International  Colloquium  :  The Genes i s and per format iv i ty o f mediat ion

Saturday  ,  November  28  to    Sunday,  November  29,  2016  Maison  de  la  Magie    (France)  

 Studies of media practices (including artistic practices) have focused increasingly, in the last thirty years, on the concept of dispositif, hoping thereby to find answers to the many questions raised by the whole phenomenon of mediation, defined here as the process that renders sensorially perceivable, in a context of communication, what would be otherwise unperceivable. Rather than basing the analysis on the apparatus and the conditions underlying mediation, this approach puts mediation itself at the center—how does it work, and what does it produce? Hence the importance of reviewing the history of the concept of medium from an archeological point of view, starting where the broad genealogical lines cross. The “magic model” is one of these, and as such could turn out to be particularly inspiring. Fully assuming the artifice of illusion, which is neither revealed nor revealable, and working from the “truth of experience” and the power of the performance as shared experience (shared between performers and spectators), this model is based on the performativity of mediation as a performance in and of itself.

PROGRAM

Saturday 28 november

SESSION 1 : The Performativity of Mediation

This axis is about the dynamics, which, in specific conditions, give rise to mediations. We’ll be considering techniques, technologies, and interactions with the human agents who participate, in one way or another, in the media event.

Chair : François Jost (Université Paris 3)

9H30/10h10 : Performativity of mediation : Jean-Marc Larrue, Université de Montréal To submit a collective reflection on the performativity of mediation, is to suggest a radical change in the theoretical approach of medial phenomena. This change has an impact on the epistemological and methodological dimensions of media studies and intermedial studies, including those on magic. As indicated in the title of this conference, mediation is considered primal (the medium is not mentioned); also, the focus is on the process of mediation. This requires a repositioning and a new

definition of two key concepts of intermediality : the dispositif and the in-between. I will base my presentation on the assumption made by Chiel Kattenbelt for whom Intermediality is today the most radical form of performativity. 10H40/11H20 : “Without science, one is no longer amused.” The theatre of Henri Robin in

19th century Paris : Kurt Vanhoutte, Nele Wynants, University of Antwerp Throughout modernity, theatre emerged as one of the central spaces to playfully test and bring to life astronomical, physical and electrical sciences. This paper deals with the particular epistemic impact and intermedial dynamics of the scientific theatre of Parisian modernity. Central to these amusing physiques (physiques amusantes) at the intersection of serious science teaching and popular visual culture was a precarious oscillation between the enactment and the replication of scientific experiments aimed to mediate true nature. Our paper will pay special attention to the peculiar kind of continuity with the experiential world of the spectator in popular cultural venues of the Boulevard du Temple and those fostered by influential protagonists of the théâtre scientifique such as Henri Robin, an important yet forgotten showman. Issues to address include the complex struggle between aesthetic conditions and didactic concerns, the relation to changing ideas of theatricality and the remarkable persistence of the shows to intermingle magic and science. Break

11H45/12H25 : Scientific Knowledge, Technological Competence and Spectacular Performances : Frank Kessler, Utrecht University and Sabine Lenk, University of Antwerp

Performing spectacular effects or magical tricks on stage or on screen is often linked in a complex way to the scientific knowledge of a given historical period. On the one hand, spectacular performances often rely upon advances in scientific research in areas such as optics, mechanics, or electricity. On the other hand, such performances evoke, refer to, or represent in various ways scientific research and transform it into spectacle. In addition, technological competence is required to make use of scientific knowledge for the purpose of spectacular entertainment. In our contribution, we will use some examples to explore this complex relationship. 12H25/13H05 : Kellar, Herrmann, and Houdini: The Mediation of Three Golden Age Magic

Performances in Montreal : Joe Culpepper, performance scholar, magician, and magic consultant

This paper will discuss the mediation of three magic performances within the specific socio-historical context of Montréal, Québec. Special emphasis will be placed upon the uses of lithographic posters, newspaper advertisements, and vaudeville bills as technologies of communication. During their historical moments, magicians relied upon these tools to draw spectators to their performances. In 1894, Harry Kellar and Alexander Herrmann even waged a poster war against one another. Today, these rare commodities speak to magic researchers. Their preservation helps us to reconstruct the social conditions of illusions performed by Harry Kellar, Alexander Herrmann, Harry Houdini and others. Lunch

SESSION 2 : An Archaeology of the Concept of Medium

This axis is concerned with the genesis of medium concepts—the history and evolution of four intermingled genealogical lines: the philosophical, the aesthetic, communications theory, and occultism.

