relation to the spectator, Rose Hobart is equally but oppositely committed to nurturing the spectator’s vision, to engineering a gradual integration of the spectator’s gaze with that of the star and the filmmaker that relies on slow repetition rather than shocking suddenness. This makes Cornell central, not peripheral, to the ambitions and accomplishments of surrealist cinema’s experiments in spectatorship.
Adam Lowenstein is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also directs the Film Studies Program. He is the author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film (Columbia University Press, 2005) as well as essays that have appeared in Cinema Journal, Representations, Critical Quarterly, boundary 2, Post Script, and numerous anthologies. He is currently completing a book concerning cinematic spectatorship, surrealism, and the age of digital media.
Surrealism, Spectatorship, and Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart
Penn Cinema Studies Colloquium
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
12:00pm
330 Fisher-Bennett Hall
University of Pennsylvania
The explosion of scholarship in recent years devoted to Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) has elevated this once marginal artist and avant-garde filmmaker to the center of modern art history. But something curious has happened along the way. Cornell’s ties to surrealism, the very movement that provided him with crucial inspiration and the first meaningful critical context for his art, have been minimized or erased. I will argue that Cornell’s most famous film, Rose Hobart (1936), presents vital opportunities for rethinking how spectatorship functions in surrealist cinema. Where Un Chien andalou (1929) never relinquishes the aura of violence around its relation to the spectator, Rose Hobart is equally but oppositely committed to nurturing the spectator’s vision, to engineering a gradual integration of the spectator’s gaze with that of the star and the filmmaker that relies on slow repetition rather than shocking suddenness. This makes Cornell central, not peripheral, to the ambitions and accomplishments of surrealist cinema’s experiments in spectatorship.
Adam Lowenstein is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also directs the Film Studies Program. He is the author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film (Columbia University Press, 2005) as well as essays that have appeared in Cinema Journal, Representations, Critical Quarterly, boundary 2, Post Script, and numerous anthologies. He is currently completing a book concerning cinematic spectatorship, surrealism, and the age of digital media.
Hito Steyerl on Adorno
Adorno's Grey and other refusals
Hito Steyerl
in conversation with Nora M. Alter
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
6:30-8:00pm
Slought Foundation
Free, reservation not required
Slought Foundation is pleased to announce a public conversation with filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl, in dialogue with film scholar Nora Alter, on Tuesday, October 9, 2012 from 6:30-8:00pm. The conversation will be preceded by a special screening of Hito Steyerl's Adorno's Grey (approx. 14 min). The program is presented in conjunction with Temple University's Department of Film and Media Arts (FMA).
"In her works, Hito reflects upon the role of traveling images, those images, that crowd the realms of suburbs and the lowlands of the web. Images that change their meaning, outlook, framing, caption and often also their protagonists by traveling through time and space. She put some interesting questions like: Which role do digital modes of communication play in creating new political and aesthetical articulations? How do they accelerate, slow down or modify conflict, civil war and the writing of history? How are media – video or audio tapes, jpegs or posters – implicated in violence? How does the struggle over copyright and reproduction- over making things seen and heard - factor into these considerations? And is a withdrawal from representation perhaps a new form of strike or refusal?" (Rabih Mroue).
About the screening of Adorno's Grey
Legend has it that Theodor W. Adorno had the auditorium where he taught at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt painted grey to aid concentration. In Adorno’s Grey, a team of conservators burrows into the wall of this auditorium hoping to reveal the layer of grey paint beneath it. A voiceover recounts an incident in 1969 when, after three female students approached and bore their breasts to him during a lecture, Adorno collected his papers and ran away in a panic. This would be his last lecture.
Hito Steyerl is a filmmaker and writer based in Berlin. She teaches artistic media practice at the University of Arts Berlin. Her latest works include: The Kiss 2012, Adorno's Grey 2012, The Body of the Image 2012 (performance), Abstract 2012, Guards 2012 as well as the lectures Probable Title: Zero Probability (2012) with Rabih Mroué and I dreamed a dream (2012). Nora M. Alter is Chair and Professor of Film and Media arts, Temple University, and the author of Chris Marker.
