The first CLAM publication on the Gesamtkunstwerk, which comes out of a Workshop held at 2016 Vienna ICLA Congress, just appeared by Peter Lang, edited by Massimo Fusillo and Marina Grishakowa, with a Postface by Matthew Wilson Smith (University of Stanford).
The book reconceives the “total work of art” as a variation of intermediality, a practice that subverts any essentialist vision of artistic languages through complex interplay and blending of perceptions, amplified by new media and the syncretic nature of the cyberspace. It aims at revealing the vitality of modern and contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk by mapping its presence in various arts and media.
Workshop in Macau and publication of the proceedings
The CLAM held its second Workshop at the ICLA Congress in Macau in July 2019, devoted to “Problems of Terminology and Classification” with the participation of Hans-Joachim Backe, Massimo Fusillo, Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Helga Mitterbauer, Mauro Pala, Marcio Seligmann-Silva, Federico Zecca. The papers were submitted to the Journal of the Italian Association of Theory and Comparative History of Literature Between, and have been just published in the current issue: Vol 10 No 20 (2020): Transmediality / Intermediality / Crossmediality: Problems of Definition, Eds. H.-J. Backe, M. Fusillo, M. Lino, with the focus sectionIntermedial Dante: Reception, Appropriation, Metamorphosis, Eds. C. Fischer and M. Petricola https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
First Conference of the ICLA Research Committee on Literatures/Arts/Media (CLAM)
Department of Humanities – Excellence Program 2018-2022
January 14-16, 2021 – University of L’Aquila
Benny Chirco, Dinamica di linguaggio, 2011. Reproduced with the artist’s permission.
The transition of narratives, characters, themes and iconic elements from one code of representation to another represents one of the most fundamental processes through which the literary and artistic fields evolve, transform, and expand within a given culture. These same processes of transcodification also play a vital role in how different cultures interact across time and space. In the classical world, mythical narratives were disseminated through the Homeric epic, the theatrical genre of tragedy and the visual arts. From the onset of Christianity to the late modern age, the history of European art has been driven by the adaptation of episodes from the Bible and other religious texts across a number of media, from painting to sculpture, from medieval plays to sacre rappresentazioni, from musical texts to folkloric practices. Fables have moved from orality to the written form; at the same time, written narratives have been circulating through oral transmission. Medieval and early modern manuscripts were illuminated; modern and contemporary texts are illustrated. From antiquity to the contemporary media franchise, transcodification is ubiquitous.
Today, mass
media and the digital revolution have changed—and are still changing—the
notions of author, text, public, intellectual property and medium that were inherited
from the 20th century’s critical traditions. Literature, cinema, theatre
and television are now facing the multisensory logic of the contemporary mediascape,
a logic based on inclusion, acceleration, simultaneity and hyper-mediation. The
idea of text has expanded into that of hypertext, while narration is becoming
more and more pluralistic, polycentric and antihierarchical: as proposed by Lev
Manovich (2010), narratives are becoming more and more like softwares
that can be endlessly rewritten and reused. Cinema is being re-articulated in
the forms of the so-called postcinema, in which films become part of a larger
system of converging media and cinema can be relocated outside its traditional
and institutional spaces. This medium’s formal structures are being
disseminated in urban spaces, thus giving birth to new forms of visuality like
videomapping and media façade installations. Media may quote and thematize
other media, according to the well-known concept of re-mediation coined by
Bolter and Grusin (1999), thus generating what Irina Rajewsky (2002) defined as
“intermedia references”. The interactivity and immersivity of videogames, augmented
reality and virtual reality, as well as the transmedia and crossmedia
organization of storytelling (especially in the case of TV series), also
suggest a deep sense of engagement towards media hybridization and the
exploration of innovative forms of textuality. Finally, the question has arisen,
and is still being debated, whether it is appropriate to consider the theatre
as part of the cluster of forms which, since the middle of the 20th century,
have been subsumed under the general label “media”.