Chair : Martin Barnier (Université Lyon 2) 14H30/15H10 : « “The Medium Is the Medium?” The Beginnings of video art and the question of the medium : Larisa Dryansky, Université Paris-Sorbonne

This paper addresses the way in which the emergence of video as an artform challenged the notion of medium-specificity. Video art brought together two a priori antagonistic conceptions of the medium: the one stemming from McLuhan’s communication theory and the other steeped in Greenberg’s theory of modernism. This unlikely combination created a definite anxiety as demonstrated at the time by the discourse of artists and critics. Today, echoes of this debate continue to haunt the appreciation of video art and its historiography. 15H10/15H40 : Broadcasting the Spirit Word: Mediums, Public Performances, and Print

Media in Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism : Simone Natale, Loughborough University (UK)

While scholars in media studies have focused on how spiritualists described the medium as a telegraphic receiver for spirit communication, less emphasis has been given to the fact that mediums were also conceived as ambassadors of the messages sent by spirits. Their duty was to spread the spirit word to the widest public possible, through public demonstrations as well as in publications and periodicals. The paper will look at the different strategies employed by mediums to “broadcast” spirit messages to large masses of spectators and readers.

15H40/16H20 : Medium, Aura, and Spirit Photography in the Writings of Walter Benjamin : Antonio Somaini, Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle

In the Little History of Photography (1931), commenting the way in which people were portrayed in the early photographs of the 1840s and 1850s, Walter Benjamin writes: “there was an aura about them, a medium [es war ein Aura um sie, ein Medium] that lent fullness and security to their gaze even as it penetrated that medium” (W. Benjamin, Little History of Photography, Selected Writings, vol. 2.2, p.517). The use of “aura” and “medium” as synonyms that we find in this passage will be analysed by comparing it with the meanings Benjamin assigns to the German term Medium in his writings, ranging from the early texts on colour of the 1910s to the late theses On the Concept of History of 1940. We will show how in Benjamin’s writings the concept of « Medium » is conceived both in relation to a long philosophical tradition that begins with Aristotle’s treatise De Anima – a tradition in which the medium is interpreted as a milieu (in ancient Greek metaxy), an environment in which sensory experience takes place – and in relation to occultism and spirit photography. Both these traditions, as we will see, condition Benjamin’s theory of photography and film. Break 17H00/17H40 : From the spirit medium to the « cinematographic medium » : Mireille Berton,

University of Lausanne (Switzerland)

This paper will retrace the transformations of the medium’s concept from the magnetism (celebrating immateriality of the psychic/transcendental forces), up to the emergence around 1900 of the figure of the “cinematographic-medium”, an entity half-human half-technological (symptom of the junction between tradition and modernity), through the idea of the spirit medium as an electrical and optical device. Dinner

20H30 Théâtre Christian Fechner : Cloc . Pièce pour deux magiciens.

Sunday 29 november

SESSION 3 : Magic, Practice and Discourse

In parallel with axes 1 and 2, this axis pursues reflections on the “magic model” and its potential contribution to our understanding of mediation phenomena, as well as past and current intermedial dynamics.

Chair : Isabelle Le Corff (Université de Bretagne) 9H30/10h10 : The Effective Invisible : the Mediations of an Unmediated Art : Thibault Rioult, ENS Ulm Thinking about the interactions between illusionism and mediation requires the clarification of this concept. Three levels emerge: macro-mediated retransmission of illusionist performances, which proves to be deeply deleterious; strategic meso-mediation of dispositive which coordinates the heterogeneous mediations structuring the artist-spectator relationship; and finally the visible or invisible tactical micro-mediations connected together to create the magical experience (only studied here through "objects" or "magical operators"). 10H10/10H50 : Does modern magic need magicians ? Anthropological reflections on

mediation and reflexivity in ritual and performative practices : Valentine Losseau, Collège de France

Like the shamanistic rituals, the modern magic shows involve a mediation process which embodies a system of invisible relationships, centered on the performance of an individual with special properties. If the paradoxical role of actor-magician, in his struggle with identification with illusion, reflects a questioning of the nature of representation, ritual officiant's performance is no less devoid of ambiguity, as revealed in recent anthropological studies (especially in amerindian shamanism). Break

