Cultural Dynamics Symposium on 9 April 2010

3 June 2010

On 9 April a symposium took place as part of the Cultural Dynamics theme programme. The aim of the meeting was to let participants get to know each other and to promote collaboration between the projects. In the morning programme, the project leaders of the projects recently awarded funding presented their research. The afternoon programme took 'intermediality’ as its theme.

Dr M.J. Kattenbelt from Utrecht University introduced the theme with a keynote lecture. In his lecture Dr Kattenbelt observed that the concept of ‘intermediality’ is used with different meanings in different disciplines, sometimes in a very broad sense and sometimes in a very specific sense. He drew a distinction between concepts such as ‘multimediality’, ‘transmediality’ and ‘intermediality’.

According to Dr Kattenbelt’s definition, intermediality is an interaction between media which can be understood as a redefinition of the media in question and also as a resensibilisation of the onlooker’s perceptions. He also linked the concept of ‘intermediality’ with the concept of ‘performativity’ to account for the fact that today’s mediatised culture is characterised pre-eminently by an aspect of staging.

The project researchers then examined the possibilities for applying the concept of ‘intermediality’ in their own research project and presented the results of their research.