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Indeterminate Futures / The Future of Indeterminacy
Transdisciplinary Conference 13 – 15 November 2020, University of Dundee Keynotes: Karen Barad, Franco Berardi, Xin Wei Sha, Vladimir Tasić The future is no longer seen as open. It’s seen as precarious on the one hand, and technologically over-determined on the other. Economic uncertainty, the rise of the risk society, the culture of fear and neoliberal necropolitics are seen as a serious threat. The risk society attributes all hazards to human decisions; the culture of fear cultivates the tendency to catastrophise; neoliberal necropolitics welds technology to the exploitation of natural and social reserves in an irreversible way. Amidst the general climate of ‘instrumentarianism’ (Zuboff 2019), paradoxes like ‘the cancelled future’ (Berardi 2014) or ‘automated deregulation’ (Steyerl 2019) are synonymous with permanent crisis, disorder, and the 'end of free will' (Han 2017). Indeterminacy – often associated with but not identical to unknowability and liminality – doesn’t merely defy the ‘order-disorder’, ‘certainty-uncertainty’ binary creating a ‘both-and’ and ‘neither-nor’ space in which a cat can be both dead and alive, as in Schrödinger’s experiment. Indeterminacy is a self-perpetuating dynamic of change with no spatial or temporal constancy – a vibrant multiplicity of parallel potentialities and realities. Initially derived from Bohr’s quantum indeterminacy, Gödel's undecidability, and Stengers and Prirogine's non-linear dynamics, indeterminacy upsets stable structures and ossified power regimes which is why it was embraced as a liberating epistemic force by many 20th century artists and theorists: Jarry, Boulez, Cage, Ichinayagi, Situationists International, Xenakis, Fluxus, Knowbotic Research, Derrida, Guattari, Hayles, Varela and Latour, to mention but a few. In the digital age, in accelerated, informational capitalism, the situation is very different. First, permanent change is the rule. Second, art, culture, and (bio)politics are no longer separate; they are fused in the infosphere. Consisting of datification, algorithmic predetermination, cultural production, symbolic and affective regimes, the infosphere has modified the language of thought and action. It has also modified the structure of reality. The aim of this transdisciplinary conference is to evaluate the current and future epistemic and ontological potential of spatio-temporal, cultural-mnemonic and socio-political forms of indeterminacy. To this end, we ask questions such as:
We invite proposals for 20 min papers, provocations, creative contributions, re-enactments of scientific experiments and proposals for curated panels from the fields of art, media (theory), physics, mathematics, philosophy, cultural studies, memory studies, digital humanities, and anthropology. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
Panel proposal deadline: 20 April 2020 (1000 w proposal + 450 speaker bios) Individual presentation deadline: 1 May 2020 (350 w abstract + 150 bio) NEW DUE DATE 15th JUNE. Notification of Acceptance: 10 May 2020 Please email abstracts with ‘Indeterminacy Conference’ in the subject to indeterminacy@dundee.ac.uk This conference is hosted by the AHRC-funded project The Future of Indeterminacy: Datification, Memory, Biopolitics.  We are pleased to annouce that papers arising from our 2018 Temporal Belongings conference The Social Life of Time are now out in Time & Society. See a wonderful selection of papers including Charles W. Mills keynote "The chronopolitics of racial time".
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: The social life of time Michelle Bastian , Lisa Baraitser , Michael J Flexer , Andrew R Hom and Laura Salisbury The chronopolitics of racial time Charles W Mills Waiting as a redemptive state: The ‘Lampedusa in Hamburg’ and the offer from the Hamburg government Kari Anne K Drangsland Jaffa’s times: Temporalities of dispossession and the advent of natives’ reclaimed time Yara Sa’di-Ibraheem The Trump administration’s politics of time: The temporal dynamics that enable Trump’s interests to determine American foreign policy Christopher McIntosh Times of power, knowledge and critique in the work of Foucault Jürgen Portschy Seizure aesthetics: Temporal regimes and medical technology in epilepsy diagnosis Megh Marathe The ‘telegraphic schizophrenic manner’: Psychosis and a (non)sense of time Michael J Flexer The secret of quick thinking: The invention of mental speed in America, 1890–1925 Justin Tyler Clark No time to waste – How the social practices of temporal organisation change in the transition from work to retirement Anna Wanka From Combahee resistance to the Confederate : Black feminist temporalities and white supremacy Tanya Ann Kennedy Thinking about the meaning of time among temporary labor migrants in Israel Robin A Harper and Hani Zubida Ruins of pre-gentrification: Schrotthäuser and urban standstill in a postindustrial city Felix Ringel Time as a source of struggle and resilience in homeless families Peter Fraenkel The social life of time and methods: Studying London’s temporal architectures Ella Harris and Rebecca Coleman  In March we held a three day pilot workshop to start testing out some approaches for our next conference. You can see the agenda here and I've also written up some longer reflections over on my personal blog.
In the context of the global pandemic, we invite contributions of time-related writings and projects emerging out of your current experience now. Locked in a heightened sense of the present moment, how has our attention to and expectation of time changed? With increased uncertainty towards the future, how are temporal perspectives shifting and what new concepts are taking shape?
The Anthropocene – the critical era marking human impacts on the environment – designates a duration with fuzzy boundaries. As a geologic era, it remains unofficial and without an origin or ‘Golden Spike’; as a historical period, its span, causes, and definitive questions remain open to conjecture. As a juncture characterized by the entanglement of disparate timescales (biological, ecological, geologic, cosmic), the Anthropocene is less a distinct “time” than a plurality of temporalities. With urgency, we invite scholars and artists to reflect on Anthropocenic temporalities in a variety of modalities, welcoming projects and writing in any creative style or critical genre. We seek to assemble a rich range of contributions from emerging and established writers, who share concern and commitment to the Anthropocenic situation. Contributions are invited for a special issue of Kronoscope: Journal for the Study of Time (Brill) entitled “Anthropocenic Temporalities.” As an interdisciplinary journal directed by The International Society for the Study of Time, Kronoscope welcomes work from all fields. Proposals (abstracts of 250-500 words) or completed work may be sent to the co-editors: Paul Harris (paul.harris@lmu.edu) and Emily DiCarlo (emily.dicarlo@mail.utoronto.ca). Submissions due: June 1, 2020 (11:59 p.m. PST) Paul Harris, Professor of English at Loyola Marymount University and co-editor of SubStance, was President of the International Society for the Study of Time 2004-2013. An interdisciplinary scholar and artist, his current work revolves around stone in contexts including installations, garden design, viewing stone display, geopoetry, and ecosophy. Emily DiCarlo is an artist and writer whose interdisciplinary work applies methodologies that often produce collaborative, site-specific projects. Evidenced through video, performance and installation, her research connects the infrastructure of time with the intimacy of duration. She is currently pursuing her Master of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto and is the 2019-2020 recipient of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Scholarship. Climate Change Temporalities: Narratives, Representations and Practices
A conference on humanistic approaches to climate change University of Bergen, Norway, 3-5 August 2020 [NB Date change for this conference from 5-7 to 3-5 August] When we think about climate change, what first springs to mind is probably carbon emissions, extreme weather, draughts, floods, and melting icebergs. But climate change is just as much about time and timescales, pace and acceleration: Climate scientists incorporate lessons from the geological past in modeling possible future climates, politicians are coping with questions of how to make future societies resilient, and environmentalists are calling for immediate action. Climate change challenges established human understandings of time. Macro-scales such as geological time and historical time become entangled, but just as important is the way changes in climate affect everyday life reasoning, based in personal experiences and immediacy. Climate change also interferes with family life, turning hopes and dreams for the future of “our children” into fear and worries. This conference will approach how the wide range of more or less entangled temporalities of a changing climate are narrated, represented or expressed through performances and practices. We welcome papers discussing temporalities of climate change both from a historical and a contemporary perspective. The papers may examine quite different societal fields, such as everyday life, art, education, heritage, politics and science, for instance on topics such as:
