An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Uses of Intertextuality in Non-Textual Media
Commonly associated with postmodern writing, "intertextuality" is often viewed as a predominantly literary phenomenon; as theory it is sometimes considered limited to the investigation of textual genealogies and the production of new from pre-existing textual material. In an attempt to broaden this theory of literary recycling into a more general conception of artistic circulation and exchange, this conference will provide the opportunity to read and discuss artistic "inter"-relations in a context that does not privilege the strictly textual.
The conference will investigate the question as to whether the act of citing is indeed medium-specific, and whether quotation functions in an analogous manner within the cinema, in the theater, and the exhibition space. Our material will largely be restricted to work produced since 1990, though we will also necessarily consider historical practices of intermedial quotation and citation. It is our contention that, though it is inextricably bound up with and informed by previous methods, intertextual film, theatrical, artistic and literary work after 1989 must be treated on its own terms. Indeed, in an epoch when repetition and recycling has become so ubiquitous, is it even licit to separate the “open” intertextual work from the presumably “closed” aesthetic object? Is recurrent citation still a postmodernist phenomenon, or has it, perhaps unwittingly, experienced a return to modernism and its recently revitalized goals?
The conference will investigate the question as to whether the act of citing is indeed medium-specific, and whether quotation functions in an analogous manner within the cinema, in the theater, and the exhibition space. Our material will largely be restricted to work produced since 1990, though we will also necessarily consider historical practices of intermedial quotation and citation. It is our contention that, though it is inextricably bound up with and informed by previous methods, intertextual film, theatrical, artistic and literary work after 1989 must be treated on its own terms. Indeed, in an epoch when repetition and recycling has become so ubiquitous, is it even licit to separate the “open” intertextual work from the presumably “closed” aesthetic object? Is recurrent citation still a postmodernist phenomenon, or has it, perhaps unwittingly, experienced a return to modernism and its recently revitalized goals?