How are the images, stories, experiences and forms of knowledge that women produce in audiovisual culture remembered? Which of them enter the archive, and which remain outside it? How does the work of a woman artist, filmmaker or researcher go on living in the ways of thinking and creating of the women who come after her?
GIKK 2027 invites us to think of the archive not merely as a space where documents of the past are kept, but as a living field where inheritance is transmitted, where forgetting and remembering are negotiated, where gaps are made visible, and where new relationships with the past can be built.
Within this framework, feminist inheritance emphasizes that the intellectual and political legacy handed down from the past is not a fixed transmission, but something each generation relates to anew. Counter-archive traces the lives, experiences and works left outside official and institutional archives, while Foremother Love opens up for discussion the intellectual, artistic and affective kinships that women build among themselves beyond biological lineage.
How are the images, stories, experiences and modes of production that women inherit from one another in audiovisual culture preserved, transformed, and passed on to the future?
Feminist cultural inheritance is not simply the transmission of works and names from one generation to the next. Sometimes a film, an image, a method, a gesture, a way of telling, or an intellectual space opened up by another woman goes on living in the work of the generations that follow.
This sub-theme focuses on the historical, aesthetic, intellectual and affective bonds that women build with one another in audiovisual culture.
Which women do we place ourselves after, alongside and in continuation of?
Every archive is also a practice of selection and exclusion. While some lives, works and experiences are preserved, others are lost; while some voices become part of the historical narrative, others fall silent.
Feminist counter-archive seeks not only to fill these gaps, but also to question how the archive itself is constructed and which forms of knowledge are deemed worthy of archiving. Digital culture adds a new dimension to this question: what do platforms and algorithms mediate us into remembering, and what into forgetting?
How do we remember what is not in the archive?
Feminist inheritance is not simply a matter of preserving the past as it was. Relating to the past also means rereading it, confronting its gaps, making its wounds and silences visible, and building new narratives out of what remains.
This sub-theme approaches the relationship built with the archive and its inheritance from the perspective of care and repair. Repair here does not mean closing the gaps of the past or reconstructing a lost wholeness; rather, it means building new relationships and new narratives out of the fragments of the past while leaving their gaps and “seams” visible.
How do we build a new future out of what remains to us from the past?
What does an image make us feel? Which emotions does the body carry, which does it conceal, and which does it refuse to express? How do anger, grief, desire, fear, shame, pleasure and vulnerability take shape in audiovisual culture?
GIKK 2027 invites us to think of emotions not merely as individual, psychological experiences, but as affective forces that circulate among bodies, relationships and social structures.
Anger, silence, withdrawal and refusal are as much a part of this field as care and vulnerability. The female body is thus treated not merely as a body that is looked at or represented, but as a subject who feels, is affected, forms relationships, gives care, and can say “no” when it needs to.
How do the feelings of the body become visible, audible and political in audiovisual culture?
Do emotions belong only to the inner world of characters, or do they circulate among bodies through the image's rhythm, sound, texture, proximity and duration?
This sub-theme focuses on how affect is produced in audiovisual culture, and on how the body's experiences of seeing, hearing and feeling relate to one another.
Do we only see an image, or do we experience it with our bodies?
Is vulnerability merely powerlessness? Can relationships in which bodies depend on one another, giving and receiving care, be the starting point for a different understanding of the political subject?
This sub-theme moves care and vulnerability out of the private sphere, opening them up for discussion in audiovisual culture through forms of dependency, solidarity, mourning, intimacy and living together.
Can we think of vulnerability not as powerlessness, but as the possibility of another way of living together?
Women's resistance does not always take the form of speaking, becoming visible, or taking action. Staying silent, withdrawing, refusing to take part, complaining, disobeying, or simply saying “no” can also be political acts.
Drawing on debates around feminist refusal, this sub-theme questions how refusal, silence and withdrawal are represented in audiovisual culture, and how they can be transformed into aesthetic forms.
Can staying unseen, staying silent, or withdrawing also be a form of resistance?
What does the future look like? Whose future can be imagined; which bodies, ways of life and worlds can find a place for themselves in the images of the future?
Audiovisual culture does not merely represent the future; it also produces ways of thinking about worlds, relationships and ways of life that do not yet exist. Cinema, video, digital art and new media open up a field for thinking about how the future is imagined and for whom it is made possible — from utopia to dystopia, from ecological crisis to post-human visions of life.
GIKK 2027 approaches feminist thinking about the future not by reducing it to the question of “women's place in the future,” but as a practice of exceeding the limits of the present world, imagining other ways of life, and constructing the not-yet-existing in audiovisual form.
How do we construct images of a world that does not yet exist?
