Kategorie-Archiv: conference///konferenz

conference///konferenz

Lisbon : Latencies

IV Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture, Latencies | Europe 1914-2014, 30. 06.-05.07.2014 Lisbon, Portugal

Over the past century, Europe has been a site of contradiction. Marked, on the one hand, by the utmost explosions of violence, it has also given rise to the most peaceful post-national political project in modern times. It has been a haven of peace and a locus of disorder and violence, giving vent to experimentation, transgression and creation, while preserving tradition and enforcing normativity.

01.07. 2014, 16:00 – Raul Gschrey (GCSC – JLU Giessen):
„Disappearing Boundaries and Latent New Frontiers: Contemporary Arts and the Construction of European Borders“
Catholic University of Portugal – Library Building

Developed within the larger context of the European Project Culture@Work, the 2014 Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture addresses artistic latency in Europe. Latency periods are defined as states of transition pre-dating structured change and characterized by indefinition as well as what Freud considered a repression of desire and a return to normativity. Weiterlesen →

conference///konferenz, identifiction

Ambiguities & Asymmetries

“Ambiguities & Asymmetries”, Review of the SSN Conference, Barcelona, 2014

The bi-annual conference of the Surveillance Studies Network 2014 takes place in the centre of Barcelona, on the campus of the University of Barcelona and the adjoining cultural institution CCCB. This year’s conference’s topic opens the floor to discussions of “Asymmetries and Ambiguities” in Surveillance Studies. The attention for the conference is unusual, not only in academia, as it becomes obvious in the comparably large number of 170 participants, but also in exceptional public and media attention. This surely has to do with the revelations of Edward Snowden and the so-called NSA scandal, which have proved true or surpassed the often dismissed observations of the surveillance studies community. Here especially “asymmetries” come to the fore: between an all-encompassing state-run surveillance assemblage, drawing on private sources, on the one side and disempowered individuals on the other.

In the evening panel discussion (videos available online) with Caspar Bowden (a privacy advocate and former Microsoft executive), Katarzyna Szymielewicz (human rights lawyer, Panoptykon Foundation), and Ben Wizner (Snowden’s lawyer) who is participating via video connection, these asymmetries become apparent. Weiterlesen →

conference///konferenz

States of Exceptionalism

International Conference „States of Exceptionalism: Globalization, Difference, Power“

08.-09. 05.2014

Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Alexander-von-Humboldt-Haus, Rathenaustraße 24A, 35394 Giessen

While the contemporary world is increasingly characterized by conflict and crisis, challenging imagined geographies and geopolitical patterns formerly regarded as stable, exceptional identity positions seem to gain ground. As the world globalizes, a growing need to construct the Self as special, superior, unique and exceptional seems to emerge. Nations, countries, regions and cities as well as social groups claiming to be exceptional, obviously follow a mission. They use their alleged superiority, be it of an economic, a power-related or an imagined ethical and moral kind, to supply the other parts of the world with strategies of good governance and exemplary models.

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With this conference we take a closer look at the emerging term in order to compare and discuss how it is conceptualized and utilized in different places and contexts. Weiterlesen →