Terms of Media 2: Actions

Part two of the Leuphana University and Brown University collaboration “Terms of Media” is taking place in October in Providence, US. I am extremely glad to be part of it, talking in the section “Remain”. If all goes as planned, the talk will move from the “remains” or “remainder” in the sense of the archival and the epistemological to emphasize issues of remains of media technologies in actioned situations. Remains are not merely of the archival, but part of a design brief with a hands-on relation to epistemology; labs, studios that address the remain as in the context of media archaeology but also design, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly. The remainder becomes further detached from a nostalgic object to an issue that relates to contemporary ecologies of architecture, extended urbanism, supply chains and the “alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness” (Unknown Fields). I also will try to conclude with a mention of the methodological and thematic dilemma of infrastructural remains with a hat tips to Shannon Mattern and Unknown Fields (Liam Young & Kate Davies).

Below more info about the conference!

poster 1 1000

TERMS OF MEDIA 2: Actions
Brown University
October 8-10, 2015
with Marcell Mars, Rick Prelinger, Lisa Parks, Claus Pias, Timon Beyes, Reinhold Martin, Jussi Parikka, Rebecca Schneider, Goetz Bachmann, Lisa Nakamura, Gertrud Koch, Bernard Stiegler, Finn Brunton, Mercedes Bunz, Wolfgang Hagen, Eyal Weizman, Kara Keeling, Luciana Parisi
Please forward any questions to termsofmedia@brown.edu
RSVP HERE: https://goo.gl/csrNhR

An international conference to analyze and reshape the terms—limits, conditions, periods, relations, phrases—of media.

“Me­dia de­ter­mi­ne our si­tua­ti­on,” Fried­rich Kitt­ler in­fa­mous­ly wro­te in his in­tro­duc­tion to Gra­mo­pho­ne, Film, Ty­pewri­ter. Alt­hough this dic­tum is cer­tain­ly ex­tre­me – and me­dia ar­chaeo­lo­gy has been cri­ti­qued for being over­ly dra­ma­tic and fo­cu­sed on tech­no­lo­gi­cal de­ve­lop­ments – it pro­pels us to keep thin­king about me­dia as set­ting the terms for which we live, so­cia­li­ze, com­mu­ni­ca­te, or­ga­ni­ze, do scho­lar­ship etc. Af­ter all, as Kitt­ler con­ti­nued in his opening state­ment al­most 30 ye­ars ago, our si­tua­ti­on, “in spi­te or be­cau­se” of me­dia, “de­ser­ves a de­scrip­ti­on.” What, then, are the terms of me­dia? And, what is the re­la­ti­ons­hip bet­ween the­se terms and de­ter­mi­na­ti­on?

This conference will serve as the concluding half of a two-part project, following an earlier conference at Leu­pha­na Uni­ver­si­ty in Lüne­burg, Ger­ma­ny, and will be followed by a se­ries of pu­bli­ca­ti­ons ba­sed on each which will seek to re­po­se and up­date these fun­da­men­tal ques­ti­ons of me­dia theo­ry: Does our si­tua­ti­on in­di­ca­te a new term, un­ders­tood as tem­po­ral shifts of me­dia­tic con­di­tio­n­ing, which de­ser­ves a re-de­scrip­ti­on? How and on what terms are me­dia chan­ging, re­flec­ting chan­ges in me­dia its­elf? What are the terms of con­di­ti­ons that we ne­go­tia­te as sub­jects of me­dia? How do the terms of me­dia theo­ry re­la­te to such con­di­ti­ons? What are the terms of con­di­ti­ons of me­dia theo­ry itself?

Thursday Keynotes to be held in the Martinos Auditorium, Granoff Center:
154 Angell Street
Providence, Rhode Island 02906 USA

Remaining talks to be held at Pembroke Hall:
172 Meeting Street
Providence, Rhode Island 02906 USA

Schedule is as follows:

Thursday, October 8, 2015
Conference Introduction, 7 p.m.
• Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor and Chair, Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
Keynote Address, 7:15 p.m.
• Marcell Mars, Public Library Project
• Rick Prelinger, Professor of Film and Digital Media and Board Member of the Internet Archive, University of California, Santa Cruz
Opening Reception, 9 p.m.

Friday, October 9, 2015
Session 1: Structure, 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
• Lisa Parks, Professor of Film and Media, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Claus Pias, Professor for Media Theory and Media History, Institute of Culture and
Aesthetics of Digital Media, Leuphana
Session 2: Organize, 11:45 a.m. -1:15 p.m.
• Timon Beyes, Professor of Design, Innovation and Aesthetics, Copenhagen Business
School
• Reinhold Martin, Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia
University in the City of New York
Lunch, 1:15 p.m. -2:30 p.m.
• Presenters and invited guests
Session 3: Remain, 2:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m.
• Jussi Parikka, Professor in Media & Design, University of Southampton
• Rebecca Schneider, Professor, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University
Session 4: Work, 4:15 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
• Goetz Bachmann, Professor for Digital Cultures, Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of
Digital Media, Leuphana
• Lisa Nakamura, Professor, Departments of American Cultures and Screen Arts and
Cultures, University of Michigan
Conference Dinner, 7 p.m.
• Presenters and invited guests

Saturday, October 10, 2015
Session 1: Animate, 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
• Gertrud Koch, Visiting Professor, Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
• Bernard Stiegler, Head, Institut de recherche et d’innovation, Centre Georges Pompidou
Session 2: Communicate, 11:45 a.m. -1:15 p.m.
• Finn Brunton, Assistant Professor, Department of Media, Culture and Communication,
New York University
• Mercedes Bunz, Senior Lecturer, Communication and Media Research
Institute, University of Westminster
Lunch, 1:15 p.m. -2:30 p.m.
• Presenters and invited guests
Session 3: Forecast, 2:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m.
• Wolfgang Hagen, Professor, Institute of the Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media,
Leuphana University
• Eyal Weizman, Professor of Spatial & Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University London
Session 4: Mediate, 4:15 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
• Kara Keeling, Associate Professor of Critical Studies and American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California
• Luciana Parisi, Reader, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London

  1. No comments yet.
  1. No trackbacks yet.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: