The Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London invites proposals for Cultural Space, a conference to take place at the UEL Docklands Campus on Friday and Saturday, 18th and 19th October, 2013.
We are interested in presentations which address the problematics of space both as concept and as lived social reality, with a particular emphasis on the tension between spaces of control in the context of contemporary neoliberalism, spaces of resistance and the apocalyptic spaces which emerge from war, forced migration and the failures of consumer capitalism.
What are the politics of space in contemporary contexts? How can we re-think space beyond the public/private divide? How do spatial arts re-configure space and the way in which it is experienced? What new configurations of space may emerge from burgeoning forms of community? How do the theatres of contemporary war force a re-assessment of spatial concepts? Is it still possible for the notion of virtual space to function in opposition to the striated space of contemporary cities?
We would welcome proposals which take a novel approach to presentation, particularly those which include elements of performance or which make creative use of the spaces made available for the conference. Dimitris Papodopoulos (University of Leicester) and the independent artist Joanna Rajkowska have been confirmed as plenary speakers. Further plenary speakers to be confirmed. Topics may include (but are not limited to):
- Occupations and other resistant practices
- Squatter communities and displacement camps
- New theatres of war
- Art in/of the street
- Imagining extra-terrestrial space
- Utopias and heterotopias
- New imaginative architectures
- Psychogeography in the 21st century
- The space of the body and the body in space
- Digital architectures and virtual space
- Social networking as a new public sphere
- Hacking, hacktivism and other digital spatial incursions
- Cinema and post-urbanism
- Cartography and performance
- Class and social space
- Music scenes and spaces of community/expression
- The apocalyptic city
Full details will be available on our website culturalstudiesresearch.org in the near future. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted to either Debra Benita Shaw (d.shaw@uel.ac.uk) or Tony Sampson (sampson2@uel.ac.uk) on or before 15th April, 2013.