 The Full StoryConferences
Recent conferences and symposia
Imagine the Great Transition
Arts Admin, London
22 June 2013 The day-long conference with film screenings and performances was the culmination of Arts Admin's Two Degrees Festival: www.artsadmin.co.uk
Future Climate Dialogues
Aberystwyth Arts Centre Cinema
13 June 2013, 8.30am-9.00pm
The symposium will feature an eclectic range of voices on the theme of collaboration between the arts and the sciences in addressing the climate change debate. Presentations will be concerned with projects that cross the humanities, fine arts, and social, physical and applied sciences. Chaired panels will discuss: what can be gained from collaboration between art and science; how can climate science best be disseminated to the public: how can we promote new synergies between art and science; how do we best represent future climate uncertainties?
The day will conclude with films and installations at Pod number 9 from 6.30-9.00 pm.
This event is a collaboration between The Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, The Arts Centre and The School of Art. For more information, email Julian Ruddock. Registration best by 31 May. www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk ...
Transformation in a Changing Climate
University of Oslo
19 - 21 June 2013 The aim of this conference is to bring together diverse perspectives on transformation, and to generate discussions on deliberate, ethical and sustainable transformation in response to the complex global challenges associated with climate change. One of the strands of the conference is 'Art of Transformation'.
www.sv.uio.no...
Writing and Climate Change: The story so far...
Thomas Paine Study Centre, University of East Anglia
Norwich
25 May 2013
How do writers and scientists communicate the controversies of climate change?
This event inaugurates the 'Writing and Science' network, and will examine how literature in all its forms has engaged with the challenge of communicating the controversies arising from the science of climate change. With playwrights, novelists and journalists in conversation with scientists and activists, the day will consider the role of the theatre, of the novel and the media and will also reflect on the impact of 'climategate'. Throughout the day there will be readings, debates and talks as UEA brings together for the first time its most visible communities - researchers in Environmental Science and Creative Writing.
Confirmed Speakers include:
Steve Waters, playwright
John Burnside, poet and novelist
Giles Foden, novelist
Tom Greaves, philosopher
Mike Hulme, geographer
Phil Jones, climate scientist
Tony Juniper, writer and activist
Ro Randall, psychotherapist
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, critic
Rebecca Stott, novelist
Ross Wilson, critic and philosopher.
www.uea.ac.uk/literature/news-and-events/writing-and-climate-change
Performing Place Symposium
Chichester University, Bishop Otter Campus, Chichester
1 June 2013, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
The Dance and Performing Arts Department at Chichester University invite researchers, practitioners, artists and post-graduate researchers to a 1-day symposium that will explore, celebrate, problematize and articulate notions of experiencing, encountering, articulating and ‘performing’ place through creative arts inquiry.
The symposium will include installation and performance work, academic paper presentations, informal discussions and opportunities to engage in dialogue with colleagues interested in exploring practices and processes of experiencing and ‘performing’ place, and associated notions of site-specificity, embodiment, mobility, location, space, place and performativity. The symposium aims to stimulate a sharing of knowledge and ideas in an informal, playful and participatory manner. Speakers include:
Fiona Wilkie: ‘Performance, Place and Mobility’
Carl Lavery: ‘Postgeopathological Ecologies: Simon Whitehead and the Body as Home’
Jane Bacon and Vida Midgelow: ‘Experiences of Skript: A micro-installation’
Virginia Farnham: ‘Performance in Urban Spaces’
Victoria Hunter: ‘Dancing-Worlding the Beach’
Gregg Whelan: ‘What I Run About When I Run About Running’
Pete Phillips: GIFT-TAKE-MAKE-GIFT: A one-on-one performance encounter (running throughout the day)
The event is free. For more information, email Vicky Hunter.
