Ithaca College

Entitled "Cinematic-Mnemonic Encounters: From Geographic to Psychogeographic Histories of Cinema," Utterson's paper considered models of mapping––in space, in terms of geography, but also in time, in terms of history––changing patterns by which the moving image has been consumed throughout the history of cinema. 

As an illustrative case study, in order to examine the productive dynamic between material histories and the realms of individual and collective cultural memory, Utterson's paper analyzed British writer-filmmaker Iain Sinclair's 2014 book 70x70: Unlicensed Preaching: A Life Unpacked in 70 Films and the near-fifty site-specific film screenings it documents. 

Utterson detailed how the realm of memory––in this instance, bound up in biographical encounters with cinema as located in time and place, rooted in movie theaters that often no longer exist, in cities likewise transformed beyond recognition––offers a useful analogy for a broader historical understanding of cinema that considers the resonant traces of its past iterations.