CRC 1 Report — February 2025
Colour Research Colloquium — Report
February 2025
By Sanny Schulte
The Colour Research Colloquium (CRC) in February 2025, titled What Colour Means – What Colours Mean, brought together a diverse range of scholars and artists from various disciplines to explore the many ways in which colour interacts with perception, history, media, and identity.
Opening: Analysing Colours from Different Perspectives
Prof. Dr. Susanne Marschall and Dr. Elena Mucciarelli
Susanne Marschall and Elena Mucciarelli, chief editors of our journal, opened the Colloquium by showcasing the interdisciplinary scope of colour research. Marschall introduced her Kinematogramm, a comprehensive graphic she compiled during the lockdown to help students and researchers locate their research. During the CRC, she also introduced it as a way to situate colour analysis within film studies — bridging aesthetics, perception, and cognitive effects.
The discussion expanded immediately into broader questions: Where does colour reside? In composition, in aesthetics, in preproduction?
Elena Mucciarelli widened the scope, turning attention to the ritualistic dimensions of colour. She reminded us of Colour Turn's upcoming call for papers on colour and ritual and invited us to think about the times when colour became a medium or a ritual to communicate — when colour negotiates, claims, and transforms identity and culture. She further invited reflections on how the materiality of a colour affects the ritual practice, making it an active agent — shaping, impacting, and essentially contributing to the ritual as a tool.
Dr Jarvis Curry added the aspect of regional effects on colours as rituals while Priscilla Layne suggested the inclusion in this special issue on colour and rituals of geographers and cultural studies before she proceeded with her own talk.
Speakers
Prof. Dr. Priscilla Layne — Colouring Difference: Analyzing the Use of Colour in Miguel Gallardo's Comics on Disabilities
Department of German & Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Devinn Hurley, MA — On the phenomenology of aging and greying
University of Amsterdam
Casandra Boldor, PhD Candidate — On the use of colour in Věra Chytilová's experimental films Fruit of Paradise (1970) and Daisies (1966)
GestA member, University of the Republic of Uruguay (UDELAR)
Anita Back — On the printing process of cyanotype
Artist and photographer, Berlin
Prof. Katja Schmid — Specializing in Visual Effects and Postproduction
Stuttgart Media University (HdM)