The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation

An International Symposium Organized at the Centre for Intermediality Studies in Graz (October 1–3, 2009)

Call for Papers
Final Programme
Conference Report

Call for Papers

‘Metaization’ – the movement from a first cognitive or communicative level to a higher one on which first-level utterances and above all the means and media used for such utterances self-reflexively become objects of reflection and communication in their own right – was for a long time mostly restricted to a relative minority of works or artefacts, and in particular to ‘high art’. In the twentieth century, notably in the context of postmodernism, this situation changed drastically: metaization and its product, ‘metareference’, have not only increased dramatically in quantity but have also spread to areas in which they could rarely, if at all, be found in the past, in particular to popular genres (where they have produced ‘meta-pop’), but also to the new media. In fact, no matter whether we read a new novel or comic, listen to a musical such as The Phantom of the Opera, or play a computer game – in all cases we are nowadays likely to encounter metaphenomena.

This ‘metareferential turn’ has frequently been observed but rarely studied on a broad basis with the aim of providing a comprehensive synopsis of metareference including its effects and motivations in contemporary arts and media. This is what the forthcoming symposium attempts to do. It is a sequel to a conference held in May 2008 in Graz which was dedicated to both a theoretical debate (the discussion of a conceptual toolbox that would be useful for a transmedial description of ‘metareference’) and to case studies of works from various genres, arts and media past and present. In partial contrast to the theoretical focus of the earlier conference and its inclusion of historical metaphenomena, the symposium announced here is expected to concentrate exclusively on (in broad terms) contemporary metaphenomena ( i. e., from the second half of the twentieth century), but it will continue the transmedial focus and thus encourage discussion of a great variety of media. The following issues will be considered in particular:

• collecting and interpreting relevant examples of metareference in contemporary arts and media,  especially where this has not been done so far to a sufficient degree;
• exploring major functions and effects of metaization in contemporary arts and media;
• embedding the current metareferential turn in the general cultural-historical development of ‘metaization’, and finding possible reasons for its appearance.

The forthcoming symposium will again provide opportunity for intense debate, and its proceedings will be promptly published. There will also be ample occasion for informal exchange during some social and tourist activities, for which the historical centre of Graz and the city’s beautiful surroundings offer perfect settings.

Papers dealing with any of the above-mentioned topics are welcome; yet all papers ought to address the functions of metaization in our world and/or the question of how to explain the current metareferential turn. Especially papers going beyond a discussion of metafiction, the perhaps best-researched genre in this context, are encouraged. The length of papers, which must be given in English, should not exceed 30 minutes. All those who were interested in, or participated in, the 2008 symposium are again cordially invited to attend, but participation in the forthcoming conference does not require having attended the earlier one. (For those interested: the proceedings of the 2008 symposium are forthcoming as Werner Wolf, ed. Metareference in the Arts and Media: Theory and Case Studies. Studies in Intermediality 4. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2009).

Please send abstracts of 300 to 500 words with a short CV including an indication of academic affiliation by email to metareference[at]uni-graz.at.
The deadline is February 16, 2009.

For further information please contact the conference organizers at the e-mail address above.

Prof. Dr. Werner Wolf
Prof. Dr. Walter Bernhart
Mag. Katharina Bantleon
Jeff Thoss, M.A.

Programme

Wednesday, September 30^rd, 2009

From 19:00    Conference Warming: Herzl Weinstube, Prokopigasse 12/Mehlplatz (near Hauptplatz/main square)

Thursday, October 1^st, 2009

Friday, October 2^nd, 2009

Saturday, October 3^rd, 2009

Conference Report

It is certainly not a new suspicion or observation that in recent times media have tended to talk more and more about themselves and less about the ›world out there‹. However, while many individual manifestations of this increase in ›metareference‹ – the move from a first cognitive and communicative level to a higher one on which thoughts, expressions and elements from the first level become objects of reflection and communication in their own right – have been identified and studied, e.g., 1960s and 70s ›metafiction‹, a large-scale interdisciplinary and transmedial investigation of the phenomenon has so far been lacking. The symposium »The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation« ventured to remedy this research lacuna. Jointly organized by the Centre for Intermediality Studies in Graz and the research project »Metareference – A Transmedial Phenomenon«, the event was a follow-up to last year’s conference on »Metareference in the Arts and Media«, whose goal it had been to synergize efforts from various disciplines and develop a framework for the study of metareference across media. (The proceedings have been published as Metareference across Media, ed. Werner Wolf, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.) This time around, twenty-five scholars were invited to apply these theoretical findings in their inquiries into the questions of whether and why contemporary Western culture has experienced a ›metareferential turn‹. The speakers came from a wide variety of fields and discussed an even wider variety of media and genres, including literary fiction, fantasy fiction, television series, music videos, classical as well as popular music, mixed-media installations, graffiti and murals, sculpture, photography, arthouse cinema, porn as well as horror films, animation, graphic novels, webcomics, net art, clothing, and cell phone ringtones.

Over the course of the three days, the conference hypothesis that metareference has significantly increased was strongly substantiated, yet opinions differed as to when this increase began (and perhaps also ended). The issue was said to depend upon the medium under scrutiny: while, as already hinted at, ›metafiction‹ made an indelible mark on literature in the 1960s and 70s, similar developments could be observed only about two decades later in television – as was demonstrated by Henry Keazor (Saarbrücken) among others. Some participants, as for example Irina Rajewsky (Berlin), felt that metareference has already passed its zenith and seen a decline in popularity over the last decade. In contrast to this, Katharina Bantleon (Graz), speaking from the perspective of the visual arts, pointed to a large number of recent metareferential works that appropriate older metareferential works, a trend she dubbed ›meta2‹. Another topic that was hotly debated in this context was the notion of ›turn‹ itself. For many, the term implied a certain suddenness of change, which was deemed incongruent with a phenomenon that ostensibly arose in a more gradual way. Yet, conference initiator Werner Wolf (Graz) defended his choice of the term by remarking that none of the alternative labels proposed (e.g., metareferential ›boost‹) had quite the pithiness and explanatory power of ›turn‹.

If the question of whether there has been a metareferential turn was almost uniformly answered in the affirmative, attempts to explain this development were made from vastly different angles. However, the models put forward did not so much contradict as complement one another. A topic that came up again and again was that of media competition or rivalry. As, for instance, Alexander Starre (Göttingen) argued, in a culture which proliferates medial forms of expression, media cannot but turn upon themselves to show what they can do that other media cannot. A corollary to such a media saturation is media savvy, whose relevance Nicholas de Villiers (Jacksonville, FL) revealed in the context of horror audiences, audiences that know the conventions of their genre well and enjoy being made aware of them. The emergence of new media or medial hybrids as well as changes within established media were generally seen to be accompanied by a need for self-inspection in order to define (and perhaps also legitimate) one’s place in the media landscape. Such matters were discussed by, for example, Christine Schwanecke (Heidelberg) with regard to the photo-novel. Likewise, media could also frequently be found looking back upon their own history – a possible symptom of the often diagnosed postmodern nostalgia. While animation scholar Erwin Feyersinger (Innsbruck) viewed this phenomenon in a relatively positive light, Roy Sommer (Wuppertal) was somewhat more dismissive of what he considered to be a bland retro-fashion. Sommer was among the few present who offered a more skeptical perspective on the metareferential turn. Similarly critical points were raised by Andreas Mahler (Graz), who contemplated whether in some cases metareference could not be seen as a mere sleight of hand to disguise a lack of originality.

With a series of high-level presentations and lively discussions, the symposium certainly raised the expectations for the conference proceedings, which are expected to be published in the winter of 2010/2011 (The Metareferential Turn: Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation, ed. Werner Wolf, Amsterdam: Rodopi).

(originally published on JLT Online)

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