Send an abstract (maximum 300 words) for a 20 minutes presentation to: futurenow@uib.no before March 1, 2020. The abstract must include: your name, affiliation and email address. For more information see https://future.w.uib.no/conference/ Terrains of Time: Modern Temporality(ies) in Social Sciences and Beyond
An International Workshop, Bar Ilan University, Israel June 14-15, 2020 Time has been studied, researched, and thought over for thousands of years and across cultures. In recent decades, some accounts of the role of time and temporality in human (and non-human) experiences proved fruitful for contemporary thought and research. Those who dared to ask St. Augustine's renowned question—"what, then, is time?"— developed vital and fascinating insights about human and non-human nature(s), cultures, societies, environments, emotions, personalities, and politics. A nuance- sensitive understanding of the social, cultural, and political dimensions of time is of immense potential. Nevertheless, time as a category is an understudied topic in the traditional humanities and social sciences. Even though Time Studies is now institutionalized in academia (societies, journals, etc.), the field has hardly crystalized into an organized body of knowledge with its own defined and structured vocabulary, working assumptions, controversies, and research agendas, to be reflected in other disciplines. Today, the scholar of space, body and other similar categories can draw from these fields' respective bodies of knowledge. But this is not always the case with Time Studies. Is it a mere problem of institutionalization, or rather does it have to do with Augustin's wonder, i.e. with the elusiveness of the concept of time? The international workshop "Terrains of Time" is aimed at developing an integrative and interdisciplinary conversation about time as a social and cultural phenomenon, while accounting for global and local contexts. Topics: ¨ Time and temporality: definitions, analytical frameworks, narratives, and symbolizations. ¨ Time and related categories: space, body, and subjectivity. ¨ Time and humanity; time in (or after) the Anthropocene. ¨ Time and the social: The role of time in assembling and disassembling individuals and groups, personalities and collectives, actors and networks; measurement, standardization, multi-temporalities, synchronization, and desynchronization. ¨ Time and power: social and political struggles waged about time as a resource, for example regarding status, gender, and labor; time in public policy, social stratification (e.g. age stratification), evaluation and criticism; Time regimes; Global, local, and networked temporalities. ¨ Time and the market: commodification, trading, and soliciting time; Time poverty and affluence. ¨ Micro-interactions: waiting, rushing, getting prepared, aging, time wasting, "quality time," transitions, cheating on time. ¨ Rituals of time, times of rituals. ¨ Time and morality: temporal distributive justice. ¨ Time in ecological challenges and technological developments. ¨ Risk, readiness, and uncertainty (e.g. in future studies). ¨ Time and cultural relativity: Are there groups that experience "more" or "less" time, or groups that have "more" or "less" temporality? Do certain groups care about time more than others? ¨ Time and "the moderns": was the modern period embedded in "temporalization of the experienced life", as maintained by Koselleck and echoed in Latour's conceptualization of the modern? Did a "temporal turn" take place in history, and/or in theory? On the other hand, are industrialized societies poorer in time (while being affluent in other resources), as common wisdom so often holds? The workshop will explore the social, cultural, political, economic, human, and environmental dimensions of time and temporality(ies) from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including, but not limited to: philosophy, literature, psychology, geography, history, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, cultural studies, and science and technology studies. The workshop will take place at Bar Ilan University on June 14-15, 2020. No registration fee is required, but we cannot assist with travel expenses. Confirmed guest speakers: ¨ Barbara Adam, Emerita Professor, Cardiff University and Affiliate Scholar, IASS Potsdam ¨ Judy Wajcman, Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics ¨ Frédéric Worms, Professor of Philosophy, École normale supérieure Abstracts of up to 300 words for a 20-minute paper, with a short bio, may be sent to: terrainsoftime2019@gmail.com no later than January 15, 2020. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by February 15, 2020. The international workshop is organized by the Research Group "It's about Time", sponsored by Bar Ilan's Rector, Prof. Miriam Faust; and under the auspices of the Bar Ilan Center for Cultural Sociology. Organizing committee (alphabetical order): Anat Leibler, Miri Rozmarin, Hizky Shoham, Dror Yinon (Interdisciplinary Studies Unit, Bar Ilan University). The Fifth Biennial Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) will be held at University College London in the Summer of 2020. The conference’s theme – Futures – aims to engage seriously and critically with the often stated aims of heritage to address the concerns of future generations, whilst also asking participants to think expansively and creatively about the future of critical heritage studies as an emergent field of focus across a range of academic disciplines.
