University of Nottingham Ningbo China, June 5-7, 2025
Deadline for submissions February 10, 2025
Apply at https://forms.office.com/r/CEM9ccg8Mh
The Besides the Screen network seeks to examine the continuing transformation of audiovisual practices by focusing on its underlying objects, processes and materials. For fifteen years, the network has put together more than a dozen publications and events addressing subjects such as infrastructures of distribution, marketing and promotion, archives, curating, volumetric imaging, and algorithmic filmmaking.
In 2025, the Besides the Screen conference returns to the city of Ningbo to survey the state of the media, culture and creative industries field, while exploring the various ways in which agency is distributed and negotiated across borders – whether institutional, spatial, linguistic, or technological. Cinema, a quintessentially modern art form, has been cooperative from the outset. The industrial nature of filmmaking has often required not only a vast workforce but also an unprecedented combination of expertise, much of which has been embedded in the devices of media production. The increasingly complex economy of the moving image has expanded the scope of these collaborations both territorially and technologically. On the one hand, initiatives like transnational co-production agreements aim to uproot the geopolitics of filmmaking by optimizing access to resources, funding, markets, and talent. On the other, systems such as virtual environments and AI agents promises to wrap all forms of media labour and expression around them.
With these phenomena in mind, this conference seeks to address questions such as:
- How are these new collaborative arrangements reshaping the limits of audiovisual practices and circulation?
- What enables the translation across the multiple cultures, systems, and intelligences that audiovisual media bring together?
- What new artforms may emerge or diverge from their operation?
Related research areas include:
- Cultural and Creative Industries
- Film, TV, and Screen Studies
- Game Studies
- Digital Humanities and Emerging Technologies
- New media, contemporary, and performance arts
The conference is open to both short papers and films/video essays (up to 20 minutes). Submissions should be made through the online form available at besidesthescreen.com.
Paper proposals require title, 3-5 keywords, abstract (300 words max), and a short author affiliation/bio (200 words max). Short film/video essays proposals require title, link (with password if required), 3-5 keywords, synopsis or artist statement (300 words max), and a short author affiliation/bio (200 words max)
Submission deadline: Feb 10, 2025. We will accept submissions up to midnight in the proponent’s time zone. Selected participants will be notified at the beginning of March.
If you experience any issues with the submission form, please email besidesthescreen@gmail.com with the email header NINGBO25 –Submission issue. Please note: email submissions will not be accepted.
Besides the Screen Ningbo 2025 is organized by Dr. Corey Schultz (UNNC), Dr. Virginia Crisp (King’s College London), and Dr. Gabriel Menotti (Queen’s University). The conference is funded by the University of Nottingham Ningbo China’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Conference and Event Organising Support Scheme.