Hito Steyerl
in conversation with Nora M. Alter
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
6:30-8:00pm
Slought Foundation
Free, reservation not required
Slought Foundation is pleased to announce a public conversation with filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl, in dialogue with film scholar Nora Alter, on Tuesday, October 9, 2012 from 6:30-8:00pm. The conversation will be preceded by a special screening of Hito Steyerl's Adorno's Grey (approx. 14 min). The program is presented in conjunction with Temple University's Department of Film and Media Arts (FMA).
"In her works, Hito reflects upon the role of traveling images, those images, that crowd the realms of suburbs and the lowlands of the web. Images that change their meaning, outlook, framing, caption and often also their protagonists by traveling through time and space. She put some interesting questions like: Which role do digital modes of communication play in creating new political and aesthetical articulations? How do they accelerate, slow down or modify conflict, civil war and the writing of history? How are media – video or audio tapes, jpegs or posters – implicated in violence? How does the struggle over copyright and reproduction- over making things seen and heard - factor into these considerations? And is a withdrawal from representation perhaps a new form of strike or refusal?" (Rabih Mroue).
About the screening of Adorno's Grey
Legend has it that Theodor W. Adorno had the auditorium where he taught at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt painted grey to aid concentration. In Adorno’s Grey, a team of conservators burrows into the wall of this auditorium hoping to reveal the layer of grey paint beneath it. A voiceover recounts an incident in 1969 when, after three female students approached and bore their breasts to him during a lecture, Adorno collected his papers and ran away in a panic. This would be his last lecture.
Hito Steyerl is a filmmaker and writer based in Berlin. She teaches artistic media practice at the University of Arts Berlin. Her latest works include: The Kiss 2012, Adorno's Grey 2012, The Body of the Image 2012 (performance), Abstract 2012, Guards 2012 as well as the lectures Probable Title: Zero Probability (2012) with Rabih Mroué and I dreamed a dream (2012). Nora M. Alter is Chair and Professor of Film and Media arts, Temple University, and the author of Chris Marker.
Amanda Weidman on Tamil Cinema
Event at Bryn Mawr College
Amanda Weidman
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College
“Female Voice-Body Relationships and the Acoustic Organization of Tamil Cinema, 1940-1960”
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Thomas Library 224
Bryn Mawr College
12:30-2pm
This talk will explore how relationships between the female voice and the female body were managed in South Indian Tamil-language cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, during the transition from singing actresses to the division of labor between professional playback singers who recorded their voices in the studio and actresses who appeared on screen. While the relationship between the female voice and the female body was managed through a combination of technological, discursive, and performative means in the world of South Indian classical music, it was simultaneously being negotiated in the context of cinema, where technological mediation provided expanded possibilities for representing voice-body relationships. Examining several Tamil films from this period, we can see a variety of ways in which the potentially problematic spectacle of a performing female body was presented.
Amanda Weidman
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College
“Female Voice-Body Relationships and the Acoustic Organization of Tamil Cinema, 1940-1960”
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Thomas Library 224
Bryn Mawr College
12:30-2pm
This talk will explore how relationships between the female voice and the female body were managed in South Indian Tamil-language cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, during the transition from singing actresses to the division of labor between professional playback singers who recorded their voices in the studio and actresses who appeared on screen. While the relationship between the female voice and the female body was managed through a combination of technological, discursive, and performative means in the world of South Indian classical music, it was simultaneously being negotiated in the context of cinema, where technological mediation provided expanded possibilities for representing voice-body relationships. Examining several Tamil films from this period, we can see a variety of ways in which the potentially problematic spectacle of a performing female body was presented.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Animation conference at Penn
ENCHANTED DRAWING II:
ANIMATION ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
Sept. 21-22, 2012
University of Pennsylvania
a collaborative conference organized by KAREN BECKMAN (University of Pennsylvania), and ERNA FIORENTINI (Humboldt Universität), and OLIVER GAYCKEN (University of Maryland).
