NECS Conference in Bucharest Epistemic Media: Atlas, Archive, Network

The NECS 2022 Conference will take place in Bucharest, from June 22 to June 26.

We will present our panel: “Interactive Epistemologies. New Knowledge Economies in the Context of Interactive Documentaries and Web-Docs” on Friday June 24th, 9:00, D5/room B 3.2.

Panel description:

Interactive, webbased documentaries provide options of choice to influence the flow of the films and allow, generatively and rule-based, different progressions of a story. In our panel, we want to address the epistemological potential, prerequisites and repercussions of contemporary economies of knowledge circulation in the context of interactive, webbased reality-narratives. The panel is based on our SNF-funded research project, where we investigate the dominant understanding of reality narratives, the changing relationship of authors and viewers to film, and the role that choices play in the mediality of interactive documentaries.

Our presentations will address different angles of the knowledge-making potentials of interactive, webbased, non-linear documentary narratives: Should interactive documentaries be regarded as a new, special mode of documentary – combining reception and production by the help of and with respect to technological innovation? What is the use of interactive documentaries for analytical, ethnographic practices and how do they influence not only knowledge acquisition, but also the presentation and reflection of ethnographic research? What influence do the economies of content circulation via platforms like YouTube play for questions of objectivity, neutrality? How do the changes through web-based formats fit into a genealogy of ongoing change in knowledge acquisition? Involvement, Experience and decision-making are becoming increasingly important for contemporary (popular) epistemologies. What means and ways of activating and involving learning subjects can be identified?

Knowledge-making in interactive documentaries reassembles the constellation of producers, spectators, information, technologies and platforms. Our four presentations are arranged around the question if and how contemporary, webbased interactivity itself can thus be considered a new facette of epistemic practice.

The conference will take place at the Politehnica University of Bucharest.

The European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) is a platform for exchange between scholars, archivists and programmers.