Unruly Creatures
Flett Theatre, Natural History Museum
Cromwell Rd London, SW7 5BD
23 April 2013 This is the third in a series of one-day conferences that discuss the various ways in which animals have been used in the humanities and contemporary arts, the political and theoretical implications of this use, and the manner in which animals have resisted this appropriation. With examples taken from philosophy, history, and the arts, it will also examine whether there is an animal political identity, and even new ways of thinking about revolution that might be called 'animal'. Speakers include Robert McKay, University of Sheffield; Andrew Dodds, artist; Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, University of Roehampton;
Giovanni Aloi, Editor of Antennae.
The event is free but booking required. More information from John Mularkey.
AIR: Pressure
communicating climate change
Falmouth University, Cornwall
15 - 19 April 2013 The Academy for Innovation and Research (AIR), Falmouth University, hosts a week of activities responding to and communicating a changing climate.
The events will consider how climate change challenges assumptions and how it can reshape the role of art and culture and their connections with other activities. The week will consider how institutions, such as universities, can best serve the communities and regions in a climate-altered future. Some events are open to the public. The week includes:
a lecture by Holger Zschenderlein, composer, sound artist, Principal Lecturer and Subject Leader for the Master of Fine Art / BA (Hons) Digital Music and Sound Arts course program at the University of Brighton.
In 'Who Needs It? Engaging Representation Models of Complex Dynamic Climatic Systems' Holger will share findings from recent commissioned Ice-Traffic installation at the Royal Festival Hall at the Southbank Centre in London, a sculptural event of ice and melt-water, moving image, sound and data in the form of a gradually melting two tonne ice mass. An exhibition, featuring work engaging with climate issues by more than 22 artists, including John Hartley, Bram Thomas Arnold, Carolyn Arnold, Project ASPECT, Diana Beckmann, SWARM TV, Alex Murdin, Daro Montag, Jonty Lees, and more. Full programme here.
air.falmouth.ac.uk
Burning Ice #6
Kaaitheater
Sainctelettesquare 20 - 1000 Brussel
25 - 29 March 2013 Burning Ice #6, Kaaitheater's Festival in Brussels is themed on interspecies relations.
'Animals. We breed them, shoot them, eat them, exhibit them, keep them as a friend, worship them, … Whatever the relationship, the dominant idea is that man is a superior species. However, increasingly it appears that we have abused our position as ‘top species’. The question regarding proper ‘interspecies relations’ is being asked more and more emphatically, also by artists. What can we learn if we really try to listen to, collaborate with or put ourselves in the animals’ place? And how can we use these insights, to our benefit too, to build a more acceptable and sustainable future?'
Included in the festival are:
Vinciane Despret [BE] What would animals answer if we asked them the right questions? & Didier Demorcy [BE] - video works, installation and lecture
James Marsh (US/GB) and Project Nim + Stijn Bruers, on animal rights - Documentary (2011)+ talk
Isabelle Dumont [BE] Animalia Theater
Martin Nachbar [DE] Animal Dances
David Weber-Krebs & Maximilian Haas [NL/DE] Balthazar: a donkey plays the leading part. www.kaaitheater.be
The Work of Art in Critical Times
Falmouth University
9 March 2013 The symposium is the 'Art & Environment' strand of an open day for new students, and is open to the public.
The symposium focuses on three interrelated themes Energy / Economy / Environment and each will have a key speaker:
ENERGY - James Marriott, from the artists / activists group PLATFORM
ECONOMY - David Cross, artist and researcher at Camberwell, has worked collaboratively for many years as Cornford and Cross
ENVIRONMENT - Bergit Arends, curator of contemporary art at the Natural History Museum. www.falmouth.ac.uk/component/events/...