11H05/11H45 : Illusions of Scale : Matthew Solomon, University of Michigan Illusions of size and scale are a recurrent motif of magic. Magicians also often make a distinction between close-up magic, involving the manipulation of small everyday objects, and large illusions,

typically presented within a theatrical proscenium. This paper considers what magic’s continuing fascination with transformations and distortions of scale might tell us about modernity’s ceaseless push toward the extremes of both expansion and miniaturization. 11H45/12H20 : Perfomance : The Magic o f Antoine de Saint Exupéry : Max Schneider, magician and theater director

Lunch

14H/14H40 : Symposium synthesis : Giusy Pisano (ENS Louis-Lumière/Ircav

14H40/16H30 : Presentation the next events (« Panoramic Look », MUCEM, Marseille, February 11/13 2016 and « Machines. Magic. Media », Cerisy-La-Salle, August, 20/28 /2016), Stéréoscopy, 30 septembre/1 ocotober), workshop « Mdai Archaeoloy « and « The film musical in the hostory of tehcnology » (collaboration whith projet « Musical MC2) ; publications.

SPEAKERS AND ORGANIZERS

Mireille Berton is an Assistant Professor in the department of History and Aesthetics of Cinema at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. In her research and lecturing she focuses on the relationship between cinema and psychology, with a particular interest in cultural history, the epistemology of media and gender studies. Joseph Culpepper is a performance scholar, magician, and magic consultant. His dissertation, "Reception and Adaptation: Magic Effects, Mysteries and Con Games," analyzes how individuals experience magic through various media. Joe currently teaches magic as a form of practice-based research at the National Circus School in Montréal. He would like to thank La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso, Allan Slaight, McGill University and the McCord Museum for making this research possible. Delphine Chambolle is an Assistant Profesor of Spain contemporary civilization. Her main research focuses on contemporary theater, more specifically sound and his intermedial relations. She creates sound design for theater and museum. Her latest publication include Soundspaces, espaces, expériences et politiques du sonore, (Guillaume Faburel, Claire Guiu, Marie-Madeleine Mervant-Roux et Henry Torgue), Presses Universitaires de Rennes, octobre 2014 ; La mise en sce ̀ne the ́a ̂trale et les formes audiovisuelles : emprunts esthe ́tiques et techniques (dir. Jean-Marc Larrue & Giusy Pisano), Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, décembre 2014. Larisa Dryansky is Assistant Professor of Art History at Université Paris-Sorbonne and a senior fellow of the French National Art History Institute (INHA) where she is in charge of research programs in contemporary art. Her recent publications include “Sartrean Phenomenology and Postminimalism: On Some Works by Mel Bochner and Dan Graham” (French Theory and American Art, 2013) and « Paléofuturisme: Robert Smithson entre Préhistoire et Posthistoire” (Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne, 2014). Her book, Déplacements: Cartographie et Photographie dans l’Art Américain des Années 1960/1970, is under contract with Les Éditions de l’INHA. She is currently coediting a special issue on projection for the journal Intermediality. Pietsie Feenstra is Professor of Film History, Aesthetics and the Animated Image at the University Paul

Valéry 3 Montpellier. She is a member of the research school IRCAV at Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle and

specialises in the relationship between visual culture (paintings, photography, postcards, fiction films,

documentary, new media, installations) and historical writings in changing political contexts. Her latest

publications include :Le Nouveau du Cinéma Argentin, (ed. with M.L.Ortega, 2015), Le cinéma espagnol. Histoire et

culture (ed. with dir. V. Sánchez-Biosca, 2014) ; A Photographic Portrait of a Landscape. New Dimensions in Landscape

Philosophy (with the artist W. Feenstra, 2012) ; New Mythological Figures in Spanish Cinema. Dissident Bodies under

Franco, (Amsterdam University Press, 2011); Mémoire du cinéma espagnol 1975-2007, CinémAction, 2009.  

