First Announcement: Call for Papers
29th ANNUAL SAVAH CONFERENCE: IMAGES AND MEDIA University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, 3 - 5 July, 2014
Deadline: Friday 9th May
Keynote Speaker: Prof Laura Mulvey, Birckbeck, University of London
Second Keynote Speaker: Prof Annie van den Oever (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, University of the Free State)
IMAGES AND MEDIA
The theme Images and Media aims to foreground the recent expansion of image studies and its relevance across disciplines in processes of knowledge acquisition and conveyance. In the era of the Bilderflut, or flood of digital images, there is a greater awareness that pictures, by making accessible what may otherwise be invisible, intervene in the production of knowledge and thereby are in a position to contribute to scientific, cultural and other changes. This expansion of the inter- disciplinary relevance of images is closely related to the renewed sensitivity for the material-technical foundations of image production in the era of “new media”. The conference thus envisions promoting and sharing an understanding of the widening scope of image studies, to include all types of images – inclusive also of the moving image – and to direct attention to imaging technologies. The aim is to reflect on foundational questions of image studies and the current expansion of the fields of art history and visual culture. This may have both a consolidating and broadening effect on thinking about images in South Africa. The focus on the media and material- technical processes by means of which images are (re-)produced and disseminated also brings up questions of the social relevance of images in specific contexts, both historical and contemporary.
Proposals are invited for these general themes:
1. Seeing and being seen: looking at spectatorship and issues of gendered identity in visual culture in South Africa and elsewhere.
2. The moving image as “Movens Bild”: moving image/moved viewer, the movement between image and viewer, performing images, images in process, the performance of images, fading images
3. “A picture is worth a thousand words”: theorising what images are and do, image studies, philosophies of the image and ekphrastic discourses
4. From rock art to digital imaging: (re)mediation, medium and imaging technologies
5. The migratory and parasitic lives of images: how images move across bodies, cultures and times
6. Burning images and burning issues: analysing iconoclasms and “iconoclashes”, are art historians iconophobic and/or iconophilic (Bruno Latour)?
7. “Show me so that I may understand”: envisioning knowledge, the thinking image, presenting presentation, how images generate and convey knowledge (e.g. in science, culture and education)
8. “Images in spite of all”/“Images and the words that fail them”/“Can images kill?”:
approaching traumatic images, the unspeakable and the unsaid
9. Space, place and emplacement: places in buildings, monuments, cities and visual art
Abstracts should be sent via email to [email protected] by Friday, 9 May 2014.
Submissions should be no longer than 300 words in Microsoft Word or PDF format, and include your name, title, email address, academic position and affiliation. Please provide at least 5 keywords and state clearly in which section you would like to speak. SAVAH members may suggest new sub-sections if their research cannot be accommodated in the suggested panels. Successful applicants will be allotted 20 minutes to present their papers. Scholars, academics, and postgraduate students are encouraged to apply.
Organizing committee chair: Prof E.S. Human (University of the Free State)
The South African Visual Arts Historians (SAVAH) is an organisation of academics and professionals that seek to advance the professional practice of art history and visual culture in South Africa and to forge relations with practitioners from related disciplines and other regions.
The annual national conference, hosted each year by a South African university department of fine or visual arts, is the main academic and social event on the organisation’s calendar. The conferences, which are attended by delegates and guest speakers from South Africa and abroad, provide unique platforms for critical discussion of current research and visual arts practices in and about (but not limited to) the South African context. The conference provides a valuable platform for intellectual exchange, as well as building relationships between scholars, researchers, practitioners and members of institutions of higher education.
