[rohrpost] CFP: conference "TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE in Art & Science", 20-21 May 2016, Ionian University, Corfu

[Ingeborg Reichle]

Call for papers and artwork presentations for the
International Conference:

"TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE in Art & Science"

Friday 20th & Saturday 21th May 2016, Ionian University, Corfu

Audiovisual Arts Festival Official Website: avarts.ionio.gr/festival

Audiovisual Arts Festival 2016 Call for Papers:
avarts.ionio.gr/festival/2016/en/conference

Online Submissions to the 2016 Conference:
easychair.org/conferences/?conf=avfest2016

Deadline CFP: February 29, 2016

The Department of Audio and Visual Arts of the Ionian University
organizes a two-day interdisciplinary conference with theoretical and
artwork presentations under the theme of “Taboo - Transgression -
Transcendence”, focusing on questions about the nature of the
forbidden and the liminal as expressed in science and art.

Since the beginning of time, taboo has traced the edges of experience.
As with Icarus, whose excitement made him forget the restrictions of
his man-made wings leading to his fall towards death, humans have
always been regulated by a set of rules defining the borders of
knowledge and experimentation. What constitutes the limits of the
accepted, however, has to be read within the ethical horizons of a
specific time frame. It is not uncommon that what seems outrageously
transgressive in one moment, can eventually transcend to a commonplace
practice.

Limits are continuously put to test as contemporary scientific
experimentation pushes forward our idea of the world, in quest for
answers but also for solutions allowing us to overcome the problems
present in our lives. Progress in fields such as the human genome
editing, the creation of cyborgs and any human-like artificial
intelligence, are only few examples presently generating double-edged
questions on the nature of humanity. One could easily recall Dr.
Frankenstein, whose ambition to solve the mystery of life and death
ends up revealing the threshold of control between creator and
creation. As we experience a gradual, but substantial, de-centering
from the humanistic values, scientific experimentation bears potential
turmoil; its advances are essentially stretching the borders of our
experience of the world and ourselves, mostly revealing the fragility
of social values.

However, isn’t this also the essential role of Art? More than ever
before, isn’t this the point where science intrinsically meet with the
arts? Arts apply critical questions to our certainties, and it is not
a coincidence that in the last decades so many artists have focused on
the human body as their primary medium for investigation. In the
merging of science and art opens a space for creative transformation.
Art’s playfully transgressive nature offers creative bypasses to the
scientific grammar and expands the dialogue with its openness to a
multiplicity towards the new. Nevertheless, art – albeit its originary
affinity with the taboo – is never completely liberated from moral
considerations. Deeply involved into this lively discourse on the
nature of the taboo, art becomes the very domain of contemporary
experimentation with transgression, in order to provoke and sparkle
discourse, catalyzing possible forms of transcendence. Can this
relation bear a force of liberating? Is there such a thing as
incentive prohibitions and who/what defines the borders of accepted
identities and ideologies? Immersing into the impure realm of limits
and liminalities, one might trace the mental structures filtering our
experience of the world, ultimately opening space for creative
transformations through the mixing of art and science.

Submissions are welcome both from scientific fields acquainted to
audio & visual technology and/or new media theory as well as from the
diverse fields of artistic expression related with scientific issues.
Suggested, but not exclusive topics, are those associated, from an
artistic, scientific or ethical perspective, with:

Art as subversion and art as transcendence

Dirt, disgust and the polluted

The body machine and the animal body

Animal rights in Art and Science

Taboos in technological applications and transcendence in art creation

Tradition, experimental use of technology and contemporary aesthetics

Internet, new dimensions of “touching” and control

Post gender, transgressive identities and social models

Transgression, subculture and ritual

Trance culture, psychotropic substances and socialization

Attraction, eroticism and techno-reproduction

Dogmas’ transformations and dissolutions in present times

Educational environments and new practices of space transcendence

Plastic surgery and bοdy modification-body alteration

Gene editing, mutation and eugenics

Psycho-pharmacology, somatechnology and post-humanism

Human-like machines, uncanny valley and sex technology

Nanotechnology, skin and other dimensions of the body

Neurophysiology and cybernetic art

Art and neuroscience


Abstract submission
Proposals are submitted for consideration by the members of the
scientific & artistic committee. Each proposal should include an
abstract (which should be no more than 500 words), presentation title,
author(s) name(s), affiliation(s), e-mail address(es) and up to 5
keywords. Submissions must be sent electronically through easychair:
avfest2016. The working languages of the conference are Greek and English.

Information for presenters
Once accepted, a draft presentation, a short biography and the
electronic presentation file will be requested for submission by
author(s) before the conference start date. Contributions must not
exceed a 20 minutes presentation time, allowing another 10 minutes for
further discussion. Facilities include typical audiovisual equipment
for electronic presentations (PC, video projector and stereo
speakers). The conference proceedings will be published in digital
format (e-Book) with ISBN number. Paper formatting instructions will
be provided to the presenting authors together with the conference folder.

Important dates:

Deadline for submitting abstracts: until February 29, 2016
Response date in case of acceptance: until March 15, 2016
Deadline for submitting CV: until March 31, 2016
Conference programme announcement: until April 10, 2016
Deadline for submitting draft text and presentation file: until April
30, 2016
Conference schedule date: May 20-21, 2016
Deadline for submitting final text for proceedings: September 1, 2016

Venue:

Ionian University, in the island of Corfu (Greece). Ionian University,
in collaboration with local hotels and restaurants, has arranged for
special rates for the speakers. Details regarding accommodation and
meals will be sent along with the acceptance response.

Scientific & Artistic Committee:

Panagiotes Anastasiades, University of Crete, Greece
Robert Cahen, video artist, France
Konstantinos Christidis, University of Crete, Greece
Renata Dalianoudi, University of Ioannina, Greece
Manos Danezis, University of Athens, Greece
Andreas Floros, Ionian University, Greece
Marco Maria Gazzano, Universita degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy
Anastasia Georgaki, University of Athens, Greece
Andreas Giannakoulopoulos, Ionian University, Greece
Elena Hamalidi, Ionian University, Greece
Anna Hatziyiannaki, Art Historian, chairwoman ARTOPOS for Art and
Technology, Greece
Dalila Honorato, Ionian University, Greece
Andreas Ioannidis, Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece
Anna Kafetsi, art historian, Greece
Elena von Kassel, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France
Nikolaos-Grigorios Kanellopoulos, Ionian University, Greece
Apostolos Loufopoulos, Ionian University, Greece
Maria Marangou, art critic and curator, Director of the Museum of
Contemporary Art of Crete,Greece
Eirini Mavrommati, Hellenic Open University, Greece
Marc Mercier, art historian and Director of the Festival Instant
Video, France
Brenda Murphy, University of Malta, Malta
Olga Pombo, Center for Philosophy of Sciences, University of Lisbon,
Portugal
Ingeborg Reichle, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
Marianne Strapatsakis, Ionian University, Greece
Ioannis Zannos, Ionian University, Greece
Adam Zaretsky, Marist College, NY, USA

Organizing Committee:

Dalila Honorato, Ionian University (Head)
Apostolos Loufopoulos, Ionian University
Thomas Valianatos, Ionian University
Athanasia Vidali, Ionian University