[Reader-list] Fwd: Call for presentations - Creative Encounters Symposium

[The Sarai Programme]

CREATIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
<https://www.kochimuzirisbiennale.org/creative-encounters/>Legacies,
Imaginaries and Futures

*at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016*
*February 18-19, 2017*

Supported by
Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru
CEPT University, Ahmedabad
Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University, Plymouth


CALL FOR PARTICIPATION



The convenors invite participants to present reflections, ongoing work and
first-hand accounts, tracing concerns and motivations within
transdisciplinary, creative encounters with science and technology. We
encourage submissions in formats that will challenge boundaries and lend
themselves to creative encounters and unconventional framings.

The broad themes around which we invite presentations are as follows:
● Experiential histories of science and technology in India (as understood
through Art/Science/Craft/Design/Technology encounters) and their relevance
now
● Aesthetics and imaginaries of Science and Technology
● Intellectual cosmopolitanism of artists, scientists, philosophers,
educators, architects, planners via collaborative forums such as
conferences, building projects and educational initiatives
● Legacies of technological/development architecture/infrastructure/ideology
from the 1960s and 1970s
● Material and visual culture of technology in scientific practice
● Philosophies of infrastructures including participatory infrastructures
● Mappings of epistemic communities across social geographies

In addition we invite contributions on other themes you consider relevant
to this framing of concerns.
CONCEPT NOTE



By focusing on creative encounters, the symposium aims to amplify
transdisciplinary negotiations of art and science via tangible technologies
and intangible infrastructures, through social domains As a fresh wave of
media ideologies enter India’s state policy, such as in the form of the
Smart Cities Mission, the symposium provides a timely pause for reflection
on the roots, legacies and consequences of participatory technological
infrastructures, in India as well as on the global stage.

In the context of India, a thread we are interested in opening through the
symposium is the cosmopolitan, critical discourse that took place in India
through the 1960s to 1980s around the extent to which development
technologies, such as television, space technology, farming methods and
nuclear power delimited or extended agency. Sources from this time that
retrace concerns for intimacy within large-scale infrastructure and its
structural blind spots include Johan Galtung’s ‘Violence, Peace and Peace
Research’ (1969), Victor Papanek’s *Design for the Real World* (1971),
Michel Foucault’s *Discipline and Punish* (1977), Ivan Illich’s ‘The
De-linking of Peace and Development’ (1980), and Ashis Nandy’s
‘Counter-Statement on Humanistic Temper’ (1981). In addition, the public
discourse and activities of key technocrats in India’s media histories,
such as Yash Pal and Vikram Sarabhai, forged connections between science,
technology, design and the arts. The notion of transdiciplinarity, as used
in recent times to describe temporary mobilisations of a range of
disciplinary perspectives in order to engage with emerging problems
(Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons, 2001), becomes a relevant analytical tool with
which to reassess less familiar patterns of creativity within genealogies
of art/science encounters.

Setting such discussions within the Kochi-Muziris Biennale draws attention
to the performance of science as experience, affect and visuality, which
marks artistic practices and intervention. It highlights the intimate
contexts in which large-scale technological infrastructures are
encountered. The symposium, as intervention, sets out to critically
re-examine historical experiences in order to better negotiate future
scenarios.


SUBMISSION GUIDELINES



We invite proposals for 20-minute paper presentations. Please send the
title, a 300 word abstract of your presentation and a brief biography of
the author/s.

The mail should be sent to: muthatha at srishti.ac.in and
joanna.griffin at cept.ac.in
Last date for submission: *December 18, 2016*

If you would like to submit a creative work (e.g. film, performance, other
format) please also provide a web link and details of technical and space
requirements. There will be scope to present work at Mill Hall, Mattancheri
(a large warehouse building that includes a Fab Lab maker space) on the
evening of Feb 18, 2016, as well within the symposium.

We hope to be able to offer travel bursaries to participants not attached
to institutions. Please indicate in your submission whether you would
require funding to attend.


CONVENORS



Dr Joanna Griffin is a UK artist who is currently a Teaching Fellow
conducting postdoctoral research at CEPT University, Ahmedabad in the
Faculty of Design. She is also Associate Researcher with Transtechnology
Research, Plymouth University and former Artist-in-Residence at Srishti
Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she led a three-year project
called Moon Vehicle that brought together space scientists, design students
and children. As an artist she has held an International Artist Fellowship
at the NASA Space Science Lab, UC Berkeley and devised a performance with
scientists from the Mullard Space Science Lab in the UK. Her current
research focuses on collaboration between the Indian space agency and the
National Institute of Design that took place in the 1970s in Ahmedabad. She
has presented in space industry conferences internationally and writes
about the motivations behind transdisciplinary activities between artists
and scientists.

Dr Muthatha Ramanathan is a human geographer who has conducted extensive
ethnographic research into the use of remote sensing technologies by NGOs
in Karnataka. In her dissertation research she developed a place-based
critique of technocratic spatial planning in India. She is Faculty at
Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology leading the postgraduate
programme in Land and Livelihood Studies. Her current interests are centred
around researching and teaching across disciplinary boundaries,
specifically working with design students to historicise design and thereby
develop connections between the politics of place and difference, and art
and design practices.