Tagung 24. – 26. Oktober 2013, Sapientia Universität, Cluj-Napoca, Rumänien
Stichtag: 20. Mai 2013

In the past decades “intermediality” has proved to be one of the most
productive terms in the domain of humanities. Although the ideas
regarding media connections may be traced back to the poetics of the
Romantics or even further back in time, it was the accelerated
multiplication of media themselves becoming our daily experience in the
second half of the twentieth century that propelled the term to a wide
attention in a great number of fields (communication and cultural
studies, philosophy, theories of literature and music, art history,
cinema studies, etc.) where it generated an impressive number of
analyses and theoretical discussions. “Intermediality is in”
(„Intermedialität ist in”), declared one of its pioneering theorists,
Joachim Paech, at the end of the 1990s. However, we may also note, that
since then other theoretical approaches introduced even newer
perspectives that have not only revitalized the study of media phenomena
in general but have specifically targeted the emerging new problematics
raised by the new electronic media. Facing the challenge of the daily
experiences of the digital age, discussions of media differences or
‘dialogues’ highlighting the ‘inter,’ the ‘gap,’ the ‘in-between,’ the
‘incommensurability’ between media are currently being replaced by
discourses of the ‘enter’ or ‘immersion,’ and the ‘network logic’ of a
‘convergence culture’ in which we have a “free flow of content over
different media platforms” (Henry Jenkins). At the same time the turn
towards the corporeality of perception in all aspects of communication
has also shifted the attention from the ‘interaction of media’ towards
the ‘interaction with media,’ from the idea of ‘media borders’ towards
the analysis of the blurring of perception between media and reality, of
humans and machines – media being perceived more and more not as a form
of representation but as an environment and as a means to ‘augment’ reality.

Nowadays media continuously mutate, relocate and expand, while
connections between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media are being established with
incredible fluidity. Accordingly, we may ask: what are the new
perspectives for intermedial research in the digital age? While media
are continuously changing and expanding, how can we relocate the
“in-between”? If we consider ‘intermediality’ first and foremost ‒ as
suggested by Jürgen E. Müller ‒ as a “research concept” (Suchbegriff),
how can this concept be effectively applied to the media we see around
us today? And if we believe that the “ecosystem” of contemporary media
can be understood not as a unified digital environment that nullifies
differences, but as a thriving and highly diversified, “multisensory
milieu” (Jacques Rancière) that poses new challenges both for the
consumer/producer and the theorist, how can we address these challenges?
How do media differences persist and how do these differences still
matter despite voices advocating the so called “post-medium condition”?

As the former Nordic Society for Intermedial Studies launches its own
expanded, international format (International Society for Intermedial
Studies/ISIS), we think it is timely to address once more the major
issues for which this society exists, and to invite participants to
examine new forms of ‘intermedialities.’ In doing so participants may
address a broad range of questions relating to ‘old media’ and ‘new
media,’ and their possible interactions, focusing on the wide array of
intermedia phenomena and new type of relationships that new media have
produced, but also on how pre-digital media relations can be
re-evaluated, and how historical paradigms of intermediality may already
be distinguishable viewed from the standpoint of the contemporary media
landscape.

*Proposals may address (but are not limited to) the following questions
either from a theoretical point of view or through concrete analyses:*

* Media on the move? Media relations produced by expansions and
relocations of media (e.g. “the virtual life of film,” the
expansions of the “photographic” and of the “cinematic” over other
media, e-literature, etc.), the emergence of mobile screens, the
fact that media use is more and more related to moving in the
literal sense of the word: mobility and navigation.

* Relocating the ‘in-between’: intermediality, inter-sensuality,
multimodality and interactivity, assessing the contribution of
cognitive theories (and neuroscience), phenomenology and
post-phenomenology to the study of understanding interactions of
media and interactions with multiple media.

* Performing in (new) intermedial spaces: intermedial performance in
art and society. Being ‘in touch’ with reality – being ‘in touch
with media:’ researching new (trans)media practices.

* Intermediality and new forms of digital storytelling: new
perspectives in transmedial narratology, new media and narratology
(e.g. narrativity and e-platforms, games versus “old” media etc.),
the aesthetics of the intermedia flow, of complex, network
narratives generated by the experiences of the new media age.

* Modelling and mapping intermedialities: historical paradigms of
intermedial relations (pre-modern, modern, post-modern
intermediality); the aesthetics and ‘politics’ of intermediality
before and after the digital age; historical research on
intermediality related to media migration, cultural heritage and
changing relationships between production, distribution, and
perception.

*Confirmed keynote speakers:*

* *HENRY JENKINS*, University of Southern California (USA), author of
Convergence Culture: where Old and New Media Collide (2007),
currently co-authoring a book on “spreadable media.”

* *JOACHIM PAECH*, University of Konstanz (Germany), author of
Menschen im Kino. Film und Literatur erzählen (2000), Literatur und
Film (1997), PASSION oder Die EinBILDungen des Jean-Luc Godard
(1989), as well as several seminal articles on the theory of
intermediality in film, literature, and new media.

* *MARIE-LAURE RYAN*, independent scholar, Colorado (USA), co-editor
of Intermediality and Storytelling (2010), author of Avatars of
Story (Electronic Mediations) (2006), Narrative across Media: The
Languages of Storytelling (2004), Narrative as Virtual Reality.
Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media
(2001), etc.

Deadline for the submission of proposals: *20 May 2013.*

We will notify you about the acceptance of your proposals by: 1 June 2013.

*Submission of proposals:* please complete the submission form that you
can download from the conference website:

http://film.sapientia.ro/en/conferences/rethinking-intermediality-in-the-digital-age

and send it as an attachment to the following address:
2013.rethinking.intermediality@gmail.com