[-empyre-] Welcome to the October Discussion:

Renate Ferro rtf9 at cornell.edu
Sat Oct 5 23:39:23 EST 2013


Tim Murray posted:
       So one of the questions we'll be asking is how to understand the
current moment of convergence.  I was at a
       conference last weekend on comparative media and a very influential
film scholar made a passionate claim that
       cinema shares with literature the access to profundity in a way that
"media" can't.  Although I can understand the
       historical background of such a claim, I found it so curious in an
age when profundity has been democratized,
       stretched, challenged, and mobilized by interactive performance,
mobile technologies, and cross-platform exhibition....

...Coco Fusco delivered a keynote lecture at a conference in Art History
here at Cornell last night.  In a powerful juxta-position of examples she
laid out an hour's worth of examples of Cuban citizens, mostly performance
artists, who use the ubiquitous technologies  of cell phones (video capture
most notably but certainly still photography via social media) to document
their actions to expose the political machinery of that government.  There
are no independent reporters working inside of Cuba only individual
citizens who report from the inside out.  Many of these citizens including
these performance artists she cited risk jail sentences for their political
actions.  The documentation of their political acts through the use of the
moving image and other social media tools sends their message which
reverberates eventually through to main stream media news outlets (CNN,
Huffingtonpost).  According to Fusco, the importance of the reliance of
social media tools like Facebook on other countries including Iran to send
vital information to the outside world should not be underestimated.
Facebook consciously updates their site  during the midnight hours Iran
time because information is so vital to that country during its waking
hours.

I am looking forward to attending the 18th International Busan Film
Festival.  Recent ABC coverage of the festival
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/busan-film-festival-opens-stars-talent-20454700
touted its reputation to feature more independent, lesser known talents,

"The Busan festival is known for discovering new talent and highlighting
movies on the fringe of the global film industry."

It is the tension between main stream cinema, independent cinema and the
cross-platform exhibition dimensions especially those within the art world
that I am hoping we can talk about during the  next month of our
discussion. I'll write more later today.

Renate







On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 6:21 PM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Welcome to October, everyone.  Renate and I really delighted to be hosting
> this month's discussion on "Convergence: expanding time-based media." We
> have guests who work widely across the disciplines and from varying
> perspectives across the globe so are eager to see how things develop.
>
> Our first guest will be Youngmin Kim who is one of Korea's leading
> interdisciplinary scholars and on the organizing of the Busan International
> Film Festival which, as Renate mentioned, has chosen the concept
> "Convergence" for the conference framing the Festival.  Since Busan is
> Asia's most prestigious film festival, it is exciting that it has opened
> the doors to reflecting on the shifting ontologies of film, screen culture,
> and global media.  I'm particularly keen to hear empyreans' thoughts on the
> implications of the convergence of media in which the screen(s) is
> ubiquitous, audiences are mobile if not virtual, and forms that used to be
> distinct, from film and video to installation, interactive platforms,
> listservs, animation, and digital sound and image convergence in recombined
> forms.
>
> So one of the questions we'll be asking is how to understand the current
> moment of convergence.  I was at a conference last weekend on comparative
> media and a very influential film scholar made a passionate claim that
> cinema shares with literature the access to profundity in a way that
> "media" can't.  Although I can understand the historical background of such
> a claim, I found it so curious in an age when profundity has been
> democratized, stretched, challenged, and mobilized by interactive
> performance, mobile technologies, and cross-platform exhibition.  I'll
> expound on remarks that I'll be making at Busan in the following week, but
> my sense is that the very convergence of technologies in the context of
> global screen cultures challenges and complicates the very universalist
> claim of profundity upon which my colleague relies.
>
> After Youngmin wakes up (6am his time), I'll look forward to his opening
> thoughts.  Welcome to a new month on -empyre-.  We're looking forward to an
> active discussion.
>
> Best,
>
> Tim
> Director, Society for the Humanities
> Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
> A. D. White House
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York. 14853
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [
> empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Renate Ferro [
> rtf9 at cornell.edu]
> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2013 10:13 AM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: [-empyre-] Welcome to the October Discussion:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>


-- 

Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,
(contracted since 2004)
Cornell University
Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
Ithaca, NY  14853
Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net

Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20131005/89b24ee0/attachment.htm>


More information about the empyre mailing list