IJFMA Vol. 8 No. 2 (2023)
International Journal of Film and Media Arts
Precarity and the Moving Image

Guest Editors:
Francesco Sticchi – Oxford Brookes University (UK)
Maria Elena Alampi – University of Exeter (UK)
André Rui Graça – University of Beira Interior (Portugal)

Audiovisual Arts (both in their intra-cinematic elements and through its extra-cinematic contexts) have always been a vehicle to display and discuss precarity, as well as affected by it in their modes of production.

The notion of Precarity, however, in itself, is also a very open and problematic concept. Often used in reference to changes in labour dynamics, associated with the neoliberal turn, and with the mechanisms of gig-economy, this term has assumed the most various significance up to the point of becoming capable of embodying and speaking in the name of an entire collective predicament in the contemporary world. From the politics of debt/credit and the digital economy, to ecological crises, passing to accounting for the current reassessment of violent identitarian regimes (in the broad sense of the word), precarity seems to identify both mechanisms and dynamics of exploitation and marginalisation, and the awareness of a sense of vulnerability and interdependence existing between subjects. These latter elements, in fact, also allow for open and creative critical opportunities to be explored and mapped and, at the same time, actively mobilised in their counter-subjectivating potentialities.

Exactly by taking into account the openness and polysemic nature of the notion of precarity, this call for papers is directed to the investigation of how such issues variably relate to Screen Culture. Indeed, the connection between precarity and the moving image can refer to modes in which subjectivities and spaces of precarious existence are displayed on screen, or rather to the ways in which such dynamic is intersected on the line of class, race, gender, ability/disability. It can take into account new productive and distributive dynamics, helping in effectively assessing new tensions between mainstream and ‘niche’ screen culture and/or strategies to challenge such divisions. Likewise, understanding these mechanisms is also connected with the possibility of tracing genealogies of precarity in the multiple histories of cinema and audiovisual productions examining hegemonic and counter-hegemonic trends in their developments or even entrenched in the very emergence of a visual culture. In addition we are also interested in the relation between precarity and public policies concerning cinema, as well as film and AV laws, i.e., how policies have addressed it (case studies are welcome) or how legislators may address the broader topic of precarity with regard to the moving image.

It is for these reasons that the call follows a double-trajectory: on the one hand, it is directed to the analysis of cinematic experiences and, on the other, it encourages examinations of the infrastructure within which these images operate and exist and, concurrently, of the multiple strategies meant to counteract it. Indeed, as precarity seems to permeate more and more strata of contemporary life (and threatens to do so even more after the pandemic), it becomes all the more important to be tackled, studied, explained and, ultimately, solved. That is why we encourage more than purely critical or analytical discussion.

Addressing precarity and the moving image also means putting in relation screen with wider media, social, and environmental ecologies and accounting for how much cinema, television, and audiovisual experiences in a broad sense, always exist by interrelating to wider and, in turn, evolving, reality.

This special issue of the International Journal of Film and Media Arts invites film makers, artists and researchers to submit papers that deal with but are not limited to the topics of:

Precarity in Production, Circulation, and Participation in Media Culture
Political and Productive Strategies Responding/Resisting Dynamics of Precarisation
Precarious Subjectivities and Spaces On Screen at the Intersection of Class, Gender, Race, Ability/Disability
Precarity and the Neoliberal Governance; Dynamics of Necropolitics and Border as a Method
Genealogies of Precarity Beyond the Limits of Contemporaneity
Precarious Narratives and Counter-Subjectivation
Precarity and the Affective Labour in Relation to Transfeminist Thought
Ecological Precarity and the Precarious State of the Human
Ways to Address Precarity in Terms of Public Policies
Analyses of Legislation Concerning Precarity in Film and Audiovisual Sectors

Keywords: precarity; film; audiovisual; screen culture; politics; funding; media culture

Abstracts to be submitted by 2nd October 2022.
Provide two Word documents (.doc) with:
1. ABSTRACT, no longer than 500 words with 5 keywords.

The abstract should not have any reference to the authors or the institution they belong to. The authors must ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in such a way that they do not reveal their identities to reviewers, either directly or indirectly.

BIO, no longer than 300 words. Name, Email address and institutional affiliation. Authors should indicate the call for papers they are submitting.

Please submit to:
anna.coutinho@ulusofona.pt or https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijfma/about/submissions

Authors should indicate the call for papers they are submitting.

Schedule for publication:

Abstract Submission: 2nd October 2022
1st round feedback from reviewers: 16th November 2022
Full Paper Submission: 16th January 2023
2nd round feedback from reviewers: 30th March 2023
Final Revisions: 17th April 2023
Online Publication: 21st June 2023

Submission online or via email will be made anonymously. Submissions will be reviewed by at least 2 peer reviewers. Accepted abstracts will be given guidelines for the preparation and submission of the final text for the 2nd round of double blind peer-reviews.

No fees are not requested for submission or processing.