[Commlist] The Postdigital City for Post-Pandemic Times: free online conference

Attendance is free and all are welcome, but please register here: 
https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/about-us/research-events/2021/the-postdigital-city/ 



Organised by The Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University, UK.


‘The Postdigital City for Post-Pandemic Times’ will take place online 
over the course of two days:


Tuesday 15 June, 2021 (12:30pm – 6:20pm BST)

Wednesday 16 June, 2021 (10:30am – 2:50pm BST)


https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/areas-of-research/postdigital-cultures/cpc-2021-conference/ 




Keynote speakers:

Binna Choi - director of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons

Leslie Kern - Mount Allison University, author of /The Feminist City/ 
(Verso, 2020)


‘The Postdigital City for Post-Pandemic Times’


All cities can now be said to be postdigital since digital information 
processing has permeated nearly every aspect of their existence: 
communication, entertainment, education, energy, banking, health, 
transport, manufacturing, food, water supply. Yet cities today also face 
numerous /predigital/ problems: poverty,populationdensity, unemployment, 
racist state violence, segregation, social inequality, violence against 
women, climate breakdown and threats to public health posed by novel 
viruses. Given the funding cuts imposed by governments in the name of 
‘austerity’, a lot of cash-strapped cities have been forced to reduce 
their public infrastructure budgets. Britain has closed 800 of its 
public librariessince 2010, for example – that’s almost one fifth of the 
total. The coronavirus pandemic has only made the situation worse, and 
not just in the UK. Asurvey of 760 museum directorsby the American 
Alliance of Museums found that one third of their institutions may not 
reopen after the outbreak. As a result, the path has been left clear for 
private providers to enter spaces long considered the domain of the 
public sector. That many cities are planning for their post-Covid future 
by looking to for-profit businessesfor investment and infrastructure, 
often partnering with multinational data surveillance companies such as 
Amazon, Google and Uber, is all the more surprising given the virus has 
clearly exposed the danger of relying on the private sector. Doing so 
led to vaccines for diseases with pandemic potential not being developed 
in advance as businesses perceived them as having insufficient potential 
to generate profits for their owners, shareholders and investors. The 
fight against a pandemic only works if /everyone/ /everywhere/ is 
vaccinated, not just those who can afford to pay for the privilege. The 
same can be said of other aspects of municipal health and welfare. 
Cities are only really fit to live in if they provide /all/ of their 
human and nonhuman inhabitants –– people, animals, plants – with a 
decent quality of life. The climate and environmental crises have made 
this clear.

How can we reimagine our cities for post-pandemic times? And what role 
can postdigital media, from AI and FemTech to augmented reality and 360 
video play in such public placemaking? This conference will examine how 
artists, activists, designers, theorists, practitioners, publishers and 
writers can work together (albeit not necessarily without disagreement 
and dissensus) to intervene in and transform cities for the 21^st 
century world after austerity, the Covid outbreak and the recent 
Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter and violence against women 
protests. It will explore how postdigital cities, and the cultural 
institutions within them, can be reshaped, including through the 
provision of a diverse range of co-created and co-curated alternatives 
to those currently being offered by the state and corporate realms. It 
will show how urban citizens and communities can use the infrastructural 
tools and resources generated by advocates of open access, free and 
open-source software, p2p filesharing, copyfarleft, ‘piracy’ and the 
anti-privatized knowledge commons; and how they can build their own 
anticapitalist,antiracist orantiheteropatriarchal versions of galleries, 
libraries, archives and museums. By cultivating conditions for a wide 
range of situated ideas, initiatives and projects, the conference will 
look to generate a nonharmonious pluriverse of more socially just and 
environmentally sustainable ways of living and working in the 
postdigital city.

The conference includes panels on:

Being Public: placemaking with the whistle-blower, the heckler, the 
killjoy and the protestor / 'She Was Just Walking Home': on violence 
against women / Publishing and Place: situated knowledges in art and 
academia / The Immersive City: co-creating with 360 video, augmented and 
virtual reality / AI and Algorithmic Cultures: from predictive policing 
to intelligent assistants on phones and in homes.


Participants include:


Adrienne Evans, Debra Ferreday, Devi Kolli, Gary Hall, Ian Bruff, Ian 
Forrester, Jacqueline Cawston, Janneke Adema, Kevin Walker, Lena 
Wånggren, Lindsay Balfour, Maria Economou, Matt Davies, Mel Jordan, 
Nathan O'Donnell, Priya Rajasekar, Ravin Raori, Sylvester Arnab, Vidushi 
Marda//


Find out more and sign up here: 
https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/about-us/research-events/2021/the-postdigital-city/ 



The conference webpage is here:

https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/areas-of-research/postdigital-cultures/cpc-2021-conference/ 

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