Graduate Workshop 'Of Other Languages'
22 June 2011, London

For more information please visit: http://www.necs-initiative.org/

CFP below - Deadline for submissions: 31 January 2011


In concordance with the NECS conference in London in June 2010, the Graduate Committee is organizing the 2nd NECS Graduate Workshop: an intensive one-day workshop for graduate students directly preceding the NECS Conference. The topic of this one-day event, “Of Other Languages” interlocks with this year’s conference, which focuses on “Sonic Futures: Soundscapes and the Languages of Screen Media.” The objective of the graduate event is to intensify debate among graduate students by focusing, in small discussion groups, on a particular yet expansive theme intersecting with media studies, cultural theory, media art, reflexive ethnography, geography, philosophy and systems theory. Our aim is to create a network that is sustainable after NECS London 2011, allowing PhD-candidates to connect with academic peers in fruitful debate. Although it is not be possible to present the same paper for both occasions, candidates participating in this workshop are kindly invited to stay throughout the NECS 2011 London Conference, which will take place from 23-26 June.

Under the title “Of Other Languages” we seek to address, on the one hand, topics like multilingualism, silence, bodily language, affect, and address through the senses as ways of (non)communicating with or within cinema. On the other hand, we welcome contributions that attend to the changing languages of cinema. What do we talk about when we talk about language when it comes to our encounter with the cinematic today? What role, for example, does language play in locative media practices, responsive media environments, screen based architecture, scripted spaces, and so on. And what is left of “language” in the conversion to digital “code”? Despite the differences of approach suggested above, these perspectives converge in reconsidering the relevance of language both of and within cinema, in an era in which our conception of the cinematic, as well as the field of interest of media studies itself, is expanding in a number of directions, both topographically, interculturally and geographically, as well as technically, practically and theoretically. Besides welcoming social-, cultural and theoretical reflections, we explicitly encourage contributions from candidates writing a practice-based PhD, providing that in the paper the role of language in locative, augmented and other alternate cinema practices is foregrounded.

Candidates are invited to submit a proposal (max. 300 words) with a short biography (max. 150 words) to [log in to unmask]
The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2011. Those selected to participate will be asked to provide a 3000-word paper (excluding bibliography) by 1 June 2011 at the latest, which will be distributed among other participants in advance of the workshop. In order to allow for a sufficient amount of discussion time, papers will not be read. Instead, participants will be asked to provide a short pitch of their argument for a maximum of 10 minutes. Respondents will be assigned to each paper. Discussion will take off from the basis of the papers.

We actively encourage workshop participants to consider submitting their papers to, and/ or write a conference report for the online postgraduate arts journal Dandelion. The journal´s CFP is posted on dandelionnetwork.org. Queries about submissions can be addressed to: [log in to unmask]