[artinfo] Media Archaeology and Technological Debris

[Gabriel Menotti]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Postgraduate Workshop & Conference: Media Archaeology and Technological Debris
Thursday, June 20 - Friday, June 21, 2013
Goldsmiths, University of London

This workshop aims to bring academics and PhD students together to 
discuss emerging research projects on the field of media studies. It 
means to combine the thriving approach of media archaeology with the 
growing environmental concerns about technological debris, 
emphasizing the complementary character of these topics in the 
construction of a material understanding of media practices' past, 
present and future. We expect to gather a number of emerging 
investigations that can shed new light over the socio-political, 
economic, cultural, technological, material and aesthetic dimensions 
of the continuous phenomena of novelty and obsolescence of media 
systems. In doing so, we also hope to create conditions to examine 
the systems of relationship formulated around these topics, paying 
particular attention to the regimes of value that define media 
objects either as museum artifacts or as rubbish in different 
global/local contexts (such as Europe and Latin America).

10-15 PhD students will be selected to participate. The workshop will 
last for two days: the first one will be composed of closed reading 
groups in which seasoned researchers will act as respondents and 
mediators for the presentation of the participating students, while 
the second one will be a small conference open to the public. As 
such, the workshop intends to create a platform for exchanging ideas 
and research methods upon this interdisciplinary field.

The event is organized by Goldsmiths' Media and Communications 
Department, and counts with the sponsorship of Goldsmiths' Graduate 
School.

Confirmed panelists: Sean Cubitt (Media & Comms, Goldsmiths); Graham 
Harwood (Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths); Jennifer Gabrys (Design, 
Goldsmiths); Gabriel Menotti (Audiovisual, UFES); and people from 
Access Space (Sheffield).

Possible themes include:
- archaeological and anarchaeological research
- the repurposing of old devices (for fun & profit & art)
- programmed obsolescence and the temporality of materials and technologies
- precarious technical milieus
- artifact materiality and value
- media museography and historiography
- transnational contexts for zombie media
- industrial media and environmental hazards
- practices and economies of recycling technology
- electronic recycling and archiving of technological artifacts
- qualities, histories and applications of media systems and media ecologies
- global and local economic forces in cycles of innovation and decay
To apply, please submit a text document containing a title, a brief 
description of your project (no more than 250 words), and a brief 
biography to 
<mailto:mediaarchdebris at gmail.com>mediaarchdebris at gmail.com by 
Sunday, April 21, 17:00 GMT.
For more information, see: 
<http://www.technologicaldebris.info>http://www.technologicaldebris.info