ASLE-UKI Symposium: Literature and Sustainability
University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, Lampeter
15 March 2013 The UK and Ireland branch of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE-UKI), in collaboration with University of Wales, Trinity Saint David’s Institute of Sustainable Practice and Resource Effectiveness (INSPIRE), are hosting this one-day symposium. Confirmed keynote speakers are Claire Colebrook from Penn State University; Adeline Johns-Putra from University of Surrey; and Jane Davidson, Director of INSPIRE and former Welsh Minister of Sustainability. The questions these presentations and other papers will address include: what can literary scholars or environmental critics do with the term 'sustainability'; how might notions of 'sustainability' enter literary analysis; what does 'sustainability' mean for ecocriticism; what does ecocriticism mean for 'sustainability'? As the cultural weight of technical and popular literature on sustainability accumulates, how do literary scholars frame this diverse and problematic concept? The organisers welcome people working within and outside the literary world.
asle.org.uk/conferences
The politics of the social in contemporary art
Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium, London
15 February 2013, 10.00am – 7.00pm
Can art intervene in social relations? What are the implications of involving art and its audiences in an ethical problem? And how do such practices relate to art’s social institutions? This symposium examines the turn towards participatory and collaborative art forms and the ethical questions that raises.
They keynote is by Professor Shannon Jackson and there will be contributions from Wafaa Bilal, Not an Alternative, Wochenklausur, Ztohoven, Renzo Martens, Grupo Etcétera, Gavin Grindon and Anja Kanngieser.
The symposium will be followed by film screenings by the day’s speakers. image: Occupied Real Estate [2011], © Not an Alternative
www.tate.org.uk
Eco-Aesthetics: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology
University College London, Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre,
2 March 2013, 2:00 - 7:00pm
The Eco-Aesthetics conference marks the release of the journal Third Text (January 2013), dedicated to the subject of 'Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology,' guest-edited by TJ Demos. The event will include contributors to the special issue, which investigates eco-aesthetics in a postcolonial framework, from global warming in the Arctic to oil industry environmental damage in Nigeria’s delta, from conflicts between mining corporations and tribals in rural India to the ecological effects of industrial development in the port of Bahia Blanca, Argentina, from urban farming in Detroit to the Occupy movement’s development of a post-media social ecology. The conference seeks to link international and interdisciplinary researchers, artists, and critical theorists in order to consider the questions of how such politico-ecological developments have been recently analyzed, mediated, and negotiated within the visual cultural of art and activism. The conference is free and no registration is required. Seats on a first-come first-serve basis. In the journal, TJ Demos' introduction can be downloaded for free. The articles are behind a paywall. image: George Osodi, Gas Flare, 2006, from the series Oil Rich Niger Delta, 2003 – 2007 www.ucl.ac.uk/art-history/events/eco-aesthetics
On Taking Care : Symposium
symposium curated by Rosemary Lee
Queen Mary University
ArtsOne Building, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
1 December 2012, 11am - 6pm
This symposium will bring together presenters and guests from different disciplines to share their responses to and understanding of the notion of care. This will include spoken presentation, films, installations, and live works.
The symposium originates from Rosemary Lee’s reflections on her cross-generational work Common Dance (2009). p>
Contributors include Anne-Marie Rafferty, Professor of Nursing Policy at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College London; Jane Wiffin, Freelance Social Care Consultant; Joe Smith, Senior Lecturer in Environment at Open University; Raymond Tallis, Physician and Writer; Artists, Chris Goode, Graeme Miller, Florence Peake, Miranda Tufnell, Jo Bannon, Rachel Gomme and Marcus Coates. This event will mark the launch of a new DVD published by ResCen (Centre for Research into Creation in the Performing Arts). Also entitled, 'On Taking Care', this DVD will reveal and explore the themes and processes behind the making of Common Dance. Booking is through Artsadmin.
www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/3185
Economies of Generosity
The Bluecoat
School Lane, Liverpool
1 December 2012, 11am – 5pm
A day of presentations and discussion, the Economies of Generosity symposium provides an opportunity to explore the role of gift-giving and generosity in both capitalist and alternative economies, as thought through themes of education, sponsorship, volunteering, piracy and theft. The symposium is part of Tim Jeeves’ live art project Giving in to Gift.
