Symposium and Film Screening
On Cinema, Embodiment and the Aesthetics of Pornograph
Information and registration: confinedprojections
With the generous support of:
The British Society of Aesthetics
The Aesthetics Research Centre, University of Kent
The Centre for Film and Media Research, University of Kent
Symposium on Cinema, Embodiment and the Aesthetics of Pornograph
Date: Thursday 3 March 2016, 9.30am-4pm
Location: Darwin Lecture Theatre 3, University of Kent FREE (Register online)
This one-day symposium focuses on the intimate relationship between cinema, embodiment, and pornography. By bringing together an interdisciplinary range of speakers, originating from disciplines such as philosophy of art, film and media studies, and cultural studies we investigate the relationship between cinema and the senses. From investigating the “cinema of attractions” in early cinema, to the “haptic visuality” apparent in intercultural and feminist film, and “body genres” such as horror, melodrama, and pornography; in very different ways film scholars have argued against the conventional emphasis on vision and visibility and in favour of an understanding of embodied spectatorship. In relation, recent research in analytic aesthetics has focused on the multimodality of perception as well as definitions of erotic art and pornography. This symposium explores in what ways different pornographies engage with the sensate, tactile, and visceral experience of sexuality. By instigating a dialogue between scholars from different approaches we hope that this symposium will advance scholarly engagement with the “carnal aesthetics” of pornography.
Programme
9.30am – 9.45
Opening remarks by Hans Maes
9.45 – 10.45
Clarissa Smith – Professor of Sexual Cultures in the Centre for Research in Media & Cultural Studies University of Sunderland
More Than Just Flesh: The Porn Performer’s Body in Action
10.45 – 11.45
Ingrid Ryberg – Filmmaker and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Media Studies of Stockholm University
“Feeling Wasteland: Utopianism and Backwardness in Queer Porn”
11.45 – 12.00 Coffee and tea
12.00 – 13.00
Petra van Brabandt – Lecturer at the St Lucas School of Arts Antwerp “Wet Aesthetics and Queer Pornography”
13.00 – 14.00
Lunch (not provided)
14.00 – 15.00
Eliza Steinbock – Assistant Professor and postdoctoral researcher at the Film and Literary Department of Leiden University
“Look! But also, Touch! Theorizing Images of Trans Eroticism Beyond a Politics of Visual Essentialism”
15.00 – 16.00
Panel Discussion with Eliza Steinbock, Petra van Brabandt, Ingrid Ryberg, Clarissa Smith, and Pandora Blake.
After the symposium, everyone is welcome to join us for drinks at the Goods Shed.
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cinema-and-embodiment-a-symposium-on-the- aesthetics-of-pornography-tickets-21383613965
Film Screening on Cinema, Embodiment and the Aesthetics of Pornography
Date: Wednesday 2nd of March 2016, 7pm-9.30pm Location: Lupino Cinema, University of Kent FREE, (Register online)
A film screening with a selection of short feminist, lesbian, queer, and trans pornographic films will usher in the symposium on Wednesday night. The screening will be concluded with a panel discussion and Q&A with filmmaker and scholar Ingrid Ryberg, curator and scholar Eliza Steinbock, and feminist pornographer Pandora Blake.
Registration (free):
Disclaimer: Please be aware that due to the theme of the event, both the symposium and the film screening will discuss and show images of a mature content.
The symposium and film screening are two of the components that make up the cross-disciplinary project Confined Projections, which is part of the International Festival of Projections taking place at the University of Kent 21-23 March 2016. The project also includes the exhibition of six custom- made mutoscopes, showing work by national and international artists and filmmakers. Taking the mutoscope as leitmotiv, this project investigates the tension between public and private, visibility and invisibility, and proximity and distance in the film experience, revealing interesting connections between this early form of cinema and more recent developments in erotic filmmaking.
For more information on the project visit: https://confinedprojections.wordpress.com