The post-cinematic moving image installations enabled by high-definition projection technologies create such atmospheric environments for their visitors that generate new forms of spectatorship activating both self-reflexive awareness of mediation and affective response to the surrounding audio-visual spectacle. The article intends to provide a description of this viewer experience by developing two concepts (embodied self-reflexivity and affective immersion) apprehending the spectacle of the exhibited moving image. To this end, phenomenological theories of affectivity will be briefly explored alongside the invocation of Deleuze’s term affection-image and Giuliana Bruno’s idea of atmospheric projection. The final suggestion of the paper is that the spectators’ experience of such moving image installations is best understood through the description of the interplay between what I term embodied self-reflexivity and affective immersion.

Film and videography have played crucial roles in the documentation of performing arts. One such case is of sign language poetry (SLP), which materializes as a phenomenon through the polylogics among different media like visuals and the performing body. The ways of representation within these intersecting language systems of the body, camera, lights, etc. determine how SLP is received. This paper focuses on Ella Mae Lentz’s American Sign Language poem Silence, Oh Painful as a case study, and analyses multiple performances of it. Lentz’s own performance of the poem from her presentation at the 1987 National ASL Poetry Conference is the primary site of inquiry. In comparison, Alexis Boardrow Green’s performance of the poem, for her ASL Poetry Discourse Analysis course at UC San Diego, is examined. Current research aims to study sign language poetry as an intermedial phenomenon, and see how changes in the performing body and its visual representation affect the poem’s unfolding in space and time, with focus on Martin Heidegger’s concept of poetizing, Yuri Lotman’s semiotics, and Lars Elleström’s material intermediality. Moreover, the article also probes into how the usage of the two media (video and the performing body) affect the intended artwork. In light of varying performing bodies, the article further questions the autotelic qualities attributed to poetry from a new-critical approach to artworks, and inquires into the possibility of multiple unaffiliated intermedial phenomena branching from similar intentionalities.

The article redefines intermediality not as a mere artistic or expressive tool but as a set of practices shaping our conceptualization of technology, media, and art. In this context, intermedial practices are crucial in the continuous process through which technologies can evolve into mediums and art forms. These practices facilitate the socially negotiated meanings and uses that elevate new technologies into recognized mediums and confer cultural prestige to art forms. Drawing on examples from mass cultural practices, the article explores the role of intermedial practices in media debates. The kinema-sketch, a pivotal moment in the history of moving images in Hungary, illustrates the transition from early cinema to feature films. By integrating cinematic scenes into theatrical performances, the kinema-sketch contrasted the perception of moving images with the live performance alternating between screen and stage. A contemporary parallel is the screenlife (computer or desktop) film, which integrates digital media into the storytelling of traditional film genres, equating the cinematic space with the digital interface. Both examples highlight how intermedial practices challenge conventional notions of presence and reality in older media, foregrounding the mediated character of identities and agencies.

The conference entitled Affective Intermediality, organized between 20–21 October 2023 at the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca, included a hybrid (i.e. online and in person) round table presentation of book series and peer reviewed journals specializing or frequently publishing on intermediality (as the 2nd Meeting of Researchers in Intermediality initiated by Ana Munari). As a followup to this round table, a more detailed discussion was initiated with editors (who are also researchers themselves) about the state of the art in intermediality studies, the main challenges in the field, the diversity of topics and approaches, and the possible new directions including the one proposed by the organizing research team focusing on the idea of “affective intermediality.” The participants in this discussion were asked by Ágnes Pethő to answer five groups of questions with the aim of providing an inspection of key issues affecting the study of intermediality, and to offer an overview of ideas that have emerged from the diversification of intermedial scholarship practiced in various parts of the world. Although far from comprehensive in its covering of geographical areas or publication outlets, with some of the answers more succinct than the others, this survey puts a spotlight on important publications and theoretical concerns of intermedial scholarship today. It probably raises even more questions that might be the focus of further debates.

The paper studies cinematic ekphrasis, the representation of film in another medium, and the practice of media transformation. It analyses how lost films are represented and their media characteristics are transmediated in fiction. The article starts with building the connection between ekphrasis and two types of media transformation, media representation and transmediation of media characteristics. It presents an overview of lost films as a subcategory of the film medium drawing on their uncanny characteristics. The argumentation proceeds with the analysis of Jonathan Coe’s novel The House of Sleep (2014), focusing on the ways the cinematic ekphrasis of lost films operates. The paper draws a conclusion on the uncanny effect of cinematic ekphrasis of lost films and the interrelatedness of media representation and transmediation of media characteristics in its practices.

