Founded in 2015 within the Art History and Film Studies department at Université de Montréal the Labo Télé’s primary goal was to create an interdisciplinary research space on televisual studies. Considering the increasingly important place this research field has taken within academic audiovisual studies since the early 2000s, the Labo Télé aims to develop analytic tools in order to account for the many forms and practices of television series.
Strong from its interdisciplinary approach, both from a theoretical and practical perspective, the Art History and Film Studies department at Université de Montréal integrates the studies of many artistic mediums within its main research axes, among them visual arts, cinema, and video games. The Labo Télé brings a new perspective on the televisual medium, with researches ranging from Narratology and film analysis to the mutations of media technologies as well as Cultural Studies. This interdisciplinary perspective is fortified by the collaboration of both local and international researchers. The Labo Télé’s main research interests range from a verity of subjects, such as forms, platforms, genres, production methods, cultures, transmedia storytelling, and contemporary televisual series viewership and fandom.
The Labo Télé’s perspective stems from the premise that television exists in a post-network era (Lotz, 2007). Contemporary series are still televisual, although they might very well never be broadcasted on a traditional tv screen. The many upheavals in the digital industry have had a strong influence on televisual spectatorship, moving away from the linearized experience associated with traditional viewership. The Labo Télé’s pragmatic approach envisions the form of tv series, both from a narrative and aesthetic standpoint, as constantly evolving through its many platforms as well as their viewers’ uses. By combining this pragmatic approach with a theorization of series as wolds or systems, television series can be apprehended as a whole, as an ecosystem which includes the series itself, its production means and the reception practices of its viewers.
Considering the vast proliferation of televisual series in this day and age, one might wonder how knowledge can be produced from the study of such numerous objects (some might even talk of peak television), as well as how they can and should be analyzed. Taking inspiration from the model of distant reading, first developed by literary critics (Moretti, 2013), the Labo Télé also uses quantitative analysis methods. According to Moretti, analyzing a system from a distance is crucial to its understanding. Reception, and the activities and forms it can take, is as central to the televisual object as its nature or its narrative.
Organization and research projects
The Labo Télé’s team is comprised of members from diverse academic backgrounds (Film Studies, Art History, Literature, and Communications) whose research projects and personal interests are already centered around the study and the analysis of TV series. The Labo Télé’s meetings generally take the form of workshops, which offer a discussion and reflection space to its members. These workshops are open to all, including non-members, and are made available online on the groups’ YouTube Page.
The research project entitled “La série télé dans tous ses écrans” (“The many screens of TV series”) (2018-2020) has been made possible by the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) through their “Insight” grant program. From 2018 to 2021, the research cycle will be focused on three main subjects: seriality as produced and broadcasted by its actors, the concept of “hors-film” (literally off-movie or off-cinema), which highlights the presence of televisual series in movie theaters and film festivals, as well as portability. This research projects aims to observe the many links between the aesthetic and technological dimensions of contemporary TV series (with a scope limited to series produced between 2013 and 2018) within the context of digital production and broadcasting. This academic investigation of the forms, formats and contents of TV series is twofold: first, it introduces a theoretical reflection on the mutations of the televisual narrative through its broadcasting means (from traditional networks to digital broadcasting), and second, it allows for the development of analytical and methodological tools specific to these new audiovisual objects. Aside from the laboratory’s regular members, this project includes researchers from France, Italy and Quebec.
The Labo Télé is also developing a quantitative study of the numerous broadcasting platforms surrounding the series themselves through a cartographic representation of the relations between the practices and the discourse of viewers from a geographical perspective. By observing the links between fan discourse and their localization, it is possible to highlight the links between the users’ activities and the televisual series’ mechanisms. This research on televisual viewership discourse allows to envision series as a complex system, including the social discourse surrounding them.
Research dissemination: conferences and papers
Since its creation, the Labo Télé has hosted three international conferences: Television Forms and Platforms in the Digital Age: Narratives, audiences and technologies (March 2017) Intervalles sériels : Littérature, cinéma, télévision, médias (April 2019) and Queer Television: Representations, Sensibilities, Forms, and Fandom (May 2019).
The Television Forms and Platforms in the Digital Age: Narratives, audiences and technologies conference was first created as part of the research project entitled “ La télévision à l’ère du numérique. Production, circulation, reception” (“Television in the Digital Age : Production, Circulation, Reception”). It was made possible by the support of the SSHRC through their “Connection” grant program, the GRAFICS, the TECHNÈS international partnership network, the Cinémathèque québécoise, as well as the Art History and Film Studies department. Many local and international researchers were reunited at the Cinémathèque québecoise in Montreal in order to reflect on the new televisual practices in the digital age through an exploration of the links between aesthetic and technological concerns. Presented as a series of case studies, the conference took place over three days and was filmed and made available online to promote open access. Participants from Brazil, Canada, France, Italia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States attended the event.
The Intervalles Sériels conference was held in April 2019. This series of workshops, held at the Carrefour des arts et sciences at Université de Montréal, was organized by Marta Boni, Thomas Carrier-Lafleur (Université de Montréal, Art History and Film Studies Department) and Marcello Vitali-Rosati (Université de Montréal, Littératures de langue française department). This interdisciplinary conference offered a space for discussion around the notion of temporal or spatial interval in the context of contemporary media.
In May of 2019, the Labo Télé contributed to the Queer Television conference, organized by Joelle Rouleau (Université de Montréal, Art History and Film Studies Department) and Marta Boni. The conference’s main objective was to analyse televisual series from a queer perspective.
In addition to the events organized in Montreal, the Labo Télé also collaborated to other international conferences as a research group, including the panel entitled “Cartographier la fiction télévisuelle” at the Film Studies Association of Canada (FSAC) yearly conference in 2016 (Marta Boni, Larissa Christoforo, Camille Martinez), as well as the panel entitled “Cultural Diversity and the Global Media Flow” at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) yearly conference in March 2019 (Larissa Christoforo, Marc-Antoine Lévesque, Giulia Taurino).
The many collaborations between the members of the Labo Télé have lead to the publication of joint papers, such as “I Love Dick et Transparent : Ergonomie, montage et rythme” by Marta Boni and Larissa Christoforo in CinémaS (2019) and “Maps, Distant Reading and the Internet Movie Database” y Marta Boni and Giulia Taurino in VIEW (2019). Marta Boni’s external collaborations include “Comment étudier la complexité des séries télévisées? : vers une approche spatiale”, a joint paper published with Mirelle Berton (Université de Lausanne) in TV/Series, and “ Here Be Dragons. Le mappe comme soglia/le mappe come creazione”, with co-author Valentina Re in Valentina Re and Sara Martin’s edited collection, Trono di Spade - Game of Thrones - Erotismo guerra e spazi urbani nel trono di spade (2017).
