[Reader-list] Fwd: Contemporary conference 2017

[The Sarai Programme]

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From: "The Sarai Programme" <dak at sarai.net>
Date: 02-Dec-2017 11:23 pm
Subject: Contemporary conference 2017
To: <newsletter at sarai.net>
Cc:

*What Time Is It? *

*Technologies of Life in the Contemporary *

14th, 15th, 16th December 2017

Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi



#whattimeisit



Conference Convenors: Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan (Sarai, CSDS), and Raqs
Media Collective (Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta)



The conference brings together academics and artists, archivists and
architects, sound artists and scholars, teachers and practitioners to
experiment with ideas, through a series of hybrid formats, interlacing
lectures, performances, screenings, pavilion, sound works, online networks,
publishing, and public debate.



*The Backdrop*



Have we finally entered the “End of the End of History”? (E-flux, Journal
#57, Sept 2014). Recent media technological transformations have thrown
into confusion many existing political and social theories; art, media
philosophy, politics, biology; in fact all ideas of life presented in the
last century. Are these the jumbled signs of ‘our’ contemporaneity? The
idea of the contemporary has been around for a few decades, seen variously
as a period, a critical gesture, and a disciplinary frame for literature
and art. We believe the time is right to revisit the idea of the
contemporary from a different lens, outside the closeted frameworks of a
Euro-American debate where contemporaneity appears as an unstable successor
to modernity and postmodernity.



In the past decade we have seen the worldwide spread of media and
information networks. Since value is now gained from experience, new
corporations and political parties deploy strategies of agglomeration using
digital media technologies. Growing computational grids inaugurate storage
and surveillance technologies that are affecting fields like the
environment, finance and law. Machine time disturbs historical continuity
and sequence. Genetic engineering and life storage technologies disrupt the
idea of the biological life span; media memory and recording technologies
have already transformed the lives of mobile phone users in the world.
Media-enabled
populations in Asia, Africa and Latin America are now part of a new
infrastructure of the senses. These infrastructures have produced a new
generation of art and media practitioners. Like everywhere, such
transformations have set in motion a sense of indetermination and flux,
providing opportunities, shadow zones and critical discourses.



This conference seeks to explore experience from the vantage point of these
media-informational transformations. We will be debating art practice,
cultural theory, media aesthetics, social theory, forensics, urbanism, and
the landscape of the political. Time horizons and philosophies are a major
concern of the conference, as we seek to displace the idea of the
contemporary as (just) a ‘present’ without limits.



The conference is part of the Leverhulme International Network of
Contemporary Studies (LINCS).




*Themes: *The Landscapes of the Digital, Video and Post-Cinema, The
Unstable Archive, Technics and Forensics, Spectres of the Political, Money,
Media, Space, Cinema as a Migratory Form.




*Participants: *Aarti Sethi (Providence), Ashish Rajadhyaksha (Bangalore),
Berno Odo Polzer, (Berlin), Keller Easterling (Yale), Lantian Xie
(Dubai), Lara Khaldi (Jerusalem), Liu Tian (Hangzhou), Lorenzo Pezzani
(London), May Adadol Ingawanij (London), Michelle Wong (Hong Kong), Mochu
(Chennai), Mohammad Salemy (Berlin), Moinak Biswas (Kolkata), Orit Halpern
(Montreal), Pallavi Paul (Delhi), Prasad Shetty (Mumbai), Prathama Banerjee
(Delhi), Ravi Vasudevan (Delhi), Sabih Ahmed (Delhi), Santhosh Sadanandan
(Delhi), Susan Schuppli (London), Venkat Srinivasan (Bangalore)



*Public Lecture*: “Medium Design” by Keller Easterling, Architect and
Professor, Yale University



*Reading Performances:*  Lantian Xie and Raqs Media Collective.



*Pavilion:* *Five Gardens*, by architect Samir Raut, Mumbai, proposed by
School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai



*Special Screening:* *Liquid Traces: The Left-to-Die Boat Case* (2014)
(Directors: Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani)



*Screening Room* featuring works by participating artists and academics.



*Locations  *

14th December (11AM to 7PM) @ CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054

15th December (10 AM to 8 PM) @ Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New
Delhi

16th December (10 AM to 9 PM) @ Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New
Delhi





*Programme schedule and other information coming soon.*

*For queries, write to us at *contemporaryconference2017 at gmail.com


Regards,

Satakshi
*The Sarai Programme*
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
sarai.net | facebook.com/sarai.net