VŠKK SYMPOSIUM 29. 4. 2025
Call for Papers: Ecstatic Truth IX
Ways of Knowing: practice as research, material resistance and re-presented reality in expanded documentary form.
Welcome proposals from PhD students, film practitioners, scholars and other researchers.
Join us in Prague on Tuesday 29 th April, 2025 at vskk.cz
Keywords: knowledge, knowing, artistic research, practice as research, provisionality, metamorphosis, fact, truth, ecstatic truth, materiality, environment, media archaeology, media geology, sensory ethnography, experiential knowledge, algorithmic knowledge, expanded animation, expanded documentary, expanded communication, audio-visual media, resistance, animated documentary
In the age of expanding powers of AI, we want to question what it means to understand, to get to know something and communicate this beyond the limited scope of human language. How do we engage in a process of getting to know, knowing ever deeper, more intimately, of making sense? How does your own (audio-visual) practice help you know something? What tools and methods do you use to get to know something? How does the process of research, the methods and tools that you use, impact the product itself, be it a film, performance or text?. What is the role of the environment you are in and the materials you engage with? And, considering the proliferation of virtual worlds, what is the role of the animated image in the development of new forms of perception? How do these particular forms of enquiry affect the answers you receive? What is the relationship to questions of “truth” – how is truth shaped by the media through which it passes, the encounters with more-than-human worlds? What is the relationship between knowing something and knowing yourself? How does your knowing transform you? How do you transform your knowing into something that can help others to know, or to be transformed? Or in other forms, how do you use your research to communicate your insights?
Given there are so many ways of knowing or getting to know, we invite you to share and question the methods and processes that you employ in order to produce your films/audio-visual works. We are particularly interested in questioning the role of the body, materiality and also technology to mediate these complex dynamics between the physical world and the representation on the screen as well as beyond it. We are interested in speculations on questions of material, ecstatic, as well as algorithmic truth, embodied and situated knowledge, simulation and virtual realities in relationship to questions of authenticity, truth and understanding, the possible entanglements between these. We are equally interested in forms of resistance – to the established structures, opaque interfaces, dominant narratives propelled by corporations. What partisan, subversive forms of resistance, of softening, of finding cracks and openings have you found through your practice?
Ecstatic Truth is an annual symposium on animated documentary founded in 2016 that explores issues arising from the interface between notions of animation (in its most expanded form) and of documentary (conceptualised very broadly as non-fiction) with a particular interest in questions raised by experimental and practitioner perspectives.
Publication of selected papers
Our call for papers thematically coincides with an open call for Tangible Territory journal, which is one of our partners. Selected contributions will be offered a chance of publication in this open access online journal. More information: https://tangibleterritory.art/
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
We call for papers, presentations and responses (for a 20minute slot) on themes outlined above.
Your submission should include:
- Title of your presentation
- Abstract (brief summary of your proposed presentation) 500 words (including references)
- Short Biography – 200 words
- Relevant link to moving image work/websites etc.
- Intending to attend in presence or on line
If the contribution is practice-based, it should include reflection and contextualisation in addition to presenting the practice. We will not accept papers that propose to show the practice only.
Submission is via Oxford Abstracts where you will be prompted to set up a free account.
Finally, we are unable to provide feedback on individual submissions.
Submission link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/77402/submitter
Submission deadline: 28. 2. 2025
Enquiries:
Ecstatic Truth: ecstatic.truth.symposium@gmail.com
Organising committee:
Tereza Stehlikova, Birgitta Hosea, Pedro Serrazina, Natalie Woolf
Birgitta Hosea, Professor of Moving Image and Director of the Animation Research Centre at UCA Farnham, is an artist / curator known for her innovative approach to expanding animation who creates live events, exhibitions, installations, durational images and short films. Previously, she was Head of Animation at the RCA (2016-18); Course Director of MA Character Animation (2000-15) / Research Leader in Performance (2011-4) at Central Saint Martins, where she also did her PhD. Amongst academic publications on drawing and experimental animation, her most recent book is Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945 (Bloomsbury, 2020) co-written with Foá, Grisewood and McCall.
Pedro Serrazina is an award-winning director and senior lecturer in animation. His first short, Tale About the Cat and the Moon, premiered internationally at the Cannes Film Festival’96 and continues to be screened at retrospectives and festivals worldwide. Since then, his work has been exhibited and published internationally, ranging from film, site-specific installations, to documentary, music videos and academic projects. Serrazina is interested in the intersections of architecture, documentary and animation, and his practice-based PhD was dedicated to the use of animated space as a tool to reflect on social space. A member of the Society for Animation Studies, he recently completed Shadows of Ourselves, an experimental sand animation short exploring the feeling of being observed, and is co-writing a book on Portuguese animation, to be published by Taylor and Francis.
Tereza Stehlíková is an artist, researcher and educator. She is the head of the visual arts department at VSKK and also teaches artistic research to PhD and MA students at Academy of Performing Arts and Academy of Applied Arts, Prague. Tereza is engaged in research focused on investigating the role our senses and embodiment play in conveying meaning through artistic practice. Her practice spans moving image, installation and participatory performance and is driven by cross-disciplinary collaboration. She is writing a book called Exiled from our Bodies, How to Come Back to our Senses to be published by Routledge and is also an editor of an online arts journal/platform Tangible Territory, featuring essays and articles by established artists/authors from the world of arts, science, philosophy.
Natalie Woolf is an artist and professor/researcher at Universidade Lusófona, co-curating the DELLI drawing program and teaching expanded and exploratory drawing practices in the Animation and Communication Design BA and MA courses. Holding a PhD from the Royal College of Art, her research on material responsiveness evolved into public arts consultancy, where work on site-specific interventions and urban design projects has influenced her academic and creative practice. Woolf has presented her work internationally, combining expanded drawing, animated moving images, and installation art to address themes such as spatial phobias, sensory perception, and the mediation of experience through technology. Actively contributing to research groups focusing on digital interactions and sensory narratives, she is part of a team that recently secured EU research funding to study animation’s role in enhancing wellbeing in children’s hospital contexts across Europe.