Wanda Strauven
Wanda Strauven (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
The iTouch Generation: Some Thoughts on the Neo-Spectators of Relocated Cinema
Show Video Recording
This talk revisits the notion of “neo-spectator” in the light of today’s relocated cinema. When coined in the early 1990s by André Gaudreault and Germain Lacasse, the term was meant to point out the quasi-virginity of early cinema’s spectators in terms of moving image consumption. Today the term proves to be useful to talk about the next generation of cinemagoers, whose early familiarization with various forms of relocated cinema affects the way they appreciate cinema in its “original” (non-relocated) context. What does it mean, for instance, that the touchscreen is becoming the default technology for screens? Or what is the “knowledge effect” of watching movies on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones? How do children’s skills as media producers, from texting to filming, influence their experience as film spectators? These are some of the questions that I will address in order to think the future of cinema.
Wanda Strauven is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam. In 2014 she is visiting professor at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan and Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research focuses on early cinema, Italian futurism, media archaeology, materiality and ecology. She is the author of Marinetti e il cinema (2006) and has (co-)edited several collective volumes including The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (2006). Her essays have been published in Cinémas, Cinéma & Cie, Iluminace, New Review of Film and Television Studies and NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies.