Our conference aims to encourage studies that explore an emerging paradigm in intermediality studies centred on "affective intermediality", and we hope to initiate a friendly, scholarly debate regarding the relevance and productivity of this approach. The necessity of such an “affective turn” of intermediality studies arises from viewing intermediality as an intricate and highly performative process of communication between humans within a particular context of material reality and historical time, not just as a “transfer”, a “combination” or “reference” of media characteristics or representations, i.e. not only as something that happens between media and affects media, but as something that affects us. Accordingly, we propose “affective intermediality” as a key term for a perspective over the experience of the in-betweenness of arts and media that pivots from concentrating on formal operations of media transgressions to examining the sensuous excess and complex affective performativity of cinematic intermediality and of intermedial artworks in general.
Cognitive and narrative theory has long considered cinema to be essentially an “emotion machine” (Ed S. Tan) capable of offering “ethically illuminating experiences” (Carl Plantinga). The great cinéphile philosophers of our times, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou both speak of cinema in affective terms, highlighting how the medium “overflows” itself (Rancière) towards the other arts and reality, or, reversely, allows reality and the arts to contaminate it, to “flow through” it, “using and magnifying them”, whilst “according them a distinctive emotional power” (Badiou). However, the wide spectrum where intermediality intervenes into cinema’s “affective regimes” is yet to be fully untangled. Furthermore, cinema serves as an eminent example and model for our proposed investigation and it may open up the field of analysis towards other contemporary media that are increasingly “cinematic”. Cinephilia mingles with the enjoyment of the affordances of our high-tech display devices. At the same time, cinematic liveness, presence, and affectivity itself have all acquired new meanings in our times, as digital mediatedness has become a part of reality and essential for personal interactions.
Looking at a variety of samples, we may find that the tensions in-between arts and media, which are inherent to any forms of intermediality, can reflect our affective responses to the world. Moreover, intermediality can also become an effective tool in a critical, ethical and emotional engagement with old and new media alike and with vital problems of contemporary reality.
Although we launch the call from the perspective of a research project on the art of moving images, we would like to encourage participants to cover as much as possible of the depth and breadth of the idea of “affective intermediality” and invite contributions from all fields of intermediality studies.

The following topics may inspire you in writing theoretical essays or individual case studies (but we also welcome any paper that proposes a relevant approach to the main idea of the conference and that can expand the area of investigations):

• unravelling the sensuous excess, sensuous materiality, or the poetic strategies and tropes through which an "affective intermediality" is manifested in moving images and other media;
• the pleasures and displeasures of cinematic intermediality: an exploration of specific moods, sensations and feelings or “incongruous affects” (Plantinga) communicated/generated through intermediality;
• the uncanniness of intermediality (an idea carried over from our previous workshop launching our research project – see further suggestions about this topic here);
• imagination, empathy, memory/postmemory and intermediality; the representability and affective accessibility of traumatic experiences through intermediality;
• sensitizing through intermediality: addressing key issues of reality (e.g. ecological, social-humanitarian, political crises, etc.); ethical stance and critical thought emerging through “affective intermediality”;
• “the distribution of the sensible” (Rancière) reflected through intermediality;
• the gendered gaze and “touch” in intermedial art;
• affective intermediality in the digital age (e.g. in computer games, in immersive/interactive uses of digital media/platforms/applications, etc.); 
• affective dispositifs (arrangements, milieus) in art installations using moving images/expanded cinema and connecting multiple arts;
• presentations of practice as research approaches and curatorial practice bringing into spotlight an “affective intermediality” in the arts.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

JØRGEN BRUHN, Professor of Comparative Literature at the Linnæus University, Sweden.

JULIAN HANICH, Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

LAURA RASCAROLI, Professor in Film and Screen Media at University College Cork, Ireland. 

We plan this as a stimulating and mainly in-person event, therefore we encourage you to come and join us in the debates “in real life”. Nevertheless, in case you cannot come, we will accept a limited number (up to 20%) of online presentations that we can include in hybrid panels (i.e. there will be no panels with only online presentations).

We plan to publish a selection of papers based on the presentations in the form of a special issue of a journal and an edited volume submitted to a prestigious internatonal publishing house.

We accept proposals for individual presentations and especially welcome proposals of panels presenting the work of a research project/centre or friendly group (consisting of 3 papers).

Please send your proposals by filling in one of these submission forms:

SUBMISSION FORM (individual proposal): https://forms.gle/QE7Ek38vob6DHT5A7

SUBMISSION FORM (panel proposal): https://forms.gle/VdfWZaUJNpq4Zy8S6

Please note that we will not accept panels consisting of online presentations only, each panel needs to have at least two in-person presenters.

The forms are accessible on our website along with further info about registration fee, publication plans and suggestions for travel and accommodation: http://film.sapientia.ro/en/conferences/affective-intermediality

If you have any questions, contact us at: affective.intermediality@gmail.com.

Deadline: 10 July 2023. We will notify you about our decisions regarding the proposals by: 17 July 2023.

(Feel free to request an earlier reply if you submit earlier than the final deadline and need it in order to apply for funding at your university.)