The conference will be held at the University of Manchester, 5-6th September 2019, presenting work of UK and international researchers, artists or students that undertake audio-visual research as part of their PhD. The conference keynote speakers will be Dr Catarina Alves Costa 

Pushing the boundaries of aesthetics and the human in visual representation

Representations of lived experience may be meticulous and articulated as in Lévi-Strauss writings and Hitchcock's films, or expressed as excessive, ambiguous, marginalized, and repressed as evident in Roeg's films and Lotman's semiotics. The unique ways in which everyday life is audio-visually represented highlights the multiple realities and subjectivities that characterise our world. To understand the nuances of human experience, Deleuze and Guattari (1986) called for the production of “assemblages of collective enunciation” whereby participatory engagement with people and places operates as a hosting device for a multiplicity of subaltern beings and stories. This implies “taking seriously” the experiences of others (Viveiros de Castro, 2010) and realizing that representation is dynamic and political and thus, it creates new conditions of possibility and room for alter-ontologies (Ingawanij, 2013). Representations are not solely constructed through individual agency. Intersubjective relationships in collaborative practice, external entities in audio visual media, and the wider environment also shape the way that the world is perceived, represented, and lived in (see Harman, 2011; Sparrow, 2014; Torren 2014). 

This year's themes

 Individual expressions of perception, emotion, and identity

Cultural representations, memories, imaginings, and visions

Sociospatial encounters and understandings between different people and places

The politics and ethics of representation in visual research

​The dynamic power relations at play in the construction and dissemination of images