Given these
premises, the first CLAM conference Transcodification: Literatures – Arts –
Media represents an invitation to investigate the principles and practices
of transcodification across time and space, as well as to discuss re-mediation
as an aesthetic category which implies fluidity, fragmentation and
pluralization. The conference’s main purpose is to offer an intermedial
perspective on fiction and the arts taking as a starting point the insights
provided by the most recent developments in comparative literature. More
specifically, such an inquiry’s aim is twofold:
historicizing transcodification, re-mediation and intermediality
as both a set of practices and a set of philosophical notions;
exploring transcodification in the contemporary (post-WWII)
age and examining the new roles and configurations of literature in the global
polymorphic imagination.
We encourage contributions
addressing any of the following areas or any interrelation between them:
Transcodification, adaptation and intermediality, from
antiquity to today;
Literatures and the arts;
Transmedia narratology;
Philosophies of transcodification;
Literary transcodifications: new perspectives in comparative
literature;
The dissemination of literary techniques (narration,
empathy, point of view, etc.) in every aspect of contemporary culture;
Cinema/TV series and intermediality: theoretical
frameworks;
Postcinema and new digital technologies;
TV series and transmedia television
Baroque/Neo-Baroque: theories, aesthetics and technologies;
Performance, performativity and theatricality;
Digital Art: aesthetics, environments and historical
perspectives;
Inter-art studies;
Hybrid forms of mediality: musical theatre, theatrical
performance, graphic novels, transmedia storytelling, computer games, video art,
video clips, advertising, webseries, videomapping, media façade, etc.
Confirmed Keynotes:
Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne / Marina
Grishakova, University of Tartu / Christopher Johnson, Arizona
State University / Ágnes Pethő, Sapientia University of Cluj-Napoca /
Marie-Laure Ryan, University of Colorado / Rebecca Schneider, Brown
University
Proposals should include an abstract
(300 words max), five keywords and a short biographical note (10
lines max).
The working language of the
conference will be English.
The deadline for abstracts submission is February 23, 2020.
Participants will be notified of
acceptance by March 15, 2020.
The conference will not have
a registration fee.
The conference venue is the Department of Humanities, Viale Nizza, 14,
L’Aquila.
Further information about accommodation
and how to reach the conference venue will be published at www.clam-icla.com
(the website is currently under construction).
Scientific
Committee:
Massimo Fusillo, University of L’Aquila, Italy / Marina
Grishakova, University of Tartu, Estonia / Hans-Joachim Backe,
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark / Jan Baetens, KU Leuven, Belgium / Bart Van Den Bossche, KU
Leuven, Belgium / Kiene Brillenburg Wurth, University of Utrecht,
Netherlands / Jørgen Bruhn, Linnaeus University, Sweden / Philippe
Despoix, University of Montréal, Canada / Caroline Fischer,
Université de Pau, France / Yorimitsu Hashimoto, University of Osaka,
Japan / Karin Kukkonen, University of Oslo, Norway / Christina
Ljungberg, University of Zurich, Switzerland / Kai Mikkonen,
University of Helsinki, Finland / Nam Soo-Young, Korea National
Univerity of Arts, Korea / Haun Saussy, University of Chicago, USA / Márcio
Seligmann-Silva, State University of Campinas, UNICAMP, Brazil
The variety in contemporary
philosophical and aesthetic thinking as well as in scientific and experimental
research on complexity has not yet been fully adopted by narratology. By
integrating cutting-edge approaches, this volume takes a step toward filling
this gap and establishing interdisciplinary narrative research on
complexity.
Narrative Complexity provides a framework for a more
complex and nuanced study of narrative and explores the experience of narrative
complexity in terms of cognitive processing, affect, and mind and body
engagement. Bringing together leading international scholars from a range of
disciplines, this volume combines analytical effort and conceptual insight in
order to relate more effectively our theories of narrative representation and
complexities of intelligent behavior.