Narratives of the future are not neutral. As the cities, bodies, relationships and communities of the future are designed, some ways of life are imagined as part of that future while others remain invisible.
Drawing on feminist and queer visions of the future, this sub-theme opens up for discussion whether audiovisual culture merely carries the existing social order forward into the future, or whether it can produce images of other ways of living.
When we imagine the future, are we merely repeating today's world, or can we construct images of other ways of living?
The climate crisis, wars, migration, epidemics and ecological devastation increasingly lead us to think of the future through images of crisis. But is audiovisual culture obliged to represent crisis only as catastrophe and collapse?
Drawing on feminist and ecological thought, this sub-theme opens up for discussion audiovisual futures in which relationships between humans and nature, technology, animals and other non-human beings are reimagined.
Can we move from images of catastrophe to new images of living together?
The visual culture of the future imagines the body as a field that can be altered, multiplied and redesigned. Artificial bodies, biotechnology, prosthetics, cyborgs and human–machine entanglements compel us to rethink the boundaries of “the human.”
Rather than technology itself, this sub-theme focuses on how the body is imagined in the future: which bodies are accepted as belonging to the future and which are left out; how aging, disability, reproduction and normalcy are reconstructed in images of the future?
Do images of the future free the boundaries of the body, or do they establish new norms?
Does women's visibility mean that social relations are being transformed? When women are more widely represented in a campaign, a corporate narrative or on a digital platform, does this also bring with it a voice of their own and a real share in decision-making processes?
Visibility is not only about who is shown; it is also about who is able to speak, which stories enter circulation, and for what purposes those stories are produced.
GIKK 2027 invites us to think of public relations and strategic communication not merely as a field where messages are crafted and disseminated, but as a cultural and political practice in which gender relations are reproduced, negotiated and potentially transformed.
Under what conditions can women's visibility move beyond representation and become a means of social transformation?
Does women's greater presence in communication campaigns and corporate narratives mean that forms of representation are changing as well? Under what conditions does visibility empower, and under what conditions does it reproduce existing gender norms?
This sub-theme questions how women are represented in public relations and strategic communication practices, which narratives are put into circulation, and by whom, and for what purposes, visibility is managed.
Does greater visibility mean that women are able to tell their own stories?
Does a communication campaign merely raise awareness, or does it also hold the potential to transform social relations? Under what conditions can campaigns for women's rights, equality and social justice bring about lasting change?
This sub-theme addresses women-focused public relations campaigns, feminist advocacy practices and social impact strategies. It also opens up for discussion the relationship between institutions' discourses of equality and their actual practices, as well as women's leadership roles in communication processes.
Should we measure a campaign's success by its visibility, or by the social transformation it brings about?
Who determines women's visibility on digital platforms? While algorithms, data-driven communication strategies and artificial intelligence technologies amplify women's voices, can they also produce new forms of exclusion and inequality?
This sub-theme examines digital public relations practices, algorithmic visibility and AI-assisted communication processes from a feminist perspective. It invites reflection on ethical representation in digital campaigns, data-driven targeting, and the ways platforms shape gender relations.
Do digital technologies amplify women's voices, or do they establish new mechanisms of power that decide who gets heard?
Masculinity in audiovisual culture is not simply an identity that is represented; it is a social position that is continually reconstructed through images, narratives, bodies, voices and performances.
Building on the critical space opened up by feminist thought, GIKK 2027 this year invites researchers working in Masculinity Studies to join the symposium through a special section. This section calls for rethinking masculinity not only through hegemony and power, but through care, vulnerability, affect, digital culture and changing social relations.
Does audiovisual culture merely represent masculinity, or does it also produce possible ways of being a man?
In today's audiovisual culture, masculinity is no longer constructed solely through power, authority and emotional distance. Images of masculinity that give care, show vulnerability and use an egalitarian language are becoming increasingly visible.
But this shift brings a new question with it: is masculinity really changing, or is it adapting to changing social conditions in order to sustain its power in new forms?
Is masculinity changing, or is it merely acquiring a new appearance?
Is it possible to think of masculinity independently of power and domination? Can care, affect, vulnerability and relationality be fields through which masculinity can be transformed?
Drawing on debates around feminist masculinities and caring masculinities, this sub-theme focuses on how audiovisual culture imagines other forms of masculinity.
Can audiovisual culture imagine a masculinity that relinquishes domination?
Today masculinity is produced not only in film and television narratives, but also in social media, podcasts, online video, gaming culture and digital communities.
Drawing on digital masculinities, the manosphere and manfluencer culture, this sub-theme opens up for discussion not only whether platforms merely reflect existing forms of masculinity, but also the role of algorithmic visibility and the attention economy in shaping new performances of masculinity.
Do digital platforms merely make masculinity visible, or do they produce new forms of masculinity?