The theme of this fine conference is: OFF THE GRID

The phrase “off the grid” is commonly understood to refer to the voluntary decoupling from established infrastructure networks such as electricity, water or gas supply. The implication is one of material independence and a self-sufficient lifestyle. Going “off the grid” means making yourself invisible by rebuking the social and technological structures that normally organize our lives. It is entering, or returning to, uncharted territory. The grid from which you disappear is often imagined like a web that we are woven into, at once providing security – of cultural connectivity, opportunities to work, or societal participation – while also limiting individual, political or technological agency.

Keynote Speakers:
Caren Kaplan – University of California at Davis, USA
Nanna Verhoeff – Utrecht University, Netherlands

Suggested paper topics include, but are not limited to:

• Politics, philosophy and ethics of going off grid
• Grid as Network, Grid as Default (Geomedia and Infrastructure)
• Physical Geography/Relational Geography
• Inhabiting Digital Geographies (VR, hybrid spaces)
• Geomedia in the Global South
• Urban and Rural Geomedia
• The ‘geo’ in Geomedia, the ‘media’ in Geomedia
• Governing Geomedia (smart city, sensor media, infrastructures, surveillance & countersurveillance)
• Geomedia Activism
• Digital detox, rationing, quarantine and isolation
• Geomedia Histories

Click here for the full version of the CfP

October 31st 2020: Submission system opens January 7th 2021: Deadline for thematic panel and individual paper proposals January 25th 2021: Notes of acceptance and registration opens March 15th 2021: Last day of registration

Meinen etwas vorgezogenen Einstand begehe ich mit einer Konferenzwoche. Heute beginnt in Siegen die Jahrestagung des Sonderforschungsbereichs Medien der Kooperation: „Media in the Wild“. Dann geht es direkt weiter mit der Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft #gfm2018!

Hier geht es zum Programm der SFB-Jahrestagung.

Ich freu mich schon auf die keynote heute Abend von Arjun Appadurai (New York University): „The Idea of the Mediant: Agency and Technology in the Financial World“

„In an earlier essay (2016), I proposed the idea of the ‚mediant‘ as a more specific category of ‚actants‘ , which might be batter suited to account for the relationship between materiality and mediation. In this essay, i will develop this argument by taking a closer at contemporary financial forms, such as the derivative, whose materiality cannot be separated from their mediating capacities. Furthermore, financial mediants not only link various materialities, they also produce new surplus value, something which is not a feature of conventional actants. This capacity encourages us to think more deeply about the generativity of mediants.“

Die morgige Keynote gibt übrigens Luc Boltanski (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris): „Déplacements du capitalisme et économie de l’enrichissement“.

Der Vortrag markiert zugleich den Abschluss der SFB-Tagung und Beginn der Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft.

Hier das Programm der #gfm2018.