Wednesday, September 24, 2014

CfP: Subversive Practices and Imagined Realities in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe since 1945

Session Convenors:
Amy Bryzgel, University of Aberdeen, a.bryzgel@abdn.ac.uk
Andrea Euringer-Bátorová, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava, Slovakia, euringer-batorova@vsvu.sk

In communist Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, the building of socialism had as its final endpoint a utopia that provided the ultimate motivation: sacrifice now, reward later. In its sheer impossibility, it was an elusive and illusory dream that formed the foundation for everyday life under totalitarian regime. Within this visionary world, artists such as Alexander Mlynarcik (Slovakia), Marko Kovacic (Slovenia) or Mark Verlan (Moldova), created their own parallel worlds, utopias, dystopias, and fantastic domains. In many cases, alternative and nonofficial artists’ works served to carve out a unique space in the so-called “grey zone” of Europe, which offered an alternative not only to state-sponsored socialism, but also to Western capitalism, both of which many artists and dissidents viewed with equal suspicion. This panel will examine a range of artistic ideas, participative strategies, subversive practices, networks and projects (imaginary or real), which demonstrate an alternative sphere of thinking and modes of creative living, and which possibly attempt to move beyond the classical binary systems of West and East – all from within an everyday world order that seemed to be set in stone. We also invite papers that offer a more differentiated view, even extending to the post-socialist period, aiming to re-evaluate the nexus of aesthetics and politics and produce new interpretations and analytical approaches regarding counterculture and censorship, which explore the relational aspects of following binaries: official and unofficial, political and apolitical, permitted and prohibited – under totalitarian rule.

The deadline for abstracts is November 10, 2014. Paper proposals must be emailed directly to the session convenor(s). You must provide a 250 word abstract for a 30 minute paper. Include your name and institution affiliation (if any). Please follow the format found in the “Paper Proposal Guidelines” document found here: http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2015
You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks from the session convenor(s). - See more at: http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2015#sthash.PXRmHWA3.dpuf

Unfortunately no fee is payable to speakers; all speakers must register and pay to attend the conference.

See more at: http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2015

Public art festival - ARTPROSPECT in Saint Petersburg

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Micro-urbanism. City in details

Micro-urbanism. City in details. Ed. by Olga Brednikova and Oksana Zaporozhets. Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2014.

The book is devoted to and inspired by contemporary city. A variety of research approaches grasping the fluidity, plurality and ambiguity of urban life are united by micro-urbanism as a common analytical perspective. Micro-urbanism is a possibility to look at the city at the close distance, to discern it in nuances and details. It unfolds a dense everyday life of the city and highlights the urbanites as its main actors, who create the city, its places and routes via everyday activities, senses and feelings. Along with the usual, though not quite familiar, urban characters such as public transport passengers, wedding companies and omnipresent tourists, the book introduces relatively new participants of urban life: urban explorers, graffiti writers, sellers and buyers of flea markets, and many other. Vivid narrations bring to life vibrant and emotionally saturated city.


Monday, September 22, 2014

CfP:TENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ARTS IN SOCIETY

 The Arts in Society Knowledge Community
London, UK
Imperial College London
22-24 July 2015
The 2015 Arts in Society Conference will be held in London, UK from 22-24 July at Imperial College London. Proposals for paper presentations, poster sessions, workshops, focused discussions, or colloquia are invited to the conference, addressing the arts through one of the following themes:
THEMES
- Theme 1: Arts Education
- Theme 2: Arts Theory and History
- Theme 3: New Media, Technology, and the Arts
- Theme 4: Social, Political, and Community Agendas in the Arts
- Special Focus: The Work of Art in the Age of Networked Society
PLENARY SPEAKERS
- James Bridle-Artist, Writer, and Publisher, London, UK
- Ruth Catlow-Co-founder and Artistic Director, Furtherfield; Head, Writtle School of Design, London, UK
Presenters also have the option to submit completed papers to one of the fully peer-reviewed journals in The Arts Collection. If you are unable to attend the conference, you may still join the community and submit your article for peer review and possible publication, upload an online presentation, and enjoy subscriber access to the journal.
Proposals are reviewed on rolling deadlines. The final submission deadline for in-person presentations is 19 May 2015 (title and short abstract). Proposals submitted after this day will be accommodated in non-themed sessions at the conference or are eligible for community membership registrations (no attendance at conference required with community membership presentations).
For more information and to submit a proposal visit:www.ArtsinSociety.com/London-2015

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Call for Proposals : CONNECTING CITIES: InVISIBLE and VISIBLE Cities 2015



Connecting Cities


CONNECTING CITIES: InVISIBLE and VISIBLE Cities 2015

European Urban Media Network for Connecting Cities is a network of European institutions that aims to foster the circulation of artistic and cultural contents throughout European urban screens and mediafacades.

Our today's modern cities are hybrid structures in which technology is invisibly interweaved in the perception layers of our everyday lives. With the curatorial theme of InVISIBLE and VISIBLE Cities we want to develop an awareness on the changes which are hardly visible to the eyes and are underlying our nowadays cities.