Following up on the dynamic conversation that began in Berlin in March 2012 at ENCHANTED DRAWING I, this conference continues to explore a series of intersecting concerns that emerge through an engagement with animation history. The conference will feature the work of scholars and practitioners from a variety of fields, including cinema and media studies, the history of science, art history, animation design in the fields of science, gaming, engineering, medicine, and journalism.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2012
@ INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, University of Pennsylvania
Followed by screenings @ INTERNATIONAL HOUSE PHILADELPHIA
2:30-3:30 PM | Attendees are encouraged to visit ICA and see their new exhibition Jeremy Deller: Joy in People
3:30–5:30 PM | Keynote address by Vivian Sobchack, "Stop + Motion: On Animation, Inertia, and Innervation"
5:30–6:30 PM | Reception at Institute of Contemporary Art 7:00 PM | Screening of animation at International House Philadelphia
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2012
@ INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, University of Pennsylvania
8:15–9:15 AM | BREAKFAST
9:15–9:30 AM | OPENING REMARKS by Erna Fiorentini
9:30-11:00 AM | PANEL ONE DIGITAL AND DATA DRIVEN ANIMATION | Moderator: Orkan Telhan (Penn, Fine Arts) • Norman Badler, "Digital Animation From a Technical Perspective" • Oliver Gaycken, "With Particle Swarms and Bad Hair: Animating Material Digitally" • Peggy Weil, "Immersive Journalism, Immersive Data"
11:00AM-12:30PM | PANEL TWO HISTORY OF SCIENCE | Moderator: Karen Beckman (Penn, History of Art and Cinema Studies) • Jimena Canales, "Animating Einstein: 'The final days of my Zurich stay resemble a runaway motion picture projector'" • Scott Curtis, "Rough and Smooth: Toward a Rhetoric of Animated Scientific Images" • Hanna Rose Shell, "The Animation of Evanescence: Camouflage in Motion"
12:30–2:00 PM | LUNCH
2:00–3:30 PM | PANEL THREE TRANSMEDIALITY | Moderator: Peter Decherney (Penn, English and Cinema Studies) • Alexander R. Galloway, "Polygraphic Photography and the Origins of 3D Animation" • Bob Rehak, "Graphic Engines: Videogame Animation as Transmedia Bridge" • Melissa Ragona, "Algorithmic Aesthetics vs. Punk De'collage: From Animation to Live Performance" 3.30–
4:00 PM | COFFEE BREAK
4:00-5:30 PM | PANEL FOUR BODY | Moderator: Beth Linker (Penn, History and Sociology of Science) • Kirsten Ostherr, "From Health Films to Healthy Games: Interventionist Animation" • Donald Crafton, "Inside and Outside the Toon Body: Challenging Somatic Integrity through Animation History"
5:30–6:00 PM | ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION with Erna Fiorentini + speakers to conclude the day; CLOSING COMMENTS Registration is free and open to the public.
ANIMATION ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
Sept. 21-22, 2012
University of Pennsylvania
a collaborative conference organized by KAREN BECKMAN (University of Pennsylvania), and ERNA FIORENTINI (Humboldt Universität), and OLIVER GAYCKEN (University of Maryland).
Following up on the dynamic conversation that began in Berlin in March 2012 at ENCHANTED DRAWING I, this conference continues to explore a series of intersecting concerns that emerge through an engagement with animation history. The conference will feature the work of scholars and practitioners from a variety of fields, including cinema and media studies, the history of science, art history, animation design in the fields of science, gaming, engineering, medicine, and journalism.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2012
@ INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, University of Pennsylvania
Followed by screenings @ INTERNATIONAL HOUSE PHILADELPHIA
2:30-3:30 PM | Attendees are encouraged to visit ICA and see their new exhibition Jeremy Deller: Joy in People
3:30–5:30 PM | Keynote address by Vivian Sobchack, "Stop + Motion: On Animation, Inertia, and Innervation"
5:30–6:30 PM | Reception at Institute of Contemporary Art 7:00 PM | Screening of animation at International House Philadelphia
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2012
@ INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, University of Pennsylvania
8:15–9:15 AM | BREAKFAST
9:15–9:30 AM | OPENING REMARKS by Erna Fiorentini
9:30-11:00 AM | PANEL ONE DIGITAL AND DATA DRIVEN ANIMATION | Moderator: Orkan Telhan (Penn, Fine Arts) • Norman Badler, "Digital Animation From a Technical Perspective" • Oliver Gaycken, "With Particle Swarms and Bad Hair: Animating Material Digitally" • Peggy Weil, "Immersive Journalism, Immersive Data"
11:00AM-12:30PM | PANEL TWO HISTORY OF SCIENCE | Moderator: Karen Beckman (Penn, History of Art and Cinema Studies) • Jimena Canales, "Animating Einstein: 'The final days of my Zurich stay resemble a runaway motion picture projector'" • Scott Curtis, "Rough and Smooth: Toward a Rhetoric of Animated Scientific Images" • Hanna Rose Shell, "The Animation of Evanescence: Camouflage in Motion"
