SPEAKERS

BAL, Alex
BARDINI, Thierry
CHATONSKY, Grégory
CONESA, Jean-Claude
COTE, Mario
CZEGLEDY, Nina
DANIELS, Steve
DUBOIS, Jean
ELDER, R. Bruce
EPOQUE, Martine
FISCHER, Hervé
FLEISCHER, Alain
GARDNER, Paula
JOOSSE, Angela
LaBELLE, Guillaume
LANGILL, Caroline
MATHIEU, Marie-Christine
NOLAN, Jason
OUELLET, Pierre
PALMIERI, Christine
PAPON, Frédéric
POISSANT, Louise
POULIN, Denis
PRUSKA-OLDENHOF, Izabella
RODIONOFF, Anolga
SLOPEK, Edward
SNYDER, Don
TREMBLAY, Pierre
VAN ALSTYNE, Greg

Bruce R. Elder
Ryerson University, Program Director, Graduate Program in Communication and Culture

- Conference Video

R. Bruce Elder studied philosophy at McMaster University and the University of Toronto, mathematics at York University, computer science at Ryerson University, dance, music composition, semiotics, and West African and Egyptian percussion at various schools in Toronto and New England. His films have been screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and The Millennium Film Workshop, Berlin’s Kino Arsenal, Paris’ Centre Pompidou, the San Francisco Cinematheque, Los Angeles Film Forum, Stadtfilmmuseum München, and Hamburg’s Kino Metropolis. Retrospectives of his work have been presented by Anthology Film Archives (NY), the Art Gallery of Ontario, La Cinémathèque Québecoise, Il Festival Senzatitolo (Trento), Images ‘97 (Toronto), the Antechamber (Regina) and the University of Western Ontario.

He has published numerous articles and three books, Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film Culture (1989); A Body of Vision: Representations of the Body in Recent Film and Poetry (1997); and  The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Charles Olson (1998). A new book, Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century will appear in 2008.In 2007, Bruce Elder was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Media Arts, Canada’s most prestigious award in the discipline and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the highest honour that can be awarded to scholars in Canada.

Experience, Real Bodies, Real Space
The following panel ( Elder, Joosse, Pruska-Oldenhof) consists of three coordinated presentations that work together and subject some of the themes of recent writings on virtual space and telepresence to critical scrutiny. R. Bruce Elder will talk about the gnostic fantasies that structure some new media theory, including much of the discussion of virtual space. Elder characterizes these fantasies as gnostic because, he claims, the wish that fuels them is that we can surrender our bodies and become purely electric minds inhabiting another reality