Please submit your project proposal until 31 October, 2014.

More information: http://medialab-prado.es/article/invisibleandvisiblecities2015
www.connectingcities.net

The Connecting Cities Network is initiated by Public Art Lab Berlin in cooperation with 23 international partners in 21 cities:Ars Electronica Futurelab Linz – Medialab-Prado Madrid – FACT Liverpool – Foundation Bauhaus Dessau
– Videospread Marseille – Marseille - Provence 2013 – iMAL Brussels – Riga 2014 – BIS (Body Process Arts Association) Istanbul– FACT Liverpool – m-cult Helsinki – Media Architecture Institute Vienna – Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb – University of Aarhus – MUTEK Montreal – Quartier des spectacles Montreal – verve cultural Sao Paulo – Federation Square Melbourne –xm:lab Saarbrücken – Media Arts Lab Sapporo – The Concourse Sydney – Etopia Centre for Art and Technology Zaragoza – International Art Centre Wuhan

Connecting Cities is supported by the Culture Programme 2007-13 of the European Union.

CALL FOR FILMS ! 7th Budapest Architecture Film Days, March 2015





Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre
Deadline: 31st October, 2014.

Do you have a film on architecture or the city? Send it to us! The Budapest Architecture Film Days is now accepting submissions for its 7th edition to be held in Budapest in March 2015. We are looking for works in all genres, forms and lengths related to design, architecture and built environment. Entry is free.

The mission of the film festival is to generate a dialogue between architectural practice that finds inspiration in cinema, and cinema borrowing its subjects from architecture and the city. For more information about the festival please visit http://filmnapok.kek.org.hu/en/. For related questions please contact filmnapok@kek.org.hu.

Please find the steps of submitting a film below:

1. Fill out the online submission form
2. Send your film via an online file-transferring platform (dropbox, webtransfer, etc.) to filmnapok@kek.org.hu

Monday, September 15, 2014

Graffolution – what would work for you?

Graffolution is a European Union funded project aimed at addressing graffiti vandalism in public areas and public transport and also embracing opportunities for street art in the contexts of regeneration and place-making. It is coordinated between SYNYO, Vienna; Sine, Munich; Eticas & University of Barcelona, Barcelona; and University of the Arts London.

The project seeks to develop an online platform of resources, services and opportunities focused on sharing good practice information between diverse communities (professionals and publics) who are keen to promote efficient and appropriate responses to graffiti.

We invite you to help shape this platform by responding to the survey via the link in this email. We will greatly value your inputs, we will keep your responses anonymous and if you wish, we can keep you up to date as the project evolves between now and 2016.

Everyone is invited to respond - from community representatives, though to authorities, crime prevention professionals, as well as street artists, graffiti writers, other creative practitioners, academics and more. The more people that feed back to this survey the more appropriate the outputs of the Graffolution EU project can be.

//docs.google.com/forms/d/1e1xYZ-Ekq0ZGuyJZkh83PvLdCr73ReFganA_vWGB1WA/viewform Please complete the survey by Monday 22nd September, or before.

Many thanks in advance,

Marcus Willcocks and team




Graffiti Dialogues Network, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London - Graffolution UK project partners

Friday, September 12, 2014

Call for Proposals: Critical Geographies of Urban Infrastructur

Deadline: 19 September 2014
Conference: 6-7 November 2014

A two-day conference and open discussion organised by the Urban Geography Research Group (UGRG) of the RGS-IBG, taking place at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL.

This year’s UGRG Conference will explore the relationship between critical urban theory and infrastructure. Critical urbanism may be defined by Brenner et al (2009: 179) as concerned:

(a) to analyze the systemic, yet historically specific, intersections between capitalism and urbanization processes;
(b) to examine the changing balance of social forces, power relations, sociospatial inequalities and political-institutional arrangements;
(c) to expose marginalizations and injustices that are inscribed and naturalized within existing urban configurations;
(d) to decipher the contradictions, crisis tendencies and lines of potential or actual conflict within contemporary cities, and on this basis;
(e) to demarcate and to politicize possibilities for more progressive, socially just, emancipatory and sustainable formations of urban life.

Since the publication of Splintering Urbanism (Graham and Marvin, 2001), there has been a heightened focus on employing critical urbanist perspectives to study the fundamental issues of urban infrastructure, of who gets what infrastructure and where? This includes work on the assemblage and effects of different types of infrastructure including water, waste and other metabolic systems (Gandy 2002; Marvin and Medd 2006; Nikolas et al 2006), traffic and city streets (Hamilton-Baillie 2008; Buiter 2008) motorways and flyovers (Harris 2013; Merriman 2007; Norton 2008), various forms of public transportation (Butcher 2011), cycling (Aldred 2012) and airports (Guller and Guller 2003; McNeill 2010). Emerging research has highlighted the particular materialities of different infrastructure systems as they sustain and disrupt the circulations that constitute urban life (Amin and Thrift 2002; Gandy 2004; Latham and McCormack 2004; Hommels 2005). It has also examined practices of dwelling and experiences of inhabiting infrastructural systems as particular kinds of public spaces (Bissell 2010, 2014; Koch and Latham 2014; McIlvenny 2010; Sheller and Urry 2003; Wilson 2012).