12:30–2:00 PM | LUNCH
2:00–3:30 PM | PANEL THREE TRANSMEDIALITY | Moderator: Peter Decherney (Penn, English and Cinema Studies) • Alexander R. Galloway, "Polygraphic Photography and the Origins of 3D Animation" • Bob Rehak, "Graphic Engines: Videogame Animation as Transmedia Bridge" • Melissa Ragona, "Algorithmic Aesthetics vs. Punk De'collage: From Animation to Live Performance" 3.30–
4:00 PM | COFFEE BREAK
4:00-5:30 PM | PANEL FOUR BODY | Moderator: Beth Linker (Penn, History and Sociology of Science) • Kirsten Ostherr, "From Health Films to Healthy Games: Interventionist Animation" • Donald Crafton, "Inside and Outside the Toon Body: Challenging Somatic Integrity through Animation History"
5:30–6:00 PM | ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION with Erna Fiorentini + speakers to conclude the day; CLOSING COMMENTS Registration is free and open to the public.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Lucy Fischer on Abel Gance
Penn Cinema Studies Colloquium | Lucy Fischer
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - 12:00pm
University of Pennsylvania
330 Fisher-Bennett Hall
Lucy Fischer
"Modernity, Machine, Movies, Mind: Abel Gance’s La Roue (1923)"
A discussion of French director Abel Gance‘s film La Roue (The Wheel / 1923), viewed as a pinnacle work of the silent cinema. Jean Cocteau agreed, stating: “There is the cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso.” The film is a watershed modernist text because it makes innovative use of all the elements of cinematic discourse at this time—tinting, matting, the close-up, intertitles, but especially montage. Beyond the film’s innovative formal attributes, I will focus specifically on two issues. First is the film’s valorization of the machine (here, the railroad system) --an icon of modernity and a new subject of art (e.g. in Futurist painting and in photography). Secondly, I explore how La Roue, fashions various modes for presenting human consciousness—another concern of modernity in this era, as sparked by the writings of Freud and others.
Lucy Fischer is Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies as well as director of the Film Studies Program. She is the author of ten books: Jacques Tati (G.K. Hall, 1983), Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women's Cinema (Princeton, 1989), Imitation of Life (Rutgers, 1991), Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (Princeton University Press, 1996), Sunrise (British Film Institute, 1998), Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema and the Female Form (Columbia University Press, 2003), Stars: The Film Reader (co-edited with Marcia Landy, Rutgers University Press, 2004), Teaching Film (coedited with Patrice Petro, forthcoming MLA, 2012) and Body Double: The Author Incarnate in the Cinema (forthcoming, Rutgers University Press, 2013).
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - 12:00pm
University of Pennsylvania
330 Fisher-Bennett Hall
Lucy Fischer
"Modernity, Machine, Movies, Mind: Abel Gance’s La Roue (1923)"
A discussion of French director Abel Gance‘s film La Roue (The Wheel / 1923), viewed as a pinnacle work of the silent cinema. Jean Cocteau agreed, stating: “There is the cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso.” The film is a watershed modernist text because it makes innovative use of all the elements of cinematic discourse at this time—tinting, matting, the close-up, intertitles, but especially montage. Beyond the film’s innovative formal attributes, I will focus specifically on two issues. First is the film’s valorization of the machine (here, the railroad system) --an icon of modernity and a new subject of art (e.g. in Futurist painting and in photography). Secondly, I explore how La Roue, fashions various modes for presenting human consciousness—another concern of modernity in this era, as sparked by the writings of Freud and others.
Lucy Fischer is Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies as well as director of the Film Studies Program. She is the author of ten books: Jacques Tati (G.K. Hall, 1983), Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women's Cinema (Princeton, 1989), Imitation of Life (Rutgers, 1991), Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (Princeton University Press, 1996), Sunrise (British Film Institute, 1998), Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema and the Female Form (Columbia University Press, 2003), Stars: The Film Reader (co-edited with Marcia Landy, Rutgers University Press, 2004), Teaching Film (coedited with Patrice Petro, forthcoming MLA, 2012) and Body Double: The Author Incarnate in the Cinema (forthcoming, Rutgers University Press, 2013).
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