3rd Spiral Film and Philosophy Conference:

Thinking Space

Toronto, Canada, May 11-12, 2018

Since Muybridge’s chronophotographic experiments, the relationship between cinema and time has been well documented. Less obvious, perhaps, is the relationship of cinema with space. Following the so-called digital mutation of recording and viewing technologies, this issue has nonetheless made its way to the forefront of cinema and media studies. It is not only that moviegoing is being decentered by the rise of portable viewing platforms — as cinema happens more and more outside of traditional theatres —, but also that the usual medium of inscription of film — the celluloid base — has been radically opened by new media.

This recent dislocation of film represents a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between space, philosophy and film. What does it mean for film-philosophy to happen — to take place — as a theoretical event in the gaps opened by this disruption? In what ways can thinking be informed by this spatial turn going on in film and media studies? What kind of possibilities arise when the spatiality of the medium is being considered from a cinematic perspective? All these questions require that we carry over Foucault’s intuition into film-philosophy: “[t]he present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space” (1986).

Spiral 2018 – Thinking Space