EWS Face Value. Mediations of the Human Face.

Participants in both workshops will be the project group Anne Gjelsvik, Anne Jerslev, Malin Wahlberg, Aud Sissel Hoel and Mette Mortensen) and an additional network of approximately 15 Nordic researchers. In addition we will invite different guests at eac h of the two workshops. In the Face Value workshops we will discuss the mediation of the human face by way of two interconnected approaches: Representations of the face in the media and media as technologies and materialities influencing the representati ons of the face. To investigate these factors the two workshops shall address the overall research question: How can we understand the value and power of the mediated face and how has it been brought to value in different media and in different forms at different periods in history? This overall question leads to the following more specific research questions, which the two workshops will address: Which faces are represented and valued in the media, and which are not? What does mediation do to the fac e (and in what ways is the encounter with mediated faces different from a face-to-face encounter)? How do different kinds of media technology participate differently in the construction of the face, and how has technology and mediated practices developed through history? How can we theorize the power of the face in terms of affect and emotion? These topics will be adressed by well-known international experts from different traditions and disiplines, and investigated by all invited participants in individ ual papers.