FYI...
Stefanie Rixecker
ECOFEM Coordinator
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
[Ed. note: This CFP was posted on ASLE.]
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:42:41 -0600 (CST)
From: Daniel P Shea <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
SCHOOL OF ART & DESIGN
COVENTRY UNIVERSITY
Call for Papers
1999 CONFERENCE
"Living in a Material World"
Following the success of our previous conferences, TECHNOCITIES (1996),
ELECTRONIC
EMPIRES (1997) and CULTURAL WORK (1998), Coventry School of Art and Design
is pleased to announce our conference for 1999 - LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD.
The conference will take place over the weekend of 25th - 27th June 1999,
and will include
keynote addresses, plenary sessions, panel and witness sessions, exhibitions
and screenings. The three main themes of the conference will be
'Materialism, Materiality and
After', 'Working Cultures' and 'the Environment as Discourse'.
Day 1:LOST PROPERTY? Materiality, Materialism and After
This day will address the place of the material object in contemporary
culture,
exploring the contexts in which things are produced, exchanged and
consumed. It will
necessarily explore the legacy of existing frameworks for interpreting
materiality -
Marxism, structuralism/semiotics, symbolic exchange, aesthetics, etc.
However, it will
also incorporate perspectives which breach such accepted views, and
question the very
material existence of the object within Late Capitalism.
1. The Ecstatic Object, or the Cultivation of the Artefact.
In the era of the virtual, the clone and the consumer, what is the
significance of the
materiality of the aesthetic/sublime, sacrificial/sacred, economic/symbolic
object. Do
artworks, relics and goods require a material dimension ?
2. In the Tracks of Hysterical Materialism.
Ethnographies, biographies and genealogies of consumption in Late
Capitalism. Marx?
Benjamin? Veblen? Simmel? Baudrillard? Jameson? Bourdieu ? Foucault ? -
whose tale
do we wish to tell about meaning and value in contemporary commodities and
specific
consumer cultures ?
3. Fetishes, Flags and Fashions: Objectifications of identity and difference.
Dressing the self, dressing for others, wearing cultural values, shopping
as social life,
buying and belonging, producing and possessing identity - how can we
approach the
articulation of individual, social, ethnic and cultural identities through
material forms ?
Day 2: S/HE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY- Working Cultures
Despite (or maybe because of) the uneasy truce which exists between workers
in the
communication, media and cultural industries and media and cultural studies
teachers
and researchers, there appears to be a remarkable lack of curiosity about
the conditions
of work within those industries. Whilst anecdotal accounts of work within the
industries do exist they seem particularly underresearched and
undertheorised. Further,
much recent research has focused on the audiences for the products of
communication,
media and cultural workers and ignored the conditions of their production.
We invite
contributions from industry and academia in the form of papers or
participation in
witness sessions, interviews or panel sessions, with a focus on examining
the material
practices of people working in print media, radio, popular music, advertising,
marketing and politics.
Day 3: SPACE IS THE PLACE - The Environment as Discourse
1. Psychogeography - its origins in Situationalism, Debord & Vaniegem; the
British
Situationalist legacy; political, literary & filmic uses (Stewart Home,
Iain Sinclair,
Patrick Keillor); J.G.Gibson's ecological psychology - visual arrays &
affordances;
Walter Benjamin & the Arcades project; the flaneur since the Symbolists; the
contemporary flaneuse and the female gaze.
2. Cultural geography; ; the politics of space (Lefevre) and non-places
(Auge);
sexualised & gendered geographies; the racialisation of space; Sue Golding's
impossible geographies; social selves and habitus ( Bordieu); social
construction of
subjects; mapping the subject; the geography of the person.
3. Literary geography; literary cities & locations (eg Gotham City, Engels'
Manchester,
Eliot & Conrad's London, Alan Moore's Northampton, George Elliot's Coventry) &
the sense of place; 'lost' Black cities, ancient & modern; cinematic
cities; the city in art
& art in the city (Rachel Whiteread); land art.
The deadline for proposals is 30th April 1999. Proposals for papers ( no
more than 300 words)
or enquiries should be sent to:
Peter Playdon
School of Art & Design
Coventry University
Priory St.
Coventry CV1 5FB
U.K.
Direct phone: (01203) 838511
Direct fax: (01203) 838667
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker
Division of Environmental Management & Design
Lincoln University, Canterbury
PO Box 84
Aotearoa New Zealand
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: 64-03-325-3841
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