21 September, 2023 | by Rushi P
Overview
Writing in the seminal text, Expanded Cinema, Gene Youngblood positioned himself “at the end of the era of cinema as we’ve known it, the beginning of an era of image-exchange between man and man” (1970, 49). Re-visiting Youngblood invites us to consider notions of image exchange in social space in the context of major developments in the field in the last ten years. The theme for this volume, then, is ‘Expanded Screendance’ and we are interested in hearing from people who are actively engaged in expanding the scope of screendance as a field of practice and enquiry, responding to the movement of technologies, cultures and societies. With an acknowledgment to the filmmakers, artists and writers who established the Expanded Cinema movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this volume will highlight what we identify as three key strands running through current screendance activity in artist practices, academic research and curation:
* foregrounding the material/ cultural/ political conditions in and through which screendance works are produced and presented;
* challenging received notions of spectatorship and re-imagining the relations between artists, artworks, audiences;
* responding to emerging ideas around what constitutes connectivity in the present day
Topics for papers might include:
Audiences How are social media platforms being employed to expand existing audiences or target specific audiences for screendance? What is the role of language in choreographing social media spaces? What effect does this have on screendance cultures?
Screen archives Domains and web platforms are not permanent, neither is their content: what might this mean in relation to archiving screendance? What happens to content when a social media platform dies?
Economics and creativity In issue 1 of the Journal, in 2010, Chirstinn Whyte reflected on screendance practice as what she termed ‘a complex series of navigation processes, requiring skillful triangulation of rapidly shifting economic, operational and artistic factors’ (2010:11). This screendance field now encompasses different creation modes and models and the majority emerge from micro-budget and indeed no-budget environments alongside well-financed productions. How do making and collaboration processes flow from different economic circumstances and what is the role of critique within each model?
Strategic Development and Activism What strategic development, production and screening initiatives have emerged in response to the specificity of economic, cultural and technological environments? How do/ might different kinds of activism surface in the making of screendance?
Social media platforms have actively overtaken festivals as a primary site for disseminating, and in some cases creating, screendances. How is work being made in relation to the screenic languages and interfaces that define different kinds of platforms? What are the implications for screendance now, and in the future, in relation to platforms and ways in which they define duration? How are artists working creatively in relation to duration?
We invite contributions of scholarly research, interviews, reviews, provocations, viewpoints, visual essays, and work by established and emerging scholars on the theme of Expanded Screendance. Please refer to the journal website for guidelines in relation to submission, this includes a video tutorial: Link . For the purposes of review, please indicate which of the above categories best characterize your contribution.
Please note: scholarly papers are peer-reviewed in a double-blind process, and should be 3500-6000 words. All other contributions will be reviewed by the editorial board. The deadline for all contributions is 1st September 2019. The volume will be published online in March 2020, following the peer-review and editorial process.
Bibliography
Chirstinn Whyte. ‘The Evolution of the ‘A’ Word Changing Notions of Professional Practice in Avantgarde Film and Contemporary Screendance’ in The International Journal of Screendance, Volume 1. 2010.
Gene Youngblood. Expanded Cinema. New York: P. Dutton & Co. Inc.. 1970.