Contributors:
aaaarg.org; Cat Moir, Charlotte A Morgan, Rob Quirk and Terry Slater, Homeland; Grace Harrison, Independent Researcher and Artist; James Hill, Black Dogs, Art in Unusual Spaces; Mel Evans, Platform; staff and volunteers from The Bluecoat. The event is free, but booking essential through the Bluecoat. www.givingintogift.org
www.thebluecoat.org.uk
The Arne Naess Symposium
University of Oslo
12 November
Arne Naess’s concept of 'thinking dutifully, acting beautifully' takes social and environmental responsibility beyond good intentions to concrete ethical actions. Has responsibility been strengthened or pulverised in institutions and society? What has been the personal and social cost of 'acting beautifully'?
This year’s Arne Naess Lecture will be delivered by Lawrence Buell of Harvard University, author of The Environmental Imagination. In 2012, Buell has been the Arne Naess Chair-holder at the Centre for Development and the Environment, the University of Oslo. He writes on environmental discourses, issues of cultural nationalism, and comparative approaches to American literary study including transatlantic and post-colonial models of inquiry. His lecture will be followed by responses from Jostein Gaarder, founder of the Sophie Prize; British journalist George Monbiot; and Eva Joly, French magistrate known for her pursuit of the agents of corruption in the French political and economic system.
The event also includes a presentation by researchers developing a model for transforming 'petroholic' Norway into a sustainable society. www.sum.uio.no
Art of Resilience
ART + COMMUNICATION 2012
XIV International New Media Culture Festival
Riga and Liepaja, Latvia
Art + Communication is an annual art, science and new technologies Festival in Riga, which gained international acclaim with the theme of innovation. This year's festival, entitled The Art of Resilience will focus on the art of adaptation, the ability to adapt to the rapidly changing environment, which is affected by weather fluctuations and by scientific knowledge and technological implications. An exhibition runs throughout the festival at RIXC Media Space. Among the artists are Christian Hübler and Ivonne Wilhelm from Knowbotiq collective performing 'Dancing with / without Darwin', which received the Swiss Art Award 2012. Other performances include those by jazz musician and philosopher David Rothenberg who combines clarinet improvisations with sound recordings of whales and birds in their natural habitats; and British experimental electronic musicians Mark Fell & Matt Steel creating live performance with soundscapes of electronic space. The programme also includes Latvian musicians Jekabs Nimanis and Maksims Sentelevs together with Indian classical dance artist Ieva Orbidane. Martins Rokis will combine improvisation elements with generated sound structures based on the signal analysis of insect and bird communication. There is a conference and workshops 5 - 6 October. rixc.lv/12
More steps towards an ecology of performance
seminar by Gareth Somers
Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies
Aberystwyth University
26 October, 5.30pm More information to follow on Gareth Somers' talk as part of Aberysthwyth's seminar series.
cstonline.tv/aber-research-seminars
Biopolitics, Society and Performance
School of Drama, Film and Music
Trinity College, Dublin
31 October – 2 November 2012
The conference considers biopolitics and its recent transformations in theory, art and the contemporary world. Giorgio Agamben, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at University of Paris 8, is confirmed as one of the keynote speakers. Others include
Rosi Braidotti, University of Utrecht; Oron Catts of Symbiotica, University of Western Australia; Thomas Lemke, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main; and Kira O’Reilly, performance artist. The term biopolitics was first defined by Michel Foucault to mean the technologies of political power that allow for the control of the human population as a biological species. For Agamben the inclusion of 'bare life' in the political realm constitutes the original nucleus of sovereign power. Thus, the political system has the power to decide not only who deserves to have 'human rights', but also which life counts as 'human' and worth living.