Sessions, discussion panels, papers, posters and films will explore a range of issues, including (but not limited to): the future of critical heritage studies; newly emerging concepts, themes and methods for the study of heritage; the future of heritage management, governance and diplomacy; evolving and nascent forms of heritage, and how they might be recognised; heritage as future-making; the “time” of heritage and its relationship with the past, present and future; future impacts of climatological, ecological, economic, political and social change on heritage; future relations of natural and cultural heritage in the light of the recognition of the Anthropocene; and the future of heritage itself. The local conference organising committee has identified a series of sub-themes which will represent distinct threads through the conference, and session organisers and paper proposers are asked to select one of these sub-themes when they submit their proposals. All proposals must identify at least one relevant conference sub-theme upon submission. Please contact the relevant sub-theme convenor(s) for any queries about a specific theme. The deadline for the call for curated sessions, individual papers, posters, films and discussion panels is midnight UK time on the 31st October 2019. See https://achs2020london.com/submissions/ for full details. DEADLINE EXTENDED — SEPT 15, 2019
Our seventh event is taking place on 22-23 November, 2019. It will be our first event in the US, and is being organized by Zach Kaiser (Michigan State University) and Erin Glass (University of California, San Diego) with coordinating assistance from Filip Vostal (Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences) and Mark Carrigan (Cambridge University, UK). In theory, the academy is an institution of research and learning, intended to advance human knowledge and educate citizens. In practice, however, the academy appears evermore as a site of prospecting, or a source of raw material for aggressive forms of neoliberal mining and extraction. Through various speculative and extractive behaviors, academic practice is increasingly managed and shaped by internal and external forces as a means of “optimizing” academic activities and making them more efficient in order to cut costs and maximize revenue. As is well documented in the growing literature of critical university studies, this prospecting is manifest in the adjunctification of academic labor, the rise of administration, the continuous increase of student tuition, and the perpetuation of the student debt crisis that has engulfed the United States. We can also see prospecting in the ruthless capture and privatization of scholarly research by scholarly publishers at the cost of public access to research that the public has in fact already paid for. Prospecting is also at play in the academy’s collision course with surveillance/platform/cognitive capitalism: the university’s intellectual products have been transformed into valuable data to be mined, packaged, sold, and ultimately controlled by IT and ed tech capitalists in their pursuit of profit. Though these extractive and neoliberal processes are not unique to the academy, their presence in institutions dedicated to learning has implications for academic subjectivities and the institutions themselves. Building on the work of past Accelerated Academy symposia, the 7th edition proposes the concept of “prospecting” as a productive tool to think through the future of academic life, labor, and outcomes. Prospecting as a concept may help us broaden the discourses about academia, and shine light on the different economic interests, technical assemblages, and affective regimes that shape its activities. We are also, however, committed to the challenge of identifying prospects of autonomy and liberation that are still within the academy despite its compromised state, and thinking through the strategies that academics might use to better take advantage of them. We encourage contributors to consider the various material and social connotations carried by the term “prospecting,” and the way it might help us develop a robust analysis of life in the accelerated academy and the high stakes of our contemporary moment. Topics might include:
