Call for Abstracts
“Composing, Decomposing, Recomposing. Montage as a form of experience”
PHILM – Philosophy and Cinema Magazine – Issue 3
Research Center of Philosophy and Cinema, University of Verona and the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan
31a0ae_77553477974a435781628703bfbd921c.pdf (univr.it) (Call pdf)
https://www.philm.univr.it/rivista (PHILM Magazine)
Deadline for submission of abstracts: September 1, 2023
Throughout the twentieth century, montage proved to be a exceptional expressive resource, both in terms of the spatio-temporal organisation of the image and at the level of the viewer’s perceptual and interpretive responses. From an initially purely technical stage, the processes of articulation and recomposition of audiovisual material, carried out through cuts and splices, quickly became a structuring element in the narrative architecture of films, organising the flow of images into a text with recognisable divisions in which the spectator could discern a “story”. This extraordinary plasticity of montage has not only allowed the spectator to transit within the narrative, but has also gradually been filled with new polarising functions that tend to interrupt or deviate from the narrative order: on the one hand, organising the narrative flow, on the other, resisting it. The montage – understood as an evolving form – has thus gradually transformed its material, historical and theoretical function: the possibility of cutting, relocating, recombining and substituting ultimately guarantees a more pervasive coordination of sensory stimuli and thought processes far beyond the boundaries of cinema. One need only think of Walter Benjamin’s constellations and residual architectures, Aby Warburg’s “space of thinking [Denkraum]” or Roland Barthes’ claim of “obtuse meaning [sense obtus]”.
In this way, montage becomes the natural theoretical environment for understanding – in its generality – the work of composing, decomposing and recomposing the elements that participate in the structuring of the image and the experience, linking the different levels of expression and the multiplicity of their sensory data If we recall that, since Kant, the coordination of the sensible and the intelligible is typical of the work of imagination, then audiovisual montage becomes the tool that makes the spectator’s imagination work on increasingly differentiated registers and through variable technical formats. In montage, then, the very notions of image and imagination are at stake as synthetic processes that weave and reweave experience into ever new forms.
Behind the various historical and theoretical declinations of montage, it is possible to isolate a hypothesis on which the third issue of PHILM intends to work. The continuity of our experience – like that of film – is always linked to the discontinuous. The generative core of montage lies in the process of deconstruction and recomposition, whereby the mere givenness of what exists is not meaningful in itself, but is transformed into a meaningful configuration when it is related to other elements. In this perspective, montage takes on the depth of one of the oldest philosophical dilemmas: the mutual relationship between continuity and discontinuity, continuous and discrete, or, if you like, between synthesis and analysis. This is an increasingly urgent question to understand the media status of the present, marked by new image and sound technologies that force us to rethink the relationship between the nature of montage and its synthetic capacities.
As well as inviting original reflections on these themes, the editorial staff also suggest some lines of research that could be developed:
- montage and transmediality;
- montage concerning the continuous-discrete dialectic;
- montage and temporality in the audiovisual;
- logic and aesthetics of montage;
- montage versus long take;
- transcendental conditions of montage;
- montage and truth of experience;
- montage beyond the audiovisual;
- visual montage and sound montage;
- ethics of montage.
Selection procedure: please send an abstract of no more of 1000 bytes (including spaces) by September 1, 2023 to philm.redazione@gmail.com, indicating the title of the proposal, the section of the journal in which you intend to participate (Writings or Traces) and a short biography of the author. The proposals will be evaluated by the editorial board and the results of the selection will be communicated by email before October 1, 2023. Selected papers must then be submitted by May 2024 and will be subject to double-blind peer review.
Contributions, written and composed expressly for the journal, must fall into one of the following sections:
- Scritture (Writings): in-depth essays dedicated to the specific themes of the single issue, between 25000 and 35000 bytes (including spaces and footnotes);
- Tracce (Traces): short articles, dedicated to individual films or video-art works which are linked to the theme of the issue, between 15000 and 20000 bytes (including spaces and footnotes).
The volume is expected to be published by the end of 2024.
Best regards,
The editorial staff of PHILM