Institut national d’histoire de l’art, June 22 – 24, 2016
Deadline: Jan 5, 2016
Rethinking the Medium
Matter, Techniques, and Transmission in Contemporary Art and Cinema
An International Conference hosted at the Institut national de
l’histoire de l’art, Paris
June 22, 23, and 24, 2016
Organized by the research program “Contemporary Art, Cinema, Media” of
the Contemporary Art section of INHA in partnership with the Université
Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle / LIRA (Laboratoire International de
Recherches en Arts), Goethe-Universität Frankfurt-am-Main,
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and IKKM-Weimar.
To a certain extent, there is still today a tendency to distinguish the
terms “medium” and “media” following a strict theoretical and
disciplinary divide: on the one hand, the study of mediums, that is,
artistic mediums understood as the material supports, techniques, and
forms of representation studied by the history and theory of art and
cinema, and, on the other hand, the study of media in the sense of mass
media, that is, the means of mass communication addressed by
communication and information studies.
However, over the past twenty years, an important new field of research
has emerged that addresses all forms of mediation occurring within a
given cultural context. Transdisciplinary and open to a variety of
methodological influxes, this expanding field, better known as
Medienwissenschaft or media studies, looks at the technical and
material conditions of all forms of perception and experience,
representation and communication, as well as the different cultural
techniques implied in the production of meaning, overcoming thereby the
distinction between “medium” and “media”
The development within contemporary art of practices that combine
different mediums (multimedia, mixed media) or move between and across
mediums (intermedia, transmedia), just as, within the field of cinema,
the transition from film to the digital, and the rise of new modes of
recording, manipulating, and viewing moving images, have made it
necessary to rethink what a medium actually is. Responding to an
artistic, cinematographic, and technological landscape in constant
flux, this conference seeks to investigate the definition of what a
medium is by questioning the rigid distinction between “medium” and
“media”.
In order to do so, it is important to consider the various meanings and
connotations ascribed to the latin-derived word “medium” within a long
genealogy that can be traced back to the Aristotelian notions of metaxu
and diaphanes and that finds its key moments in the 20th century with
the writings of László Moholy-Nagy and Walter Benjamin, Rudolf Arnheim
and Clement Greenberg, Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler. Seeking
to present the most recent research on these topics, this symposium
aims at the same time to contribute to the dialog between the
disciplines of art history, cinema studies, and media studies.
Papers may address the following topics:
1. Medium, Specificity, Modernism
In the field of art history, the notion of “medium” is often used with
reference to the geographically as well as theoretically circumscribed
notion of “medium specificity” such as it was defined by Clement
Greenberg’s formalist modernism. This is true even of attempts to
transcend this model, several of which demonstrate in fact a return to
modernist issues that appeared to have been discarded. Similarly, in
the context of cinema studies, there is today a revived interest in the
notion of medium specificity put forward most famously by Rudolf
Arnheim and Siegfried Kracauer, while in the field of
Medienwissenschaft there is a new discussion about the way in which the
reference to one specific medium (photography, film, radio, television)
determines the production of an overall theory of media. To what extent
is the medium a modernist concept? What is the current relevance of the
notion of a strict compartmentalization of artistic mediums? How may we
address the historical and cultural foundations of this notion?
Particularly welcome are proposals for papers addressing approaches not
limited to the American context.
2. Medium, Milieu, Environment
The understanding of the medium as a technical instrument or channel of
communication, as well as the theories of medium specificity within the
fields of art and film theory, have relegated to the background the
concept of the medium as an intermediary entity or ambient space: a
milieu, or an environment. However, this idea has gained new currency
in contemporary art and cinema, starting with the “environments” of
postwar art, Op and kinetic art, as well as with expanded cinema and
video installations. This conception of the medium belongs to a long
genealogy that has its origin in Aristotle’s philosophy, and that has
known various developments among modern thinkers: in the theoretical
biology of Jakob von Uexküll (with his notion of “Umwelt” ), in László
Moholy-Nagy’s idea of “light as a plastic medium of expression,” in
Fritz Heider’s distinction between Medium and Ding (later reformulated
by Niklas Luhmann in terms of a distinction between Medium and Form),
in Benjamin’s understanding of the relation between the technical
Apparate and the “medium of perception,” in McLuhan’s understanding of
media as “environments,” as well as in the contemporary
“meteorological,” “physical,” and “geological” approaches to media.
This section considers works that explore the materialities and the
densities of the medium conceived as an intermediary region, extending
in space and plastic, capable of conditioning our forms of perception
and experience.
3. Medium, Materialities, Gesture
Rethinking the notion of medium by exploring its long history and its
several genealogical lines leads to a reconsideration of what is meant
by matter and materiality in reference to art and cinema. How does the
study of the technical networks that structure the recording,
processing, and storing of knowledge and information (Kittler’s
Aufschreibesysteme) or that of the “cultural techniques” whose
operations constitute the fabric of culture, help us understand in a
new way the materialities and the technical dimension involved in
artistic practices ? In which way do such approaches help us reconsider
the idea of the immateriality of so-called “new media” ? Do the new
materialities and techniques at work in contemporary artistic practices
determine the development of new positions and gestures on the side of
both the artist and the spectator ?
4. Medium, Memory, Transmission
After considering the archaeology of the concept of medium and how it
contributes to the history and theory of contemporary art and cinema,
this section considers the archaeology of media proper. How does the
new approach known as media archaeology shed light on artistic
practices and cinematographic and audiovisual forms that engage with
the temporality of media and the way in which they record, process, and
transmit cultural memory? How do contemporary artists and filmmakers
depict the radical changes affecting the access to this memory and the
places, forms, and technics of archiving such as the library and the
book?
The deadline for proposals (title and abstract of 300 words and short
cv of 2 pages) for papers of 25 minutes is January 5, 2016. Please send
proposals to larisa.dryansky@inha.fr.
Symposium organizers:
Larisa Dryansky, INHA / Université Paris-Sorbonne
Oliver Fahle, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Vinzenz Hediger, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt-am-Main
Antonio Somaini, Université Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle / LIRA
(Laboratoire International de Recherches en Arts)
Riccardo Venturi, INHA