We welcome contributions (ranging from paper presentations to artistic projects, hands-on sessions, projections, tours, etc) from anyone who is interested in and passionate about these topics. We will also do our best to accommodate remote presentations/projects via video conferencing or other possibilities. Submit a 500-word abstract using the Google Form linked below by September 15, 2019. Questions? Email Zach Kaiser (kaiserza [at] msu [dot] edu) and Erin Glass (erglass [at] ucsd [dot] edu). You can submit to the CFP here: https://forms.gle/QHhQUQ6cLkHjut8KA https://accelerated.academy/prospecting-extraction-speculation-and-liberation-in-the-accelerated-academy/ The CELA is pleased to announce the Call for Abstracts for the 2020 Council of Educators in Landscape ArchitectreAnnual Conference, 100 Years of CELA: Deep Time
Abstract Submission Deadline: Midnight, September 16, 2019 The Conference will be held from March 18-21 at the Louisville Marriott Downtown in Louisville, Kentucky. Submit an abstract. The deadline to submit abstracts is Sept. 16, 2019, 12:00 am, Author's time zone. Go to https://www.openconf.org/CELA2020/papers/openconf.php and review the conference overview, submission guidelines, and new information about abstract submissions and registration, including student submissions, new track themes, and first author responsibilities. When done, scroll down to find Authors, click on submit an abstract to fill in the requested information. IMPORTANT: To make edits to your abstract, log-in using your Abstract ID# (not your email) and your created password. Sign up to be an Abstract Reviewer. Go to https://www.openconf.org/CELA2020/papers/openconf.php and scroll down to Review and Program Committees. Enter revkey in the Keycode Box, and press Enter. You may sign up to review abstracts in one or more CELA tracks. Once all the abstracts are assigned, you will receive a notice to begin your reviews, as well as instructions on completing the reviews. Find The Conference Overview and Submission Guidelines here. The CELA 2020 website is still under construction. Please check back for updates on registration, lodging, and field sessions: http://thecela.org/cela-2020/ Questions regarding abstract submissions: cela2020.louisville@gmail.com Questions regarding the conference: director@thecela.org Call For Papers: /MC Journal/ ‘Time’*
Nearly 50 years on from Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, contemporary society finds itself in a new technological age where time is taking on a turbulent and elusive edge. We are reconciling a coexistence of distinct but simultaneous temporalities through digital media, and consequently there is a multiplicity of ways of being in time; a key aspect of our contemporaneity. According to Terry Smith, our contemporaneity is characterised “by the insistent presentness of multiple, often incompatible temporalities accompanied by the failure of all candidates that seek to provide the overriding temporal framework – be it modern, historical, spiritual, evolutionary, geological, scientific, globalizing, planetary… Everything about time these days – and therefore about place, subjectivity, and sociality – is at once intensely here, is slipping, or has become artefactual”. With Smith in mind, time today becomes evasive, contradictory and antonymous while forming a sense of urgency around the changing present. This issue of M/C Journal seeks to unpack the nuances of contemporaneity in digital society today. *Areas of investigation may include but are not limited to:* * Contemporaneity as the condition in which we grapple the present in a time of social, political and ecological turbulence * Conceptualisations of time in neoliberal contexts * Temporal rationalisations with contemporary media and technology, including but not limited to wearable technologies and GPS tracking devices * Technology and efficiency * Somatechnical approaches to the body, media, and time * Speculative futures with digital media * Mediating the present * Forecasting and modelling futures in the 21st Century Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument. Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography). All articles will be double-blind refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition). *Details* Article deadline: 4 Oct. 2019 Release date: 4 Dec. 2019 Editors: Christina Chau and Laura Glitsos Please submit articles through this Website. Send any enquiries to time@journal.media-culture.org.au |
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