Art at the Frontier of Film Theory: the Work of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen.
A student-led symposium: Saturday 29 June 2019
Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Essay Film Festival is inviting proposals from doctoral students for a one-day student-led symposium about the work of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen. The symposium will be the culmination of a programme of events dedicated to Mulvey and Wollen, taking place at Birkbeck from 22 March to 24 May 2019.
The programme is in three parts: an exhibition entitled “Art at the Frontier of Film Theory” which, according to the curators, Oliver Fuke and Nick Helm-Grovas, “uses the gallery space to refract the work of Mulvey and Wollen through the prism of art”; a retrospective of Mulvey-Wollen’s collaborative films, including Riddles of the Sphinx, and Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons; and a series of public talks and workshops on topics such as “Film as Theory” and “Feminist Film Curating”. Information about the exhibition, the film season, and the public talks, is available from the CHASE website and from the website of BIMI and the EFF.
The symposium will take place on Saturday 29 June 2019, in Birkbeck Cinema. This is more than a month after the end of the programme, and therefore the idea of the symposium is to provide a space for critical reflection and debate, with a certain detachment from the programme itself.
Proposals are now welcome from doctoral students wishing to engage with any aspect of this programme of events, or indeed with aspects of the work of Mulvey and Wollen which are not covered by the programme.
Students with interests in any of the following fields may wish to put forward proposals: critical theory, feminism, sexual politics, film theory, experimental film, art practice, history of art, curatorial studies (art or film), cultural history, and others.
In addition to conference papers, the symposium will be open to presentations that take the form of video essays, sound compositions, visual studies, and other creative interventions in the debate around the legacy and contemporary relevance of the Mulvey-Wollen corpus.
We would also like to hear from CHASE students interested in taking an active role in the organisation of the symposium, and/or in the realisation of the actual programme as it unfolds – whether that be assisting with the preparation of certain events, or reporting on them in the form of written blogs or other forms of critical reflection (photography, video, sound).
Deadline: 22nd May – Expressions of interest and conference proposals should be sent to the following address, marked “Mulvey Wollen Programme”: bimi@bbk.ac.uk
On behalf of Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Essay Film Festival: Matthew Barrington, Leila Nassereldein, Michael Temple.