Research aeras

From a geographical point of view, it is important to consider media and cultural phenomena as transcending the borders of nation-states, and to take an interest in the processes of hybridity and transculturality that affect both practices and the production and realisation of certain cultural objects. The idea here is not to reject the establishment of certain actors or certain uses at a local level, or to avoid themes linked to the territorialisation of cultures, but rather to encourage research dynamics that manage to articulate the global and the regional, particularly from a European perspective.

Furthermore, studying culture as a transnational phenomenon also implies taking into account the role of migratory movements and diasporas in the constitution of cross-border cultural experiences. If culture travels in space, it also travels in time, and GIRCAM is particularly attentive to approaches that make it possible to follow the evolution, reconfiguration and reappropriation of certain cultural objects/practices throughout history. It is at this level that our research group is opening up to a genuine archaeology of media productions and welcomes work from the field of cultural history. Our aim is not simply to take an interest in the phenomena of resurgence, reappearance or survival as pure effects of intertextuality or intericonicity, which boil down to quotations from the past. More important is to grasp the modulations of the uses and values conferred on certain media productions as a function of their insertion into singular socio-historical contexts.

Of the fields defined here, the media axis is perhaps the most central in the sense that it is the media, understood in the broadest sense, which largely encourage the movement and re-appropriation of cultural productions both geographically and historically. However, even if we define the media as conveyors and agents of culture, our attention will also focus on the phenomena of exchange and displacement that take place within the media space itself. This dimension is important insofar as we take care to consider the media as a world in its own right, with its own socio-economic logic, a world also characterised, especially in the age of social networks and digital technology, by dynamics placed under the seal of the multiplication of supports, convergence and networking.

Furthermore, as important as it is to focus on the media, it is also important to emphasise the mediation processes at work more widely in the cultural field, processes that encourage the circulation of content and the appropriation of practices. It is from this perspective that we need to take into account not only the relational dimension of cultural and/or artistic objects, but also the players in the worlds of art and culture who act as mediators in a socio-cultural space that is itself in flux.

Finally, from a cognitive point of view, it is also important to take into account the effects of cultural changes and displacements, as well as new practices (particularly transmedia and new forms of cultural mediation) on social representations, both for people who experience these changes and for those who witness them directly. It is also in the field of representations and categorisations that we need to assess the impact of transcultural practices on the reinforcement or weakening of certain stereotypes, particularly those relating to gender.

From a methodological point of view, in order to work on the research areas described above from a cross-sectional perspective, GIRCAM favours the study of culture in terms of movement and process. In keeping with our epistemological preoccupations, the research group places movement and displacement at the very heart of its methodology, encouraging a two-way flow between theory and practice, fundamental research and case studies, as well as the circulation of certain concepts and analytical tools between different disciplinary fields.