The phrase in the title, borrowed from Paul (1 Corinthians 13:12), though used in a twisted form, suggests interest of new media in faith-based art, and leads to the question of whether and how such applications work in that specific context; also, if they do, then how they contribute to the spiritual and religious experience. Our media world is “the shelter where the vast majority of those of us who live in the West dwell and from which we draw the material out of which we make sense of our lives,” Cobb (2005) claims. Accordingly, as part of our world, the rise of digital art has also become common in faith-based (spiritual and religious) art. This phenomenon has been addressed in international theory, including studies of the post-secular age and (re)enchantment, as well as in theory combined with curatorial practice (e.g., Groys and Weibel 2011). The paper pays special attention to the practices of Central European artists.

Through the lens of ecologies of belonging, The City as Escape Room transfers a simple and commonly held understanding of the escape room into a metaphor that reveals a complex layering of place, participation, and affect in meaning-making for transmedia storytellers. It situates the city as a play space where community participation, meaning-making, and co-creation are interwoven as meaningful story experiences. By mirroring the practice of urban foraging, the discussion explores transmedia storytelling as a form of sympoiesis that brings into being a shared memory, a becoming-with the city for the community that resides within. Avoiding the common placemaking tropes associated with public sector marketing and economic (re)generation, city-wide transmedia storytelling is instead considered a form of speculative fabulation that can defamiliarize the familiar and generate affective story experiences. The offering of a case study that contrasts commercial and community-driven transmedia experiences further illuminates how immersive experience design can take hold of a city as a play space and render it as a meaningful story experience.

This study uses Bakhtinian methods to examine how the essay film Between Revolutions (Între revoluţii, Vlad Petri, 2023) portrays the polyphonic nature of memory and trauma in narratives about revolutions, focusing on two women’s experiences in Romania and Iran through the epistolary form. The author aims to explore the relationship between individual and collective memories, emphasizing how these narratives, free from media dominance, challenge prevailing belief about revolutions in Iran and Romania. This polyphonic approach – where multiple, independent voices and perspectives coexist within the narrative – allows the film to interweave personal and historical narratives through a diverse array of voices, both female and male, public and private. By blending political and intimate perspectives, it amplifies the voices of ordinary citizens from Romania and Iran. The intermediality of image, voiceover, and music enriches the polyphonic structure, employing archival footage, protest sounds, and interviews juxtaposed with moments of silence and personal letters. The research highlights the film’s dialogic approach to memory, analyzing how the combination and juxtaposition of personal stories and archival footage enriches cultural memory.

The paper examines the figuration of sounds in the first film of Lucrecia Martel, La Ciénaga (The Swamp, 2001), with a particular emphasis on the interpretation of the figural dynamics of the film’s last scene. It argues that the idea of sonic cinema by Gregg Hainge is relevant for the figural analysis developed by Nicole Brenez since Hainge shows that the sonic realm is a privileged sphere to grasp the figuration of the filmic material. This means also that the essential dynamism of cinema can be clearly revealed through the mapping of sonic operations and through the understanding of sonic plasticity. This paper tries to map the operations of this kind in Lucrecia Martel’s film through the isolation of sonic figures and the description of their transfiguration. The analysis reveals that this film develops a figural relationship (in the sense established by Erich Auerbach) between sounds and the source of sounds, between ambiguous signifier and clear signified, between sensory impression and trancendental experience. Martel’s film uses the very base of filmic material – the connection and disconnection of sound and image – for a metaphisical interpretation of the human experience.

The Pahlavi era’s notion of modernity, despite achieving moderate success in some aspects, encountered significant challenges during its implementation. The formation of a collective driven by utopian fantasies of progress ultimately resulted in dramatic failures. In response to this failure, the state resorted to propagandistic measures to advertise the successful aspects of modernization project, and superficial reforms to maintain an image of modern Iran, promoting a narrative of progress. However, there was hidden side to this “progress,” the narrative of decay, defeat, and catastrophe. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s theory of progress, this essay aims to examine the dual nature of the Pahlavi modernization project through two documentaries focused on the modernization of Tehran: Ahmad Faqroughi’s Tehran, Today (1962) and Kamran Shirdel’s Tehran is the Capital of Tehran (1965). The analysis suggests that Faqroughi presents the state-sponsored narrative of progress, while Shirdel explores the narrative of defeat and catastrophe that coexists with, and arises from this “progress.” By shedding light on the reality of the Pahlavi era’s modernization project, this study provides insights into why, towards the end of the 1970s, cities like Tehran witnessed a growing number of individuals who resisted what was supposedly a “progressing” and “modern” Iran.