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August 2011, Week 1

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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Tue, 2 Aug 2011 12:27:12 -0400
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Greg Zinman <[log in to unmask]>
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Proposed Panel for SCMS Annual Conference 
Inner/Outer Space: Experimental Cinema, Interiority, and the Cosmos
March 21-25, 2012, Boston, MA

The 1960s saw the start of the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States. The same era witnessed a flowering of a new kind of experimental filmmaking, in which abstract form and color was marshaled to represent altered or heightened states of vision, both literal and metaphoric. While this confluence of the cosmic and psychic was perhaps most famously captured in the “Stargate” sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a number of experimental film and media works explored similar themes years beforehand. James Whitney’s Yantra (1963-66), and Jordan Belson’s exquisitely constructed space-scapes, planetary forms, and mandalic structures in films such as Allures (1961) and Re-Entry (1964) all reflected an abiding interest in exploring inner, as well as outer, spaces. Similarly, Roger F. Malina—the rocket scientist, head of scientific research for UNESCO, and painter who founded the journal of art and science Leonardo in 1967—made “kinetic paintings” such as Dark Moon (1966) and Away From the Earth II (1966), which drew on scientific images such as probability curves, microphotography, and space exploration. The confluence of humanity collectively looking to the stars, the increasing prevalence of psychedelic drugs, and a burgeoning interest in Eastern religions and philosophies resulted in a number of cinematic works that simultaneously referenced other worlds and altered consciousnesses. As Malina said, “I see the work of artists as an important effort to communicate new visions of the universe as found through scientific research to the community at large.”

Moving image artists have been and continue to be inspired by the play between inner and outer spaces, and I therefore invite proposals for papers that engage with the issue of how works of documentary and fiction, from all corners of moving image history and media—television, online, film, expanded cinema, and video—have engaged notions of interiority and subjectivity, as well as the exploration of outer worlds and otherworldly planes of existence. As panel organizer, I will present a paper on how artists working in a variety of media—including Belson, Malina, painter/filmmaker José Antonio Sistiaga, and contemporary hybrid film and video artist Gerda Cammaer—have negotiated these boundaries, or provided critiques of mainstream cinema’s depictions of the same.

If you are not a member of SCMS, you will be asked to join the membership before the panel proposal can be submitted. As per the SCMS proposal format (please check www.cmstudies.org for details), please send a 300-word summary, five keywords, bibliography, and 25-word author biography by August 12 to the e-mail address below:

Gregory Zinman, Adjunct Professor and Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Cinema Studies, New York University ([log in to unmask])
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