March 27-28, 2020
Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
- Sandy Flitterman-Lewis (Rutgers University, Associate Professor of English and Film)
- Homay King (Bryn Mawr College, Chair and Professor of History of Art and the Eugenia Chase Guild Chair in the Humanities)
İstanbul Bilgi University is launching a series of annual events
dedicated to the intersecting themes of gender equality and sustainability
under various academic disciplines. This year’s event will consider the
framework of film studies.
The inspiration for this inaugural symposium comes from the tireless
gleaner of images Agnès Varda, whose legacy of female subjectivity spans more
than six decades, from her first film La Pointe Courte (1955) to her final
documentary Varda par Agnès (2019). An opening event launching the series will
be followed by a one-day symposium to mark the anniversary of Varda’s passing,
taking place at İstanbul Bilgi University March 27-28, 2020.
In addition to her career-long interest in gender equality,
sustainability has been a resonant theme in Varda’s work. This is particularly
true of her recent documentaries and her foray into other visual arts at the
turn of the century, a transition that coincides with her shift to digital
media. The Gleaners and I (2000) considers the practice of gleaning as
survival, as art, and as an approach to memory; further developing many of the
themes in the film, Varda’s installation Patatutopia at the 50th Venice
Biennale in 2003 moved her perspective from the big screen to the gallery space.
From this period until her death, Varda’s work deals prominently with
recycling, revisiting, and reframing objects as well as human experience. She
has described her essay film The Beaches of Agnès (2008), for example, as “an
Unidentified Flying Object,” or a collage assembled from pieces of her life as
expressed through various media: photographs, found footage, artwork, and other
objects. This same spirit of invention through collection and recollection
infuses much of her life’s work, and reveals not only what Varda understood
about gender and the world around her, but also why it is crucial to study
these concepts through art.
Taking Varda as its focal point, this symposium aims to open many
potential avenues of discussion on gender equality and sustainability,
producing a timely intervention of wide interest to many scholarly fields and
disciplines. The symposium will conclude with a roundtable contextualizing,
highlighting, and framing these issues under the heading: Global Varda.
Abstracts selected for presentation will be published online prior to
the symposium. Full papers selected for publication will be announced after the
symposium. The symposium language is English. All presentations must be
delivered in English, in person by the selected participants. No virtual
presentations will be considered, and no simultaneous translation will be
provided.
The symposium invites papers that situate the work and legacy of Agnès
Varda around the themes of gender equality and sustainability. Possible topics
include, but are not limited to:
- female agency in narration
- recycling, revisiting, and reframing
- on-screen / off-screen
- the gaze, desire and intimacy
- analog/digital and visceral
- reality, virtuality and memory
Contact person: Ms. Nilüfer Arslan
E-mail: nilufer.arslan@bilgi.edu.tr
Please submit an abstract (max 300 words), 3-5 bibliographical sources,
3-5 keywords, and a short CV by December 1, 2019. The selected abstracts for
the symposium will be announced by December 15, 2019.
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