Blog: Film festivals

The II International Conference Hybrid Aesthetics of the Moving Image: Identity and Heritage is a meeting place for the different disciplines involved in the study of new media, visual studies, aesthetics, identity and critical theory, as well as preservation strategies of the audiovisual medium.

It is an initiative of the MICIU R+D+i EShID Project: Estéticas híbridas de la imagen en movimiento. Videoarte español y dinámicas identitarias en el mapa global (2019-2021), focused on research, transfer and dissemination of audiovisual works made in our country from the ARES archive. Aesthetics, identities and audiovisual practices in Spain; as well as the research group Visu@ls. Visual culture and identity politics. After the first edition, held in November 2020 at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Salamanca and focused on the theme of migration, globalization and interculturality, in 2021 the Universitat Politècnica de València will take over.

The meeting aims to generate critical thinking among researchers and professionals from different disciplines related to video art at an international level. Video art is understood as a resource capable of generating identity manifestations, as a medium that offers reproducibility, and at the same time questions the transmission of heritage because of its fragility and obsolescence. This broad panorama ranges from the production of imaginaries, such as the visualization of intimacy and gender roles through contemporary audiovisuals in the "image-world" we inhabit today, to the conflicts that arise in cultural and educational institutions when it comes to cataloguing and preserving the social memory of videographic practices. We could speak, then, of a dual nature of video art: one that directly affects the construction of identity that creates and projects collective imaginaries, and, on the other hand, a mediological identity that investigates the effects of technological innovations in the field of heritage.

Part of the congress will focus on discussing video art as a construction of identity, as a tool for inclusivity, analyzing the relationship between video and issues of indisputable social relevance such as feminism, sexual and gender diversity. The relationship between video art and the new instrumental strategies of conservation will be, therefore, the second major topic of debate of the congress, through which it is intended to establish a certain consensus that facilitates the decision-making process related to this type of works increasingly common in our institutions.

At the same time, an exhibition of video art works selected through this call will be held at the Josep Renau Exhibition Hall of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the UPV.