Laboratorium Techno-Humanistyki

The Techno-Humanities Lab and The Film Lab are delighted to invite you to the Interdisciplinary Conference “Images Between Series and Stream – Rethinking Seriality and Streaming” which will take place on 18-19 November 2021. Conference will be held online. 

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

ADAM NOCEK (Professor in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and the Design School, Arizona State University)
ALEX TAEK-GWANG LEE (Professor of British and American Cultural Studies, Kyung Hee University)
ADAM LIPSZYC (Professor of Philosophy in the Insitute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Science)
JAKUB MOMRO (Professor at the Department of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University)

CALL FOR PAPERS

In the last few years watching TV series has become a distinct socio-cultural phenomenon. The increasing rise of streaming media services has profoundly changed the accessibility standards of TV series but also the way of watching them. However, the domestication of our life in pandemic, made us realize that streaming series and films should become more important objects of our interest than ever before. In some sense, we live in-series and on-stream platforms. New technological situations, such as the presence of videoconferences in our life, presents us not only with new problems but a new reorganisation of sensibile as Jacques Ranciere might say. Video-technology enters into our private sphere and in some sense it calls us to be constantly available – to be on-stream but also to live in series of accessibilities. The re-organisation of our life is obvious, but the role of images in this “re-” or “de-” organisation still requires some reflection. We are in constant tension between being-in-series and being-on-stream. We perceive ourselves as moving-images on screen. It affects our relationships and our perception. The collaboration of the Techno-Humanities Lab and Film Lab encourages us to ask questions on two different planesphilosophical and cinematic one. Thus, we ask what happens with the pieces of the film art when they become just “tiles” on a streaming platform — a series of „bricks in the wall”? But also – what happens with us when we become just tiles on video conference meetings?

We want to rethink seriality and streaming not only as certain phenomenon, but also as a notion itself We should look at them from a slightly wider perspective. All doubts lead us to the question “what do series do”? In particular, philosophers and culture researchers have paid attention to this problem and seriality itself. Umberto Eco classified the series as a kind of repetition which responds to our infantile need of always hearing the same story and being consoled by the “return of the Identical”. Other approaches were offered by Deleuze (quite opposite to Eco) and Sartre who tried to rethink series as a mode of our everyday life and experience. This encourages us to discuss the issue of seriality also from a more philosophical perspective. But what about streaming? How is it connected with seriality? How does it affect our perception? What changes in our lives and work?

Consequently, what doseries and streaming mean? How do they work? How do they shape our life, habitual processes and behavior? How do they change our thinking and orient us toward objects such as works of art? Last but not least – what does it mean to be inside of the series or what does it mean to be outside of the series? What does it mean to be between series and streaming?

Proposals are welcome, but not limited to the following topics:

• What do series do? How are series changing our thinking? How are they shaping our everyday experience and habitual processes?

• How does the streaming technique affect our life? Does video-technology become an evocative object (Sherry Turkle’s notion)? How does usage of video-technology for communication affect our relationships? What happens when video-technology enters into our private sphere?

• Seriality of time or time of the series – what does it mean that somebody is in this or in another season of the given show? What does it mean to be in series or be outside of it? Or on-stream and off-stream? Are these different modes of being or different experiences of time? How do we experience time in the series?

• How does streaming platforms and video conferences affect the process of filmmaking? New conceptions of montage, movies made through video conference platforms, usage of “tiles” in movies etc.

• Presence of seriality in cinema – directors who made different movies about the same characters (e.g. Michael Haneke) but also movie directors who directed TV series (David Lynch and Twin Peaks). What is the difference between making series and making a movie? Are these two completely different types of perception or two types of thinking? How is thinking through series present in cinema?

• Does popularity of TV series and stream platforms lead to the end of cinema? What is the difference between watching a movie in cinema and watching the same movie on a streaming platform? How does it change our perception of images?

• “Videoconference fatigue”. How did usage of video-technology changed our work, our thinking and everyday experience? Is it not pushing us to our limits and to being in a constant arousal?

• How are series and streaming media services changing the cinema? Does it mean that phenomena such as cinematographic art canon or cinephilia are disappearing?

• Subjectivity of the experience of time in series’ viewers: binge watching, commute watching, repeated viewings, communal watching, instant reactions to episodes in the social media.

Presentations are expected to be between 20 and 30 minutes long.

Please send abstracts of max 300 words, attached in a word-document, with a short bio, to technologyandsocialization@gmail.com by 26 September 2021.

Should you need any further information, do not hesitate to contact us at the same email address. Allinformation related to the conference can be found at th.al.uw.edu.pl

The Organizing Committee,
Professor Szymon Wróbel
Dr Michał Oleszczyk
Dr Krzysztof Skonieczny
Dr Bolesław Racięski
Dr Katarzyna Szafranowska
Mgr Adam Cichoń

CFP