the abstract of the split screen issue

The split-screen is a particularly cinematic device that symbolizes the
voyeuristic omnipresence /omniscience that tends to characterize screen
spectatorship. Yet, split-screens also expose their own artificiality,
baring the mechanics of screen culture by announcing their very
constructed-ness. Thus splitting constitutes a doubling that leads to the
revelation of duplicity. The split generates a critical rupture — one that
we posit as intrinsic to audiovisual media and its theoretical interpretation.

This special issue of Refractory seeks to mine the motif of the
split-screen in order to explore aspects of duality and duplicity in
relation to screen culture — not just in terms of the audio/visual
relationship, but also, spectatorial processes (both engagement and
identification), representation, film theory and industrial/technological
developments. The spectre of the split seems to haunt contemporary screen
media from every angle, surfacing in relation to zombie flicks,
double-crossing double agents, dubbing technologies and Multiple Language
Versions, to name but a few.

We invite contributors to take up this theme from a variety of historical
and contemporary perspectives or multi-disciplinary approaches. Possible
themes may include (but are not limited to):

∑ Screen zombies, clones, androids, dummies & twins
∑ Double agents & split personalities
∑ Body doubles & TV soap replacement actors
∑ Motifs of mirroring
∑ Echo & Narcissus
∑ Cinema’s “Coming Of Sound”
∑ Early cinema lecturers and Talker Pictures
∑ Dubbing & (post)synchronization
∑ Sound as ventriloquism (i.e. Rick Altman, Mary Ann Doane) &/or ghost
(i.e. Robert Spadoni)
∑ Bollywood Playback Singers
∑ Split-screens in the oeuvres of directors such as Brian De Palma & Darren
Aronofsky
∑ Multiplying the split: 24 (Fox Network) & Timecode (Mike Figgis, 2000)
∑ Suture theory
∑ Two-tiered models of film interpretation
∑ Conceptualising the film/theory split
∑ Split-theories (i.e. Deleuze’s time/movement break)
∑ Derrida’s theory of the supplement (le supplément)
∑ Director’s Cuts & Alternate Takes
∑ Remakes & Multiple Language Versions (MLVs)
∑ Rotoscoping animation techniques (i.e. Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, 2006)
∑ 3D technologies & double camerawork
∑ Disharmonies between sound & image (i.e. Godard)
∑ Films such as Singin' In The Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952), The Conversation
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), Blow Out (Brian de Palma, 1981), Palindromes
(Todd Solondz, 2004) & I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)

Timeline:

Abstracts Due: 3 March 2008
Notification: 31 March 2008
Manuscripts Due: 15 June 2008
Publication: August/September 2008

Editors:

Tessa Dwyer & Mehmet Mehmet
Cinema Studies Program
School of Culture & Communication
The University of Melbourne