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Call for Papers
Theme: Representations
Subtitle: Struggles for Reality
Type: 1st International Symposium
Institution: International Network for Alternative Academia
Location: Montreal, QC (Canada)
Date: 2.–4.11.2012
Deadline: 8.6.2012
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This trans-disciplinary project explores the creation, consumption
and dissemination of representations. It aims to map out the
relationship between representations, conceptions of the real and
cultural constructions of reality. Examining representations as
developing at the intersections of epistemological, political and
ethical modes of enquiry, this symposium offers the opportunity to
reflect on the practice and the theory of the constitution,
legitimation and social implications of image, art and the new media.
We invite colleagues from all disciplines and professions interested
in sharing these explorations in a collective, deliberative and
dialogical environment to send presentation proposals that address
these general questions or the following themes:
1. Real and Imaginary – A Political History
* To Represent or To Reproduce?
- How is it that representations reflect, reproduce and create our
sense of reality?
- How are representations and our concepts of reality interlaced and
intertwined?
- What role do abstractions, conversions and distortions play in the
construction of representations and our bonds to ‘weighty’
conceptions of reality?
* Power and Legitimacy
- What is at stake in the battles over representation? What is the
relationship between power, reality and representation?
- What are the processes through which representations are
legitimized and canonized?
- How is a sense of belonging and identity established in and
through media, art and/or artistic creation? How are the threads
of power nd the needs for legitimacy played out in this context?
- How are self-representations to be assessed? How are
misrepresentations to be responded to?
- Who gets to name what is real? What standard of evaluation should
be employed?
* You Say You Want A Revolution?: Rebellious Representations
- How are images and ideas transformed into action?
- What is the role of representation in political activism,
religious proselytism, and contestation movements?
- How do representations fuel transformation and change? How do
representations thwart such efforts?
- How are representations contested? What are the spaces for such
deliberations?
2. The Authentic, The Original, The Real
* On Authenticity
- In a world of reproduction, what is the meaning and the value of
judgments of authenticity?
- What factors and institutions fuel the quest for the perfect
representation in art and science?
- How are new technologies reconfiguring our understandings of
authority and expertise?
- Are distortions of reality necessarily destructive? What are the
potential productive forces of distortion?
- What does the return to the representative in contemporary
representations reveal about present day conceptions of reality?
* On Originality
- What is the relationship between The Original and the original?
- How are new understandings of originality reconfiguring our ideas
of genius?
- In an era defined by pastiche and bricolage, how is originality
to be assessed?
- Given the prevalence of prequels and sequels, remakes and remixes,
are we bearing witness to the end of creativity and/or the end of
originality?
- How are forgeries and fakes to be defined, identified and valued?
- What is the role of the signature in new forms of representation?
* On Reality
- How are images transformed into icons?
- In what ways do icons reflect reality? In what ways do they
deconstruct reality?
- How are multiple realities to be represented?
- How can emergent realities be captured?
- In what manner should competing representations be assessed? What
standards of evaluation should be employed?
- What do pastiche, bricolage and hybridity reveal about our notions
of reality?
3. Being, Becoming and Performing the Aesthetic
* The Politics of Art and the Art of Politics
- What are the conditions for the possibility of an aestheticization
of politics? How are those conditions met in contemporary
cultures?
- What is the role of modern day patrons in the artworld?
- How will the history of the politicization of art be written?
- What does the history and the practice of curating reveal about
the intersection of art and politics?
- What does the structure, organization and operation of art schools
reveal about the politics in and of art?
- What factors shape and inform the development of a political
economy of representations?
- How are representations interpreted as political gestures?
* Technology as Practice
- How are new technologies for the creation, consumption and
dissemination of representations leading us to reconceptualize The
Artworld?
- How is art being commodified in and through new media? How are new
technologies shaping and being shaped by the commodification of
art?
- How do new technologies redefine our understanding of
imagination?
- How is the relationship between technology and practice being
re-established in a post-internet era?
* Creativity and Critique
- How might art be conceived of as a form of critique?
- Can creativity be charted? What new models of creativity might be
offered to capture how reality is transformed by representation
and representations are transformed by reality?
- How might creativity be conceived of as critique?
- How are digital and virtual representations leading us to define
creativity?
- What new horizons, new metaphors, new means for re-signifying life
and experience in the virtual and non-virtual worlds are being
envisioned?
If you are interested in participating in this Annual Symposium,
submit a 400 to 500 word abstract by Friday 8th of June, 2012.
Please use the following template for your submission:
First: Author(s);
Second: Affiliation, if any;
Third: Email Address;
Fourth: Title of Abstract and Proposal;
Fifth: The 400 to 500 Word Abstract.
To facilitate the processing of abstracts, we ask that you use Word,
WordPerfect or RTF formats only and that you use plain text,
resisting the temptation of using special formatting, such as bold,
italics or underline.
Please send emails with your proposals to the Annual Symposium
Coordination address ([email protected]) with the
following subject line: Representations – Struggles for Reality
Abstract Proposal.
For every abstract proposal sent, we acknowledge receipt. If you do
not receive a reply from us within one week you should assume we did
not receive it. Please resend from your account and from an
alternative one, to make sure your proposal does get to us.
All presentation and paper proposals that address these questions and
issues will be fully considered and evaluated. Accepted abstracts
will require a full draft paper by Friday 31st of August, 2012.
Papers presented at the symposium are eligible for publication as
part of a digital or paperback book.
We invite colleagues and people interested in participating to
disseminate this call for papers. Thank you for sharing and
cross-listing where and whenever appropriate.
Alternative Academia is an international network of intellectuals,
academics, independent scholars and practitioners committed to
creating spaces, both within and beyond traditional academe, for
creative, trans-disciplinary and critical thinking on key themes. We
offer annual and biannual symposiums at sites around the world,
providing forums that foster the development of new frames of
reference and innovative structures for the production and expansion
of knowledge and theory. Dialogue, discussion and deliberation define
both the methods employed and the values upheld by this network.
Symposium Coordinators
Cheryl Sim
Commissaire Associée
DHC/ART Fondation pour l’art contemporain
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Email: [email protected]
Wendy O'Brien
Professor of Social and Political Theory
School of Liberal Studies
Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Email: [email protected]
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
General Coordinator
International Network for Alternative Academia
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Email: [email protected]
Conference website:
http://www.alternative-academia.net/home/montreal-winter-2012/rsr-1
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InterPhil List Administration:
http://interphil.polylog.org
Intercultural Philosophy Calendar:
http://cal.polylog.org
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