SYMPOSIUM IMPORTANT DATES

February 15, 2022: Call for Papers

November 21, 2022: Submission Deadline (AoE)

February 6, 2023: Notifications to Authors

March 20, 2023: Symposium Registration Deadline

March 20, 2023: Final Revised Submissions Due

May 6 + 7, 2023: Symposium Dates

Toronto Metropolitan University | School of  Interior Design
Toronto, Ontario,  CANADA

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

PRESENTATION OPPORTUNITIES

Papers
Papers presented will be part of the published symposium proceedings. Papers cannot be previously published.

Requirements:

  • Manuscript: 3,000-4,000-word including abstract and endnotes,
  • Abstract: 250-300-word abstract describing the paper,
  • Images: Up to 5 images (low resolution) embedded into the manuscript,
  • Format: Papers must be sent in MS Word format up to 10 MB in size,
  • Blind Peer Review: Omit all author names or institution identifiers for anonymity,
  • Contact Details: Provide full name, university, department, and title of the corresponding author,
  • Authors: Provide a list of author(s) as they are to appear in the publication,
  • Language: Papers must be written with U.S. spelling,
  • Submission Deadline: November 21, 2022.

Audio Papers

Abstracts for the Audio Papers presented will be part of the published symposium proceedings. Audio Papers cannot be previously published. Learn more about audio papers here:

Requirements:

  • Abstract: 500-word abstract describing the academic audio paper, investigates and answers a research question,
  • Duration: Up to 10 minutes,
  • Blind Peer Review: Omit all author names or institution identifiers for anonymity,
  • Contact Details: Provide full name, university, department, and title of the corresponding author,
  • Authors: Provide a list of author(s) as they are to appear in the publication,
  • Submission Deadline: November 21, 2022.

Creative Practice

Types of Creative Practice Work: Installation, Moving or Still Image, Experimental Audio Paper and Film Presentation (including small file media films, obsolete technologies, stills and sounds, data moshing). Abstract for the Creative Practice Work presented will be part of the published symposium proceedings.

Requirements:

  • Abstract: 500-word abstract describing the project,
  • Images: 3-5 still images in a single PDF format up to 10 MB in size,
  • Duration: Up to 10 minutes,
  • Blind Peer Review: Omit all author names or institution identifiers for anonymity,
  • Contact Details: Provide full name, university, department, and title of the corresponding author,
  • Authors: Provide a list of author(s) as they are to appear in the publication,
  • Submission Deadline: November 21, 2022.

Important Notes:

  1. Creative work may be previously exhibited but must align with the symposium’s provocations or themes.
  2. Space requirements for installation work: please connect with co-chairs before submission.
  3. Accepted Creative Practice presentations will be part of moderated presentation sessions.
  4. Accepted authors will be required to complete a copyright transfer form and agree to present at the symposium.

Pecha Kucha

Abstracts for the Pecha Kucha presentations will be part of the published symposium proceedings. Pecha Kucha presentations may run in 6 to 10 minutes and 20 images maximum.

Requirements:

  • Abstract: 500-word abstract describing the project,
  • Images: 20-image presentation in PDF format up to 18 MB in size,
  • Blind Peer Review: Omit all author names or institution identifiers for anonymity,
  • Contact Details: Provide full name, university, department, and title of the corresponding author,
  • Authors: Provide a list of author(s) as they are to appear in the publication,
  • Submission Deadline: November 21, 2022.

2023 Symposium Registration Fees: To be determined

2018 fee was $95.00 for academic & professional attendees

2018 fee was $45.00 for graduate students

To register, click here.

To see the full timeline for the symposium, click here.

General Inquiries:  info@architectureandfilm.org

CALL FOR PAPERS AND CREATIVE PRACTICE


INTENSE INTERIORS

Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, CA | May 6 & 7, 2023


I couldn’t sleep: the air, the smell. With your mask, your oxygen tank and your bottled water. T. Haynes’ film, Safe, 1995.

If you can see, look. If you can look, observe. J. Saramago, Blindness, 1995. 

You are on life support, it’s fragile, it’s technical, it’s public, it’s political, it could break down—it is breaking down—it’s being fixed, you are not too confident of those who fix it. Our current condition merely relies on our more explicit understanding that this tentative technological system, this “life support,” entails the whole planet—even its atmosphere. Sloterdijk’s explicitness: Terror From the Air (Latour, 2005, 116).