Many contemporary artists are concerned with the implications of biopolitics. Their work attempts to expose the control mechanisms that affect human behaviour and limit human rights, while exploring bioethical questions in relation to human tissue and genetic modification. Artists including Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr at Symbiotica, Eduardo Kac and Kira O’Reilly explore bio-art practices and new frontiers of body art. biopoliticstcd.wordpress.com
That Oceanic Feeling
John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
exhibition:
symposium: 13 October 2012
The exhibition That Oceanic Feeling brings together new works in different media by British artist Rona Lee, developed in dialogue with geoscientists at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, whose research involves mapping the deep sea, the least understood and accessible environment on the planet. That Oceanic Feeling explores our complex symbolic relationship to this emergent political and economic landscape asking what it might mean to look into this otherwise dark space. The John Hansard Gallery will host a free, one-day symposium exploring related ideas. The speakers include:
Rona Lee, School of Art and Design, Wolverhampton University
Christine Battersby,Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts, University of Warwick
Ryan Bishop, Winchester School of Art
Emily Brady, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh
Lucy Cash, Artist
Kathryn Yusoff, Lancaster Environment Centre. www.hansardgallery.org.uk
Wasteland Twinning Network Forum
Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (ZKU)
Siemensstrasse 27, 10551 Berlin, Germany
21 – 23 September 2012
The Wasteland Twinning Network takes the concept of ‘City Twinning’ and applies it to urban wastelands in order to generate a network for parallel research and action.
The Forum will bring together the international project partners of the Wasteland Twinning Network from Europe, Asia, USA and Australia, and will feature presentations, guest speakers, critical debates, Twinning Ceremonies, wasteland interventions and workshops.
Representatives from the various Network locations will present wasteland sites, the associated projects and the questions that they evoke. For example, Yogyakarta’s Bon Suwung Collective will address the social relations and property conflicts arising from the use of the land by a squatting community. Alongside the presentation of their ongoing programme of research, experimentation and public events, Wasteland Twinning Nottingham asks: what is the impact of artists focusing on undeveloped urban sites? Is ‘cultural capital’ created, and what are the implications of this?
Guest speakers from parallel practices of urban geography, art, activism, and architecture, will highlight wastelands as spaces continually recreated by a complex web of social, natural, economic, and technological worlds. Throughout the Forum, Wasteland Twinning Ceremonies will be conducted. In an act of ‘reverse postcolonial exoticism’, a Twinning Agreement between the Sydney and Kuala Lumpur wasteland sites will be forged at a critical moment in their parallel cycles of urban land use. Wasteland sites in Berlin and Amsterdam will celebrate their agreement to undertake a Non-Twinning Relationship.
The Forum will be the launch of Recreation Ground: a trilateral collaborative project between the Network partners in Berlin, Nottingham and Amsterdam. photo: Wasteland Twinning Nottingham
wasteland-twinning.net/forum/about/
Transition Network UK Conference
Battersea Arts Centre, London
14 - 18 September 2012 The theme of this year's Transition Network conference is Building Resilience in Extraordinary Times. There are five elements to the event:
Main Transition Conference: 14 September - 16 September
REconomy Project Day: 14 September
Youth Symposium: 14 September
National Transition Hubs gathering: 17 - 18 September
Transition THRIVE training: 13 - 14 September www.transitionnetwork.org
Emergence Summit 2012: Creating the future
The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) and Volcano Theatre
Machynlleth, mid-Wales
1 - 9 September 2012
The Summit comprises two parts: an international weekend conference of leaders, thinkers and visionaries; and a five-day Land Journey on foot through Wales culminating at the conference.
The Summit brings CAT's pioneering work on low-carbon infrastructure together with Volcano Theatre’s work on developing the role of the arts as a crucible of ideas and visions for a sustainable society. Curated, designed and produced by Fern Smith (Volcano Theatre), Lucy Neal, Jenny MacKewn and Paul Allen (CAT), the Summit will explore, exemplify and embed the role of the arts in the transition to a sustainable future. Speakers, contributors and artist interventions include Robert Newman, Phakama UK, Sue Gill and John Fox, Simon Whitehead, Sarah Woods, Touchstone Collaborations, Pete Telfer (Culture Colony), Ansuman Biswas, Nick Capaldi (Arts Council Wales), Patricia Shaw, Miranda Tufnell and Paul Allen and Peter Harper from CAT.
