On Friday, April 19, María Vélez-Serna (University of Stirling) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Who Needs Cinemas? Screening Films in a Permacrisis”.
Mapping a city’s spaces and practices of communal film viewing is a way to explore urban history, cultural policy, social change and inequality. This discussion takes up critical geography approaches to film exhibition to ask about the role of cinema spaces and events in the current conjuncture.
The Covid-19 pandemic made explicit and urgent some of the simmering concerns about the infrastructures of sociality. The loss of ‘third spaces’ due to neoliberal urbanism and the digitalisation of work and leisure was a long-running process, but the experience of lockdowns brought into focus. As the climate emergency demands a reprioritisation of resources, and the environmental impacts of cultural activities are more clearly documented, this discussion offers a space for critical reflection on the kinds of spaces that cinema can hold.
Readings
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Vélez-Serna, M. (2020) ‘Against enclosure: DIY exhibition as prefigurative action’ and ‘Coda’, in Ephemeral Cinema Spaces. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (pp. 173-204). https://doi-org.proxy.uba.uva.nl/10.1515/9789048537822
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Vélez-Serna, M. (2020) Culture beyond extractivism: What might a post-growth cinema look like?. Less 1 (pp. 24-27). https://enough.scot/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/LESS1-C3.pdf
The readings can also be accessed via this link.
Credits
1 ECTS – reading preparation, attendance and active participation in the discussions
The session takes place on Friday 19 April 2024, 10.00-12.00 in room 0.16 (E-lab), Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam. For more information and registration, please contact Linda Kopitz (l.kopitz@uva.nl). Following the Masterclass, María Vélez-Serna will also give a guest lecture as part of the ASCA Cities Seminar on “Material Cities”.