We are delighted to announce our two keynotes for the Blade Runner @40: Origins and Legacies conference, to be held at Bangor University on the 6th and 7th of June 2022, as well as the reopening of our call for papers until Monday, 11 April.



One of Blade Runner's original producers, Ivor Powell, will join us for a discussion in-person to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this landmark sci-fi feature. Alongside producing Blade Runner, writer and producer Powell worked for nearly three years as an assistant for Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey and line produced for Ridley Scott on Alien and The Duellists as well as many other projects since.



Our second keynote is Professor Sherryl Vint (UC Riverside), an expert on science fiction and Blade Runner, who has published extensively on these topics, including Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction (2007), The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction (with Mark Bould, 2011), Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014), Science Fiction and Cultural Theory: A Reader (2015), Science Fiction (2021)  and Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction (2021).



In light of securing Ivor Powell and Professor Sherryl Vint as keynotes, we have reopened the submission portal with a deadline of Monday, 11 April. Please see the CFP below for more information.



Blade Runner @40: Origins and Legacies, June 6-7, 2022



An academic conference hosted by The Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies, Bangor University, UK



Blade Runner has left an indelible mark on popular culture. Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? it anticipated with remarkable prescience the world in which we have lived for the past four decades. Scott’s breath-taking vision of a futuristic and cosmopolitan metropolis created an aesthetic and cognitive shock that continues to resonate to this day, not only in cinema but also in literature, art, design, gaming, fashion and even critical theory.



The film is often cited in debates related to robotics, biopolitics, posthumanism and urban planning. Denis Villeneuve's sequel, Blade Runner 2049, continues to explore these themes while introducing issues related to artificial intelligence, transhumanism and climate change. Ridley Scott himself does the same in other films, such as Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, as well as in the series Raised by Wolves.



Blade Runner is often credited with having spawned several aesthetic trends, such as retrofuturism, techno-noir or future-noir, and most significantly, cyberpunk. The latter has become a global cultural phenomenon that Fredric Jameson describes as “the expression, if not of postmodernism, then of late capitalism itself.”



In terms of style, cyberpunk à la Blade Runner continues to be very popular in all media. But, in terms of spirit, the real heirs to cyberpunk are to be found in the work of artists, writers, and thinkers around the world who blend creativity with critical theory; who subvert cutting-edge technologies toward non-consumerist ends; and who pioneer new lines of flight into the future, refusing to be trapped by stagnant or predefined categories of identity.



Hosted by the Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies at Bangor University, this symposium proposes to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to explore Blade Runner forty years since its release, debate its legacy and consider its position within visual culture.



Accepted papers include those on, but are not limited to: AI, robotics and digital technologies; architecture; audience studies and reception; the auteur; ecocriticism and climate studies; film industry studies; gender; genre hybridity; memory and identity; Philip K. Dick; photography; the posthuman; race; sexuality; transmedia and intersexuality; and urbanism.



We welcome contributions from any perspective such as the following:



Blade Runner – origins, influences, production, aesthetics, publicity, reception, afterlife, sequels and directors’ cuts

Blade Runner and gender

Blade Runner and sexuality

Blade Runner and race, ethnicity and otherness

Blade Runner and psychoanalysis

Blade Runner and science fiction

Blade Runner, audiences, fandom and ‘cult’

Blade Runner and capitalism, neoliberalism, post-industrialism and the rise of multinational corporations

Blade Runner and robotics, artificial intelligence, cybernetic organisms, the transhuman and the post-human

Blade Runner and biopolitics, posthumanism and urban planning. Denis Villeneuve's sequel, Blade Runner and climate change

Blade Runner and tech noir, retrofuturism, future noir, and cyberpunk.



We also have funding to help facilitate postgraduate and unwaged participation.



Please complete the following link<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforms.office.com%2FPages%2FResponsePage.aspx%3Fid%3DVUxHxiOpKk2b1OzjcUjbstEPib22iEFNqYWVn2LmcVpUQjNCM0NLR0hQRkgxNEkwWlU2MFFPMzcxMC4u&data=04%7C01%7Celizabeth.miller%40KCL.AC.UK%7C6986de85c2a34b144e7708d9d088b3b2%7C8370cf1416f34c16b83c724071654356%7C0%7C0%7C637770108258014436%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=rrjSwRen1VoXR%2BuwQir88zdx4LK2%2BxebdkRxzu16OEU%3D&reserved=0> by 11 April 2022.



For further information, please contact the organisers: Nathan Abrams ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>), Elizabeth Miller ([log in to unmask]<applewebdata:[log in to unmask]>) and Christopher Robinson ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>).





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