Cinematic Migrations is a multi-faceted exploration of the histories and contexts of moving images and time-based media and their intersecting and distinct paths of emergence around the world.

The Fall 2013 lecture series brings together a complex set of artists, filmmakers, and thinkers who have pioneered and continue to redefine the boundaries of cinematic explorations. Their practices invoke an analytical and inventive engagement with the mediated image and  its production and circulation through a vast array of forms. Experimenting with shifting notions of the cinematic in spatial forms, performance, dance, theater, essay films, and emerging technologies, they unfold a broad range of themes including probings of time, movement, attention, memory, diaspora, history, forms of knowledge, power relations, authorship, and embodiment.

October 7         Charles Atlas “Instantaneous! and Everywhere?”

October 21       Lovett/Codagnone “Re-adapting cinematic traces”

November 4    John Akomfrah & Lina Gopaul

November 25  Tarek Elhaik “The Incurable-Image”

December 9     Joan Jonas Reanimation, an ongoing performance 

Cinematic Migrations is a two-year collaborative research and production project initiated by Renée Green (Free Agent Media) and is co-hosted by the MIT Visiting Artists Program and ACT. The work of filmmaker John Akomfrah and producer Lina Gopaul (Smoking Dogs Films, and founding members of the seminal UK-based Black Audio Film Collective) is a focal point in our investigation of the theme. The research project culminates with a symposium in the spring of 2014.

The Monday night lecture series at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) was launched in 2005. The series draws together artists, cultural practiioners, and scientists from different disciplines to discuss artistic methodologies and forms of inquiry at the intersection of art, architecture, science and technology.

http://act.mit.edu/projects-and-events/lectures-series/2013-fall/