From 1 - 6 September over 30 delegates will attend the five-day Land Journey across Wales curated by Welsh artist Simon Whitehead. The Land Journey invites walkers to traverse the land in unfamiliar ways developing a deepened dialogue, concentration and reflection of the things taken for granted. Embedding sustainability into the personal and collective journeys of the Land Journey, artists and cuisinières Touchstone Collaborations will be providing locally and ethically sourced food, and the walk will be facilitated by Lucy Neal and Jenny MacKewn.
The Land Journey culminates at the Emergence conference, a three day event of workshops, discussions, creative practice, performance and presentation from 7 - 9 September.
‘Taking the conceptual form of a sine wave, the conference aims to not only discuss and debate change, but becomes a vehicle for change itself. Participants are invited to take a journey individually and together with other participants to explore our collective issues and find solutions to emerge into a new way of being, doing and making.’ Fern Smith, Volcano Theatre
The Summit will be documented by Pete Telfer of Culture Colony and streamed through the BBC and Arts Council collaborative project ‘the Space’.
www.cat.org.uk/emergence-2012
Composting Culture: Literature, Nature, Popular Culture, Science
ASLE-UK
University of Worcester
6 - 9 September 2012 The theme for the 2012 bi-annual eco-criticism conference hosted by ASLE-UKI, the UK-Ireland branch of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, is 'cultural composting'. The conference will explore the correspondence between complex ecological understanding and cultural forms, the linkages between theories and texts. Examples include ‘Edgelands', by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, or places like Essex, which blur the rural and urban; or in poplar culture, where high media technology has the ability to combine a deep ecological awareness and a scientific sense of nature, as in Bjork’s recent Biophilia project.
www.asle.org.uk
www.asle.org - information on the conference listed under 29 February 2012.
Environmental Utterance
University College Falmouth
1 - 2 September 2012
deadline for submissions - 31 March
Artists are exploring ways of articulating specific environments, spaces or places. This conference examines a problem of dissemination of this work, which is how to engage with 'being there' when 'there' is not here?
Such work often relies on direct, personal experience of a particular environment. What happens to the work when it is represented, shown or spoken about, away from that environment? For more information contact
Natalia Eernstman at environmental.utterance @ gmail.com.
Subsidy, Patronage & Sponsorship: Theatre and Performance Culture in Uncertain Times
University of Reading and the Victoria & Albert Museum
Sackler Centre, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
19 - 21 July 2012
The V&A and the University of Reading are organising an international conference related to the major AHRC project, "‘Giving Voice to the Nation': the Arts Council of Great Britain and the development of theatre and Performance in Britain 1945-1995". The keynotes are by the playwright David Edgar, Jude Kelly OBE, Artistic Director of the South Bank Centre, and Robert Hewison, cultural historian. There are panel sessions throughout the three days. www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event ...
t: 020 7942 2211
Water:Image
Land/Water Conference
University of Plymouth
4 - 6 July
This conference celebrates the 10th year of summer symposia organised by Land/Water and the Visual Arts Plymouth University. 'From salt water to holy water, there is a long history of art referencing water in its many dimensions, locations and states. Imagery may explore water as substance, make metaphoric allusion, or engage debates relating to the geographies and socio-politics of water. In an era of climate change, debates about water, its availability and significance range across a number of academic fields. This conference will bring together artists/academics in lens-based and related fields.
Keynote speakers are photographers Per Bak Jensen and Deborah Bright.
www.landwater-research.co.uk
Atmospheres of Protest: Symposium on Sustainability and Contemporary Art
Central European University Budapest
11 May 2012
The upsurge of new popular movements from Egypt to Greece and Bucharest to New York has engendered an atmosphere of defiance and social creativity that has captured the global imagination. This symposium asks whether global solidarity has taken hold and considers the variety of ways in which contemporary art is embroiled through practices of dialogue and collaboration in imagining a sustainable future.
