[ecrea] CFP: The Arts of Mediation

International Conference

The Arts of Mediation

CECC - Research Centre for Communication and Culture

3rd  PhD Net Conference/
Research Project: Tekné: Engendering Technology in the Modern World


LISBON, 17 - 19 March 2010



Mediation is a pivotal keyword to understand the 
way humans make sense of the world, how they 
create knowledge, communicate and relate to each 
other. Considering that the subject's relation to 
reality is never naïve but rather, as Heidegger 
argues, a struggle and meaning the outcome of 
that complex relationship, the conference wishes 
to address the multiple ways in which this 
association/appropriation is enacted and the way 
it shapes and is shaped by modernity. Just as the 
ancient muses figured and organized the creative 
life of the ancient world, so do in our late 
modern age the arts of mediation (literature, 
journalism, art, dance, film and the creative 
media in general) by means of its different 
technological apparatuses (writing, film, 
painting or embodied performances) organize the 
ways in which cultures and individuals relate and 
come to terms with the world and events surrounding them.
Mediation may, in fact, be understood in two 
different assertions. One is social-cognitive and 
refers to fact that knowledge is not a pure 
appearance out of an essentialized origin, but 
rather requires tools, depends on subjects to 
emerge and is socially and culturally contingent. 
Mediation is thus a process that may make use of 
several media and technologies to uphold its 
purposes. It may hence be mediatized, i.e. 
promoted and broadcasted by means of the news or 
creative media, but it is not reduced to it. On 
the other hand, mediation is a cultural-political 
tool, as it refers to strategies of negotiation, 
conciliation and intervention to bring about a 
resolution of conflict. In a certain way, the 
arts of mediation subsume the two assertions as 
they seek to negotiate meaning amongst 
conflicting parties, the event and the subject, 
witness or conveyor of the story, or because 
meaning and representation, as Foucault argues, 
are warring procedures that require mediation to 
be reconciled. The arts of mediation then, both 
as social technologies and as cultural processes, 
are framed by power structures, shaped by 
technological developments, inspired by creative 
modes, thread with emotional strategies, and 
thorn with ethical conflict which reflect the very mode of modernity.
The conference wishes to bring together scholars 
in the humanities and media studies in order to 
discuss the structure and impact of mediation in 
the praxis of meaning making in the modern world. 
Papers are welcome on the topics listed below, amongst others:
-       Keywords in media and culture: Mediation, Premediation and Remediation
-       The technologies of mediation: from writing to the new media
-       Memory and forms of mediation, representation, testimony
-       The ethics of mediation
-       Conflict and the art(s) of mediation
-       Mediating and remediating identities in the global world
-       Hybrid media and cultural hybridization
-       Gender and the technologies of mediation
-       Mediation in virtual spaces
-       Mediation, immersion and simulation
-       E-motion and mediation



Submissions must be sent by November 30, 2009 to 
www.artsofmediation.net and should consist of 
title, 300 word abstract and a short biographical note.



Venue:
CECC - Research Centre for Communication and Culture
http://www.cecc.com.pt/index_en.html
UCP
Palma de Cima
1649-023 LISBOA
PORTUGAL


Organising Committee
Isabel Capeloa Gil
Fernando Ilharco
Carla Ganito
Teresa Ferreira
Catarina Burnay
Patrícia Dias
Gonçalo Silva








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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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