Frank Kessler is a professor of Media History at Utrecht University and currently the Director of Utrecht University’s Research Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON). His main reseach interests lie in the field of early cinema and the history of film theory. He is a former president of Domitor and a co-founder and co-editor of KINtop. Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films together with Sabine Lenk and Martin Loiperdinger. Jean-Marc Larrue is professor of theatre (theory and criticism) at Département des littératures de langue française, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada). His research mainly focuses on the Long Siècle’s theatre (1880 to today), and more specifically on modernism, media and intermedial phenomenon. He is the author, co-author or editor of several works including, more recently Archives de la mise en scène : hypermédialités du théâtre (Lille, Septentrion, June 2014, co-ed. Giusy Pisano), and Théâtre et intermédialité (Lille, Septentrion, 2015). Sabine Lenk is an archivist and a film historian. She currently works as a research in the project “A Million Pictures : Magic Lantern Slide Heritage as Artefacts in the Common European History of Learning”. Together with Frank Kessler and Martin Loiperdinger she founded KINtop. Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films. She has published widely on early cinema, film restoration and archiving as well as on issues concerning the audio-visual cultural heritage.

Valentine Losseau is a PhD student at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France, under the direction of Philippe Descola. She has done research on traditional street magic of India and among the Lacandon Maya group of southern Mexico. She is also a playwright and one of the initiators of the art movement of Magie Nouvelle. Simone Natale is a Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University, UK. Previous to taking up this position, he has taught at Humboldt University Berlin and has been awarded postdoctoral fellowships by the Humboldt Foundation and by Columbia University's Italian Academy, New York. He is the author of "Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture," forthcoming with Pennsylvania State University Press in 2015, and of essays published in journals such as New Media & Society, History of Photography, Media, Culture & Society, and Early Popular Visual Culture. Giusy Pisano is a Professeur at l’ÉNS Louis-Lumière and Associate Professor, at Center of Koeran History. She is supervising PhD’s at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris-3, researcher IRCAV. She has published : L’Archive-forme (ed.), 2014 ; Archives de la mise en scène. Hypermédialités du théâtre (Eds. J-M Larrue), 2014 ; L’amour fou au cinéma, 2010; Une archéologie du cinéma sonore, 2004 ; Le muet a la parole. Cinéma et performances à l’aube du XXe siècle (Eds. V. Pozner), 2005 ; La Musique !, (Eds. F. Albera), 2003. She is co-director whith J-M Larrue the program « Deceptive Arts. Machines, Magic, Media». Thibaut Rioult research is focused on conjuring, discipline he has studied from multiple points of view (technical, artistic, historical, psychological, sociological ...). More generally, he also works on magic issues (with an anthropological approach). After a Master of Social Sciences (EHESS), he is currently preparing a thesis at ENS Ulm (ED540 / UMR 8230). This study deals with the Illusion of the supernatural and illusionists of the Renaissance. He is also a member of the Conservatoire National des Arts de la Magie et de l'Illusion (CNAMI).

He will lead next year (2015-16) the seminar “Orion aveugle : visible, invisible, crossed approach” at the Collège International de Philosophie (CIPh). Matthew Solomon is an associate professor in the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century (winner of the Kraszna-Krausz award for best moving image book) and of a recent BFI Film Classics monograph on The Gold Rush as well as the editor of Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination: Georges Méliès’s Trip to the Moon.

Antonio Somaini is Professor of Film, Media, and Visual Culture Theory at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3. He is a member of the Steering Committee of NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies). He has recently edited, together with Naum Kleiman and François Albera, the French edition of the Notes pour une histoire générale du cinéma by Sergei M. Eisenstein (Editions de l'AFRHC, 2013), which will be published in English with Amsterdam University Press in 2016. Together with Andrea Pinotti he has edited the anthology of texts by Walter Benjamin on media Aura e choc. Scritti sulla teoria dei media (Torino: Einaudi, 2012). His book Ejzenštejn. Il cinema, le arti, il montaggio (Torino : Einaudi, 2011) will be published in 2016 in French translation with CNRS Editions and in English translation with The University of Illinois Press.

Kurt Vanhoutte is professor of Performance Studies and Visual Criticism at the University of Antwerp, where he helped to establish and currently coordinates a Master programme in Film and Theatre Studies. He is spokesperson of the Research Centre for Visual Poetics (www.visualpoetics.be). Vanhoutte combined his academic duties at the University of Antwerp with a research fellowship at Centre Alexandre Koyré (EHESS - CNRS) in Paris to conduct archival research into scientific theatre in collaboration with historians of science. “Without science, one is no longer amused.” The theatre of Henri Robin in 19th century Paris Kurt Vanhoutte & Nele Wynants Nele Wynants is a postdoctoral researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Arts du spectacle vivant) and University of Antwerp (Research Centre for Visual Poetics). She has published on artists working at the intersection of theatre, film and media arts. Her project THE OPTICS OF PERFORMANCE. An Archaeological Approach to Intermediality in Theatre and Performance aims to elaborate and historicize concepts and practices of intermedial theatre by focusing on the role of optical media as tools to explore knowledge of optics and visuality.

