The concept of border crossing and conquest, or the acquisition of territory, has widely been cast as patriarchal, whereas the ocean’s fluidity, the darkness, and the endless immensity of the sea are often considered ‘dangerously feminine’. The mythological assumptions that operate in many ancient philosophical writings qualify the feminine with formlessness, wetness and darkness, qualities that indicate non-governability, unpredictability and monstrosity, qualities ascribed to the ocean.
Hester Blum suggests that, “in its geophysical, historical, and imaginative properties, the sea […] provides a new epistemology – a new dimension – for thinking about surfaces, depths, and the extra-terrestrial dimensions of planetary resources and relations”. With a special interest in the relationships between the oceanic, the moving image and the feminine, the fifth annual conference of İstanbul Bilgi University, Department of Film and Television, follows the call of ‘oceanic studies’ for a new epistemology that thinks with water and from water so as to explore the possibility of an oceanic flux in films and film studies. After all, moving image arts offers a great potential to think with the waves, currents and tides of water so as to narrate alternative stories. Highlighting this potential, the conference focuses on artistic imaginings of land and sea in moving image arts – film, video, video essay and etcetera, aspiring to seek new topographical vantage points for viewing the internal and the external worlds. We would like to invite contributors to contemplate on artistic and scholarly acts of leaving the static and solid ground of the terrestrial lands and diving into the intangible, unknowable, inhabitable, unpredictable oceans.
Besides traditional academic papers and roundtables, the conference welcomes non-traditional papers and workshop proposals, video essays, films, and videos. Individual paper presentations will be limited to 15 minutes. We will also consider pre-constituted, 30-minute roundtable discussions with 3-5 designated participants. For films, videos and video essays, the conference presentation will consist of up to 10 minutes for screening the work (an excerpt may be selected if the full video essay exceeds this limit), followed by 10 minutes of commentary from the creator.
Please submit an abstract (max 300 words), 3-5 bibliographical sources, 3-5 keywords, and a short CV by February 15, 2023. The selected abstracts for the symposium will be announced by March 5, 2023.
Abstracts selected for presentation will be published online prior to the conference. Full papers selected for publication will be announced after the conference. The conference language is English and no simultaneous translation will be provided.
Contact person: Nilüfer Neslihan Arslan, nilufer.arslan@bilgi.edu.tr
Possible topics for papers, roundtables, video essays, films and videos include, but are not limited to:
Dr. Feride Çiçekoğlu | Istanbul Bilgi University
Dr. Ebru Thwaites Diken | Istanbul Bilgi University
Dr. Ayça Çiftçi | Istanbul Bilgi University
Dr. Ayşegül Kesirli Unur | Istanbul Bilgi University
Dr. Beth Tsai | University of California, Santa Barbara
Dr. Katie Bird | The University of Texas at El Paso
Dr. Gökçen Erkılıç | Harvard University
Dr. Diğdem Sezen | Teesside University
Dr. Şirin Erensoy | Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Res. Assist. Nilüfer Neslihan Arslan | Istanbul Bilgi University