POETICS AND POLITICS: A DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
http://poeticsandpolitics.ucsc.edu/
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ
MAY 15-17th, 2015
In April 2013, an international group of documentary scholars and
scholar-practitioners assembled at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland to
participate in thePoetics and Politics of Documentary Research Symposium. The
symposium was designed to both showcase and theorize non-fiction work from the
zones between poetics and politics, image and word, theory and practice. The
call for papers was aimed at researchers working on art-based, documentary
research projects and it welcomed a wide range of proposals and approaches. The
2013 conference provided invaluable context for a growing concern in the fields
of film, media art and scholarship about documentary-based research that both
troubles and reinvigorates the discrepant categories of scholarly “theory” and
cultural “practice.” The second iteration of Poetics and Politics Documentary
Research Symposium, which will take place May 15-17th, 2015 at the University
of California Santa Cruz.
The 2015 symposium invites participants whose work frames, historicizes, or
embodies questions about the various possible relations of theory to practice
in documentary research. The symposium reflects a variety of approaches to
documentary from a range of fields including film, video and new media, art
practice, media and visual culture studies, visual anthropology and ethnography.
In recent years, post-structuralist, post-colonial and feminist thought have
persuasively destabilized documentary as a fact-based, convention-bound and
putatively objective social or scientific practice. We continue this critical
approach by asking: what is the scope of documentary making as a political and
poetic form? In line with the first iteration of this conference, we
conceptualize documentary practice as encompassing multiple media and outcomes.
We conceive ‘practice’ most broadly to include, without being limited to,
moving image media, digital media, writing, photography, installation,
performance, archiving and programming, among other forms, either as individual
or hybrid practices in which more than a single medium are in dialogue. The
symposium aims to provoke discussion on the scope of documentary making
practices and aesthetics, to analyze and foster communities for its continuing
critical practice. We aim to create innovative panels that will bring
scholar-practitioners into conversation about making as thinking. Our keynote
speakers are Anna Grimshaw (Emory University) and Kevin Jerome Everson
(University of Virginia) who represent disparate yet interconnected approaches
to documentary practice as research.
We seek proposals that explore documentary media in its current state of
production, exhibition, context, culture, significance, and possibility. Of
particular interest are proposals that conceptualize documentary practice as
encompassing multiple media and outcomes. We especially seek proposals from
documentary practitioners who conceive of their ‘practice’ most broadly to
include — without being limited to — moving image media, digital media, sound,
writing, programming, photography, archiving and installation among other
forms, either as individual or hybrid practices in which more than a single
medium are in dialogue. The symposium aims to provoke discussion on the scope
of documentary practices and aesthetics, to analyze and foster communities for
its continuing critical production and reception. We aim to create innovative
panels that will bring scholar-practitioners into conversation about a variety
of topics. This conference is an invitation to explore dialogues between
creative practice and theoretical knowledge, indeed, as it imagines them to be
related forms of intellectual work. Presentations are encouraged but not
limited to the following inter-related categories:
Works-In-Progress
What kinds of epistemologies does documentary-making provoke? In this regard,
we are especially interested in conversations around works-in-progress where
practitioners can speak to the contingencies that shape documentary practices.
Too often documentary media is seen as an exemplar or illustrative of a theory
rather than as a mode of knowledge production in and of itself. These
works-in-progress panels are designed to produce discussions in to the
specificity of mediated scholarship:
• What are the disparities and/or coincidences of intent/aspiration and the
real world contingencies of production?
• Within the context of a specific topic or research question, how does the
image function as a sign, a polemic, or a poetic?
• How do the demands of rhetoric shift or confirm the demands of a particular
time-based medium?
• What are the possible dialogues, overlaps, or acts of translation that occur
between theory and practice, media production and writing?
• What is the