The symposium is organised by Translocal in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the Centre for Arts and Culture at Central European University. www.translocal.org/sustainability
FIELD_NOTES - Cultivating Ground
Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in Kilpisjärvi, Lapland, Finland
26 September - 2 October
Field_Notes - Cultivating Ground is a week-long field laboratory for theory and practice of art and science at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki in Lapland. Five working groups, each hosted by an expert (Oron Catts, Marta de Menezes, Anu Osva, Tapio Makela and Terike Haapoja) together with a team of four, will develop, test and evaluate specific artistic approaches based on the interplay of art and science. The outcome of Field_Notes will result in a publication published by the Finnish Bioart Society in 2012. The project is organised by the Finnish Bioart Society in the context of the Ars Bioarctica project together with the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. For more information, email Erich Berger
bioartsociety.fi
Sensory Worlds: Environment, Value and the Multi-Sensory
Insitute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
University of Edinburgh
7 - 9 December 2011
The Sensory Worlds conference will examine the multi-sensory and will reflect on the historical, contemporary and possible future relations between the senses (from balance to taste to the haptic and more). From the Conference website: It is through our senses that we investigate, navigate and know the world around us and the other beings, forces and phenomena that constitute it in its rich and lively variety. To consider the nature of sensory being is to be confronted by questions that examine the ways in which we engage with our environments and those that interrogate the very nature of embodiment.
David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous, and Iain Borden, Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture, Barlett School of Architecture, are keynote speakers. Their talks will be open to the public.
The sessions of papers will include the themes of: animal senses; technology and the wasting and/or enhancement of the senses; nature, self and society; value, action and environmental engagement; historical and future senses; the imagination and the (inter)play of the senses. The themes for the panel sessions will be: virtual reality; disgust; modern sensibilities; (re)connection; desire; and political senses.
More information by email or
www.iash.ed.ac.uk
Lofoten Whale Festival
Loftoten, Norway
1 - 7 August 2011
This event is a meeting of humans and whales, of science, music, art and tourism. The event will celerate the culture and nature of cetacean species in the Lofoten
waters: pilot whales, killer whales, dolphins, harbor porpoises, minke whales, fin whales and humpback whales. There will be talks, workshops, special whale-watching tours with scientists, naturalists, artists and musicians. The main presenters will be:
Heike Vester, biologist and founder of Ocean Sounds
David Rothenberg, musician, philosopher, writer, naturalist
Rauno Lauhakangas, physicist , whale activist
Tuula Nikulainen, visual artist and enviornmental activist
Updated news on the festival: www.ocean-sounds.com
Conservation Conflicts: Strategies for Coping with a Changing World
Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability
University of Aberdeen, Scotland
19 - 24 August
The Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability (ACES) 2011 conference focuses on the conflicts involved in conservation. The conference is preceded by four artists' residencies by Dalziel and Scullion, using film and sculpture; Helen Denerley, who re-uses scrap metal to create sculptures inspired by the animal world; Huw Warren, pianist and composer; and Esther Woolfson, writer.
From the conference website:
Changing patterns in land use, over-exploitation, pollution, climate change and the threat posed by invasive species, all challenge the way we currently manage and conserve biological diversity. Consequently, there are increasing numbers of conflicts between those interested in conserving species and those with alternative goals, interests or values. These conflicts occur over a range of scales from the local management of single species to international conflicts over the management of resources. They are multi-dimensional, involving ecological, social and economic interests and operate within political and legal frameworks. www.aces-2011.org
The Art of Ecology: Transdisciplinary Research in Practice
Society of Ecological Restoration
World Conference on Ecological Restoration, SER 2011
Merida, Mexico
21-25 August 2011
The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) will include the symposium, The Art of Ecology: Transdisciplinary Research in Practice, investigating the links between nature and culture, at their international conference in Mexico.
David Haley, Director of Ecology in Practice at Manchester Metropolitan University, is session organiser, and will convene the symposium with Richard Scott, Senior Programme Manager with Landlife, the National Wildflower Centre in Liverpool.
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