The Genes i s and per formativ i ty o f mediat ion

Studies of media practices (including artistic practices) have focused increasingly, in the last thirty years, on the concept of dispositif, hoping thereby to find answers to the many questions raised by the whole phenomenon of mediation, defined here as the process that renders sensorially perceivable, in a context of communication, what would be otherwise unperceivable (Lars Elleström, Media Transformation. The Transfer of Media Characteristics Among Media, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). But the further we pursue this line of inquiry, the more the concept becomes problematic. Where does the dispositif begin? And where does it end? How to grasp its multiple functionalities? How to relate its concrete aspect to dynamic processes? If the material reality of a dispositif can, to a certain extent, be delineated— and this is not sure—what of its immaterial reality? What of the protocols and techniques, the values and the beliefs, as well as the naturalness that govern its use in a certain milieu and era? What space do the user and the user’s body occupy in the dispositif? There is no simple answer, and the hypotheses suggested thus far lead to more questions. Which is why more and more researchers are proposing new perspectives, including one which involves inverting the heuristic approach: “No media but mediation” (Alexander Golloway, The Interface Effect, Cambridge, Polity, 2013). The consequences of this inversion go beyond methodology. Rather than basing the analysis on the apparatus and the conditions underlying mediation, this approach puts mediation itself at the center—how does it work, and what does it produce? Hence the importance of reviewing the history of the concept of medium from an

archeological point of view, starting where the broad genealogical lines cross. First there is the philosophical line, starting with Aristotle’s metaxy [NB it is metaxu in French, and metaxy in English], which he uses to present his theory of sensory perception in the treatise De anima, and which Duns Scotus translated into Latin (circa 1225) as medium in Averroès’s Commentarium Magnum in Aristoteles De Anima. According to this lineage, the medium is an intermediary entity, the space that makes sensory perception possible. The thinkers who were to develop the aristotelian theory of metaxy and diaphanes conceived of the medium as a milieu, an environment, an atmosphere, an Umwelt. Second, the line that goes from magic to the occult. Here the medium—through techniques and devices that confound the senses, or through supernatural powers—is the interface between appearance and disappearance, between the living world and the spirit world (from Paracelsus to Athanasius Kircher, and then with spirit photography and the spirit theories concerning telephone communication and radio transmission). Third, the aesthetic line, which deals with the concept of medium in relation to theories of artistic representation (theatre, painting, sculpture, photography, film, etc.), considering the medium as an ensemble made up of the material support, the techniques, and the expressive possibilities that are thought to be specific to each form of representation. It is according to this perspective that the term medium is used by medium specificity theorists who—like Rudolf Arnheim writing about film and radio in the 1930s and Clement Greenberg writing about painting in the 1940s, '50s and '60s—thought that each artistic form should focus on exploring its medium-specific characteristics. Finally, there is the line of communication theory, according to which mass media are the means of mass communication: press, radio, television, and so on. This line originated at the beginning of the 20th century. Though each mediation is unique and results from the convergence of specific factors, intermedial studies of the last few years have revealed certain recurring principles: Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s model of remediation (Remediation – Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MIT Press, 2000), Chiel Kattenbelt’s model of hypermediality (Freda Chapple et Chiel Kattenbelt (eds.), Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, coll. «Themes in Theatre », Amsterdam/New York, Rodopi, 2006), transmediality, and Lars Elleström’s overarching theory of media transformation.

The workshop will provide an opportunity to enrich this conceptual apparatus and also to analyze other principles, to try out other hypotheses. The “magic model” is one of these, and as such could turn out to be particularly inspiring. Fully assuming the artifice of illusion, which is neither revealed nor revealable, and working from the “truth of experience” and the power of the performance as shared experience (shared between performers and spectators), this model is based on the performativity of mediation as a performance in and of itself. Examining the magic model forces us to open up the field of inquiry surrounding media, as well as the bipolar system that forms the basis of most inquiries: reality and representation, before and after (everything going back to how it was before), opacity and transparency (since we see that we don’t see), immediacy and hypermediacy, and so on. Such questions will be at the heart of this workshop.