In its third season, the 2023 Architecture & Film Symposium will shine its cinematic light on intense interiors. It will concurrently expand inwards and outwards from the interior, the buildings to the cities’ streets and urban conditions – while aligning with a heightened awareness of the users of these spaces.

Todd Haynes’ 1995 film Safe, Jose Saramago’s 1995 book, Blindness and later 2008 film and the 1966 book by Harry Harrison, Make Room! Make Room! later adapted into a film in 1973, Soylent Green is part of this years’ symposium selections.

The provocation of Hesitancy + Attunements + Forensics creates a forum to present new academic and creative scholarship in film, interiors, and architecture and extends to our allied fields in disability studies, public health, urban studies, and engineering. The selected films and provocation themes welcome work addressing historical, theoretical, realized and speculative projects while inviting critical and creative discourse in design theory, pedagogy and practice. The peer-reviewed intense interiors symposium aims to expand filmic interiorities and develop new conversations.

Intense Interiors seeks submissions that capture a range of topics and put forth questions to examine the following (but are not limited to):

  1. Atmospheres of the Interior (e.g., indoor air quality, toxins, pathogens, radiation and chemicals)
  2. Domestic Interiors, Domestic Goods, Women as Domestic Objects
  3. Epidemic, Pandemic and Forensic Interiors and Architecture
  4. Feminine Interiors, Feminist-Queer Interiors, Gender Studies and Sexuality, Intersectional Identity and Histories
  5. Institutional Architectural Interiors and Vulnerable Persons (e.g., long-term care, hospital, ICU, safety and support)
  6. Interiority and Emotion
  7. Proxemics, Personal Space, Territoriality, Urban and Architectural Cinematic Spaces
  8. Risk Perception, Cultural Theory of Risk and Sacred Contagion
  9. Rooms (Safe Place, Safe Room, Panic Room, Quarantine Room, Storm Cellar, Bunker, Merkhav Mugan)
  10. Visible and Invisible disabilities

Attitudes and concepts applied in the 20th and 21st-century cinematic realm of speculative architectural interiority have given us the bone-chilling relevance of our current interior life. We are a generation of educators and professionals having to rethink and revisit our understanding of proxemics, the use of space, and materials. The rules of the game have changed. Gone is a designer’s role as an aesthetic dictator; new prescribed rules about proxemics and materiality are evolving. Inclusivity and safety are fresh ingredients of the discipline.

Historically, the interior consists of ceilings, walls, partitions, windows, and doors. The architect Louis I. Kahn famously noted, ‘Architecture comes from the making of a room – the street is a room by agreement – and the ceiling is the sky.’ Still, defining the interior forces us to rethink the interior as a permeable atmosphere – both an outside and an inside. In the film, Safe and even today, the simple act of taking a breath inhaling in our interior spaces has created a new form of what Di Cintio calls interior hesitancy. How we work, eat, sleep together is now mandated by invisible off-gases, airborne droplets, particles floating in the interstitial spaces and inhabiting our interiors.

By relating to our current concerns, parallel films noting new terms coined by Di Cintio – interior attunements and interior forensics are found in the film Blindness’ epidemic and quarantine protocols. Looking further back to the 1973 film, Soylent Green’s view on limited space and resources – push forth ideas on population control. Practitioners and the public now have a heightened awareness of their interior architectural environments. Many of us wonder – What is inhabiting our ventilation systems in nursing homes, schools, residences, and workplaces? Who defines and controls quarantine spaces? Will we be safe? Will it be accessible? Where is the design ethicist?

This symposium aims to explore ways to comprehend better and, importantly, cope with the new emerging realities of the architectural interior. The symposium asks artists, designers, educators, scientists and audiences to note the potentiality of multiple dialogues built through layered and disparate knowledge practices. The current discourse on new materialism and material knowledge can be a starting point. The rethinking of Edward T. Hall’s 1966 proxemics is racing to the forefront of discussion. Theoretical structures and technical discourses make Katherine Shonfield’s book Walls have feelings: Architecture, Film, and the City another meaningful compliment to the symposium’s discourse aims.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic highlighted the need to treat the architectural interior as an emergent space rather than a static one. The need for safety limits and physical-social interaction is trying to be balanced. What if we could see what was in our interiors? How can we imagine alternative formats, new forms of interactions, safer and more inclusive spaces?

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See submission instructions here.