[ecrea] CFP: Friction - an interdisciplinary conference on technology & resistance

Friction:

An interdisciplinary conference on technology & resistance

University of Nottingham

Thursday 8th May & Friday 9th May, 2014





Keynote talk by Pollyanna Ruiz (LSE)



With workshops led by: Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey; University of 
Leicester Technology Group; Jen Birks and John Downey; and Rachel Jacobs 
(Active Ingredient).



Current workshop themes include: evil media; data, digital leaks and 
political activism; hacklabs and artistic uses of data.



More TBC



Workshop and talk abstracts, and information about speakers will be 
appearing on our blog in the forthcoming weeks: 
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/criticalmoment/





Friction:

noun

[mass noun]

The resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over 
another:

· the action of one surface or object rubbing against another

· conflict or animosity caused by a clash of wills, temperaments, or 
opinions



Oxford English Dictionary, 2013



We are now living in a frictionless economy in which money, jobs and 
products can move around the world in the blink of an eye. And yet we 
have not moved to a frictionless society. Rather, many of the 
technologies that support the frictionless economy create various forms 
of friction in society. Taking a lead from the University of 
Nottingham’s Centre for Critical Theory’s Technology and Resistance 
research strand, we are interested in proposals for papers and workshops 
that explore the concept/metaphor of ‘friction’ as a starting point for 
exploring the relationship between everyday technologies and resistance; 
with resistance understood in both a politically empowering and an 
inhibitory sense. On the one hand, we’re interested in modes of 
organised resistance: of activist movements making use of, or reacting 
against, technological developments. However we’re concerned with 
resistance in a second sense: of technologies resisting their intended 
function, breaking down, being exploited by hackers or triggering 
unexpected socio-economic complications.



We invite people to use the concept of ‘friction’ as a route into 
exploring these themes, with potential topics for discussion including 
(but not limited to):

· Data and ethics

· Cultural shifts relating to the capture of data

· The vulnerability of software to hacking and surveillance

· Resistance to surveillance and data harvesting

· Activist uses of data, particularly the circulation of leaked material

· The politics of hacking

· The exploitation of ambiguity in software design by hackers

· Activist and everyday contestations of technological developments

· The sociological and cultural factors required for technologies to ‘work’

· Everyday and/or activist reappropriations of technology

· Tensions between new technologies and existing infrastructures



We are an interdisciplinary group of researchers, including academics 
from Geography, Business, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies and Media & 
Communications: so we welcome a diverse range of perspectives and 
approaches to this theme.



We encourage interactive presentation formats, and will allocate longer 
time-slots to workshops to accommodate these, but also have space for 
shorter 20 minute position papers.



Extended deadline for proposals: 1st March 2014

If you are interested in participating please submit a 250 word proposal 
for a workshop or paper, along with your name and current email address, 
to (centreforcriticaltheory /at/ gmail.com)



Please also feel free to contact us with more general enquiries, follow 
the Centre for Critical Theory’s Twitter account @criticaltheory





Dr Eva Giraud

Room C2B

Department of Culture, Film and Media

University of Nottingham

Nottingham

NG7 2RD





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