The Erotics of Cinematic Listening

This talk explores the notion of cinematic listening by bringing together ideas from contemporary musical and sound studies discourses, the concept of erotics in art championed in the 1970s feminist discourse, and ideas of “new materialism” in film studies. Arguing that a sensuous mode of listening is also inherently musical, Kulezic-Wilson investigate the erotics of cinematic listening in connection to a trend which emphasizes the sensuousness of film form without confusing it with sensory overload. She asserts that the erotics of cinematic listening as a process of “discovering music” is facilitated by an increasingly integrated approach to soundtrack, the practice of foregrounding the materiality of music, and blurring the boundaries between music and soundtrack’s other elements.

Dr Danijela Kulezic-Wilson teaches film music, film sound and intermedia at University College Cork. Her research interests include approaches to film that emphasize its inherent musical properties, the use of musique concrèteand silence in film, the musicality of sound design and musical aspects of Beckett’s plays. She is the author of The Musicality of Narrative Film(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and co-editor (with Liz Greene) of The Palgrave Handbook of Sound Design and Music in Screen Media: Integrated Soundtracks(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).