This collection engages important
questions on how narrative complexity functions as an agent of cultural evolution,
how our understanding of narrative complexity can be extended in light of new
research in the social sciences and humanities, how interactive media produce
new types of narrative complexity, and how the role of embodiment as a factor
of narrative complexity acquires prominence in cognitive science and media
studies. The contributors explore narrative complexity transmitted through
various semiotic channels, embedded in multiple contexts, and experienced
across different media, including film, comics, music, interactive apps,
audiowalks, and ambient literature.
President of the Committee is Professor Massimo Fusillo (L’Aquila University) and Vice President Professor Marina Grishakova (University of Tartu). The Committee consists of twelve scholars from various countries – Denmark, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden, France, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, Brazil, and the US. Its purpose is studying literature as one medium among other media and arts (painting, music, theatre, film, photography, digital art, etc.) and mapping out the current rapidly changing landscape of interarts and intermedia studies.
The
workshop focuses on the most interesting and challenging issues in these fields
from the perspective of comparative literary and cultural studies. The
questions that the workshop addresses include but are not limited to
the following: How do the new technologies and media influence the ways
people and cultures perceive and conceptualize art and literature? How has the
status and value of a work of art been changing in new art and media ecologies?
What are the new forms of remediation and adaptation from one medium to
another? What is the retroactive effect of the new forms of art and media on
the old forms? How do these new phenomena change the paradigms of interart and
intermedia studies? What are most challenging and urgent issues in interart,
intermedia and transmedia studies today that a comparative scholar should
address? What are the future perspectives?
The
workshop is organized by Professor Marina
Grishakova (academic coordinator) with Dr. Siim Sorokin and
Dr. Remo Gramigna,
researchers at the Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu.
Event Schedule
Literature, Arts, and Media: Rivalry or Alliance?
Ülikooli 16-212, Institute of Cultural Research, University of
Tartu
Thu Dec. 13
9.00
Registration
9.15-9.30
Welcome and greetings (Marina Grishakova, Massimo Fusillo)
Session 1: Moderator Marina Grishakova (University
of Tartu)
9.30-10.10 Jørgen Bruhn (Linnaeus
University). Two ways of co-thinking media and literature
10.10-10.50 Christina Ljungberg (University
of Zurich). Sensorial effectiveness in multimedia arts and literature
10.50-11.10
Coffee break
11.10-11.50 Kiene Brillenburg Wurth (University
of Utrecht). Book presence
11.50-12.30 Bart Van Den Bossche (KU
Leuven). On the “retroactive” impact of new forms of art and media, in
particular with regard to literary history of modernism
12.30-13.30
Lunch break
Session 2: Moderator Siim Sorokin (University
of Tartu)
13.30-14.10 Caroline Fischer (Université
de Pau). Literary remediation of new media – new wine in old bottles?
14.10-14.50 Yorimitsu Hashimoto (University
of Osaka). Representations of torture across media: Oriental, Medieval or
Occidental?
14.50-15.10
Coffee break
15.10-15.50 Hans-Joachim Backe (IT
University of Copenhagen). Mix, hybrid, or cyborg? (Re-) Conceptualizing
Comic-Games and Game-Comics
15.50-16.30 Márcio Seligmann-Silva (State
University of Campinas). Are all kinds of art ridiculous now? The new art
landscape of the digital era
17.00-18.00
City walk
Fri Dec.14
9.15
Registration
Session 3: Moderator Remo Gramigna (University
of Tartu)
9.30-10.10 Kai Mikkonen (University
of Helsinki). So, what’s the point of hybridity?
10.10-10.50 Marina Grishakova (University
of Tartu). On a terminological confusion
10.50-11.20
Coffee break
11.20-12.00 Massimo Fusillo & Mirko Lino (University
of L’Aquila). Intermediality in Digital Media Environment. A Lexicon for the
Computerization of Storytelling
12.00-12.40
General discussion
12.40-13.40
Lunch break
13.45-14.45
Committee business meeting
15.00-17.00
Visit to the National Museum
The
event was financed by the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of
Excellence in Estonian Studies) and by the research grant PUT1481 (Estonian Research
Council).
