[Commlist] CFP Mediating Scale – Conference

/Online conference:/Mediating Scale, 16-18th June 2022

/Deadline for extended abstracts:/Sunday April 3rd 2022

/Conference website: /www.mediatingscale.com <http://www.mediatingscale.com>

/Confirmed keynote speakers:/

Prof Benjamin Bratton (University of California, San Diego)

Prof Kathryn Yusoff (Queen Mary University of London)

Dr Joshua DiCaglio (Texas A&M University)

Dr Zachary Horton (University of Pittsburgh)

Dr Bognor Konior (NYU Shanghai)

Dr Thomas Moynihan (University of Oxford)

The problem of scale has historically been discussed primarily within 
the confines of specific disciplinary contexts (biology, geography, 
mathematics, etc.), however it is increasingly emerging as a 
transdisciplinary concern. Similarly to the ways in which contemporary 
problems exceed disciplinary boundaries, and require heterogeneous 
approaches in order to be productively understood, the future 
orientation of our strategies for addressing those problems must engage 
with the full scalar spectrum of our planetary existence. Global crises 
such as pandemics or climate change disturb the human comfort of the 
mesoscale and require us to grapple with the underlying material 
reality, including molecular as well as global processes.

The COVID-19 pandemic proved that the biological, chemical, and 
epidemiological reality is indifferent to the cultural and political 
narratives conjectured by the human vectors of transmission. A 
post-pandemic world needs to learn the lessons from this ‘revenge of the 
real’ (Bratton, 2021) and recognise the complexity of the world which 
cannot be reduced to myopic projections and illusions. As Dipesh 
Chakrabarty points out: ‘the coming together of human and nonhuman 
scales produces the political in the form of a paradox that calls into 
question previous ways of thinking about and using that category’ (2021, 
p. 8). As global society is affected by ‘mega processes’, our 
orientation towards the future should be guided by reason, and a 
planetary politics which exceeds the logics of the nation-state and 
includes the whole physical universe (Mbembe, 2019).

In order to access different scalar perspectives, humans have always 
constructed mediating devices. Instruments such as the telescope or the 
microscope provided an insight into the scale of reality beyond human 
visual perception, and demonstrated that ‘the invisible makes up a 
continuum of reality with the visible’ (Blumenberg, 1987, p. 618). More 
recent examples of scalar media include the James Webb Space Telescope, 
mediating the spatial and temporal scale of the universe through an 
analysis of infrared light, as well as potentially shedding light on the 
local condition of far-off planets. It contributes to a wider process in 
which scientists use numerical data from telescopes and satellites to 
help imagine worlds and places which can be made sense of on a human 
scale (Messeri, 2016). Computational technologies also help us 
conceptualise some of the most pressing scalar problems. Inequalities 
related to labour relations and the distribution of resources can be 
traced through the mineral materialities of media devices and the 
cartographies of electronic waste (Parikka, 2015), whilst the concept of 
‘climate change’ is an epistemological accomplishment of planetary-scale 
computation (Bratton, 2019). The history of media and technologies is a 
history of evolving modes and scales of perception and knowledge, and 
cultural texts such as /Powers of Ten, Fantastic Voyage, Alice in 
Wonderland/, and /Gulliver’s Travels/ have been discussed as motivating 
thinking about scale (Horton, 2013, 2020; DiCaglio, 2020, 2021). Recent 
scholarship has also emphasized the necessity for developing a theory 
and a vocabulary of scale itself, foregrounding the ongoing negotiations 
between scalar alterity and scalar access (Horton, 2020), and placing 
scale ‘at the intersection of a transformation of the world and a 
transformation of ourselves’ (DiCaglio, 2021, p. 9).

With this conference, our ambition is to map the broad spectrum of 
frameworks and attitudes towards scale, reflecting on how scalar 
thinking should orient our visions towards the future. We are interested 
in the role of scalar media, technologies, scientific theories, models 
and concepts in confronting the scalar disjunction between human sensory 
and cognitive capacities, and the scale of reality independent of our 
perception. We believe these questions are crucial to developing the 
multi-scalar thinking required to address some of the most urgent global 
issues including automation, planetary governance, or the climate 
crisis. This conference will therefore explore ways of framing the 
problem of mediating scale, and the stakes involved in addressing 
epistemological barriers to facing contemporary problems at an 
appropriate scale.

We welcome contributions from across disciplines whose work is relevant 
to the question of mediating scale.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  * approaches to scale in media studies
  * history and archaeology of scalar media
  * politics of scale in visual cultures
  * scale and political tactics (including local vs global organising)
  * planetary politics and governance
  * existential risks, including climate change
  * the science and politics of geoengineering
  * scientific models and model-world relations
  * reductionism, antireductionism, and complexity theory
  * theories of scale, rhetoric of scale
  * timescales, geologic time, deep time, longtermism

/Submission guidelines:/

We are inviting submissions for 30-minute talks in English that address 
the conference theme.

Please send an extended abstract of 600-900 words and a short biography 
to (mediatingscale /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(mediatingscale /at/ gmail.com)>. The 
deadline for submissions is Sunday April 3rd 2022. Responses will be 
sent out in mid-April.

/Conference details:/

This online conference will be free to attend but registration will be 
required. The conference will be streamed live with recordings of the 
keynote presentations available afterwards on YouTube. For more 
information, please see the conference website: www.mediatingscale.com 
<http://www.mediatingscale.com>and if you have any questions, please 
email (mediatingscale /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(mediatingscale /at/ gmail.com)>

Organised by Oliver Kenny (Institute of Communication Studies (ISTC), 
Université Catholique de Lille) and Magdalena Krysztoforska (University 
of Nottingham).

The event is hosted and funded by the Institute of Communication Studies 
(ISTC), Université Catholique de Lille.

/Bibliography: /

Blumenberg, H. (1987). /The Genesis of the Copernican World/. MIT Press.

Bratton, B. H. (2019). /The Terraforming/. Strelka Press.

Bratton, B. H. (2021). /The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a 
Post-Pandemic World/. Verso.

Chakrabarty, D. (2021). /The Climate of History in a Planetary Age/. The 
University of Chicago Press.

DiCaglio, J. (2020). Scale Tricks and God Tricks, or The Power of Scale 
in/Powers of Ten/. /Configurations/, 28(4), 459–490.

DiCaglio, J. (2021). /Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry/. 
University of Minnesota Press.

Horton, Z. (2013). Collapsing Scale: Nanotechnology and Geoengineering 
as Speculative Media. In K. Konrad, C. Coenen, A. Dijkstra, C. Milburn, 
& H. van Lente (Eds.), /Shaping Emerging Technologies: Governance, 
Innovation, Discourse/ (pp. 203–218). IOS Press / AKA.

Horton, Z. (2020). /The Cosmic Zoom: Scale, Knowledge, and Mediation/. 
The University of Chicago Press.

Mbembe, A. (2019). Bodies as Borders. />From the European South: A 
Transdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies/, 4, 5–18.

Messeri, L. (2016). /Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of 
Other Worlds/. Duke University Press.

Parikka, J. (2015). /A Geology of Media/. University of Minnesota Press.


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