{"id":5216,"date":"2023-07-05T20:46:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/armenian\/?p=5216"},"modified":"2024-07-11T20:46:30","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T20:46:30","slug":"call-for-papers-2024-conference-on-sergei-parajanov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/armenian\/2023\/07\/05\/call-for-papers-2024-conference-on-sergei-parajanov\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for Papers: 2024 Conference on Sergei Parajanov"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Call for Papers: 2024 Conference on Sergei Parajanov<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span>USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies<\/strong>\n \n July 5, 2023<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Sergei Parajanov at One Hundred: Chimeras of Nation, Form, and Being<\/strong><\/p>\n

February 22-24, 2024<\/p>\n

University of Southern California<\/p>\n

In his interview with Ron Holloway, Parajanov proclaimed that he was a chimera, a being inscrutable to others but also uniquely able to look ahead and beyond all constraints. The chimera, a mythological figure comprising parts of different bodies, emblematizes both the possibilities of imagination and the impossibility of categorization and control. It poses a challenge to homogeneity, fixity, swift legibility and intelligibility by re-constellating the known to produce aesthetic wonders that are always in excess of the sensible. A slap in the face of propriety and pure reason, a blow to scientific and epistemological certainty, the chimera boldly transcends limiting constructions and strictures. And for those very same reasons, the chimera is often subject to suspicion, fear, and persecution.<\/p>\n

Drawing inspiration from Parajanov\u2019s description of himself as a chimera, this centennial conference organized by the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies and USC Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures aims to examine the myriad border crossings and hybridities that characterize his life and oeuvre. Born January 9,\u00a01924\u00a0in Tbilisi, Georgia to Armenian parents,\u00a0Parajanov\u00a0worked at Dovzhenko Film Studio, Armenfil\u2019m, and Georgia Film Studio, all while navigating the complexities of the Soviet film industry. While his early work can be said to fit the requirements of socialist realism, Parajanov\u2019s later films mark a radical departure from the dominant culture. Mining a variety of folkloric, literary, artistic, and cinematic traditions, the auteur\u2019s filmic worlds resist spatial and temporal determinacy as well as national and imperial borders. While the painterly quality of his cinema stalls the sense of temporal progression in his films, it simultaneously proposes alternative sources of dynamism. A playful variation on the paradoxical coexistence of stillness and motion in cinema, Parajanov\u2019s tableaux invite the spectator\u2019s wandering gaze to explore the exuberance of each frame, treasure the movement within each shot and observe inanimate objects come to life with the help of editing and sound. Through the multiplicity of both spatial and temporal points of view offered by the inverted perspective, the filmmaker\u2019s images do not only challenge the distinction between passive and active spectatorship, immobile subjects and moving objects, but posit the impossibility of a coherent subject altogether as they reveal the fluidity of such constructs as ethnicity, gender, and agency.<\/p>\n

We are particularly interested in proposals that examine the multinational and transnational dimensions of his work, as well as his ambivalent relationship to the Soviet empire. As ethnographic imaginaries, the films and collages invite consideration of Parajanov\u2019s appropriation and remediation of myths, folklore, and poetry as well as textiles, paintings, and sculpture. Additional topics include, but are not limited to the following as they relate to the filmmaker\u2019s oeuvre and lived experience:<\/p>\n