Such work has demonstrated the exercise of social and political power through infrastructural provisioning, and the challenges of governance which might bring about more inclusive and democratic forms of urban infrastructure (Boudreau et al 2009; McFarlane and Rutherford 2008; Spinney 2010; Swyngedouw 2005).
Much work remains, however, in exploring the key dynamics through which infrastructure structures and restructures urban spaces. In particular, the UGRG is keen to hear from scholars working on topics and theoretical perspectives which include (but are not limited to) the following:
  • state versus private provision, management and maintenance of infrastructure
  • dynamics of access and exclusion
  • privatization of key urban infrastructure
  • Global North and Global South standards and models of infrastructure provision
  • comparative studies of infrastructural provision and innovation
  • policy mobility and the circulation of 'best practice'
  • dwelling and inhabitation within infrastructural spaces
  • new imperatives of sustainability, austerity and resilience agendas
  • innovations ranging from micro-scale to regional master-planning
Papers are welcomed from researchers at any stage of their careers (including doctoral students). We will also be holding a ‘pecha-kucha’ session as we did in 2012.

The deadline for 200 word abstracts is Friday, 5 September 2014; abstracts should be submitted to the official UGRG conference email ugrg2014@gmail.com

The registration deadline will follow within 3-4 weeks through the UGRG website. Please register as early as possible - places will be limited to 50. Standard registration will be £75; for post-graduate students and unemployed, it will be £35.

Please contact Luke Binns (luke.binns@gmail.com) and Gabriel Silvestre (gabriel.silvestre.11@ucl.ac.uk) if you have any questions.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

АРТ ПРОСПЕКТ 2014 - September 25-28, 2014, St. Petersburg, Russia

Art Prospect is a large international public art festival organized by CEC ArtsLink, which will take place in St. Petersburg for the third time. For four days yards, gardens, squares and other public spaces in the city center will be filled with the works by contemporary artists.

This year «Art Prospect» is devoted to the discussion of ecological issues. The very genre of public art, art in the context of the urban environment, allows to speak convincingly on the most serious topics related to climate change, environmental protection, retention of biological and cultural diversity, competition between the ecosystems. Moreover, the authors do it very delicately, involving the audience into a many-sided dialogue, providing with information and inspiring for certain actions.

More than forty authors from Russia, Europe, USA, Australia, Armenia and Georgia will create their works using a variety of materials and techniques, including temporary installations, interactive media projects, collages and performances. Many projects contemplate the active participation of the local residents. The program of the festival also includes lectures and workshops on the use of recycled materials, dance classes, etc.

This year the festival joined the parallel program of the European Biennial of Contemporary Art «Manifesta 10».

The curator of the third «Art Prospect» festival is Kendal Henry – well-known specialist in the field of public art familiar with Russian art scene.

September 25-28, 2014, St. Petersburg, Russia

Art Prospect Festival

Global Art Lab's International Festival of Public Art
September 25-28, 2014, St. Petersburg, Russia
- See more at: http://cecartslink.org/projects/GAL/ArtProspect2014.html#sthash.7qF8DUBA.dpuf

Art Prospect Festival

Global Art Lab's International Festival of Public Art
September 25-28, 2014, St. Petersburg, Russia
- See more at: http://cecartslink.org/projects/GAL/ArtProspect2014.html#sthash.7qF8DUBA.dpufhttp://cecartslink.org/projects/GAL/ArtProspect2014.html

Friday, September 5, 2014

About Us - in the GSZ Newsletter Humboldt University of Berlin

CfP: Culture and Space - May 06-08, 2015 - Izmir, TURKEY

15th INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL STUDIES SYMPOSIUM
May 06-08, 2015 - Izmir, TURKEY
Culture and Space

Edward Soja in his book Postmodern Geographies says that “We must be insistently aware of how space can be made to hide consequences from us, how relations of power and discipline are inscribed into the apparently innocent spatiality of social life, how human geographies become filled with politics and ideology”. It is assumed that the spatiality of social life is under the threat and disguise of authoritarian ideologies and practices which may hide the realities of power relations on every level of space in a given culture and society or between the countries of the world. “Space” in the context of our symposium encompasses all sorts of space/places/domains/geographies that human cultural practices directly or indirectly share. The symposium seeks to explore all dialectics and realities of space and culture.

Since the nature of our symposium has traditionally been cross/interdisciplinary, research and studies from all disciplines in the social sciences along with relevant applied sciences are invited. We will have a limited number of Turkish sessions for those who would prefer to present in Turkish (no simultaneous translation will be available).

We welcome proposals for individual papers, entire sessions, presentations, performances, films, roundtables, workshops, conversations or alternative formats.

For further information:http://css.ege.edu.tr

Deadline for 250-word proposals (as abstracts): December 30, 2014

Please e-mail your proposal and a short BIO (50 words) to: egecss2015@gmail.com