Archive for calls, 2021

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

Mon Jun 14 12:53:39 GMT 2021






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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