[spectre] Researching BWPWAP: The Reinvention of Research as Participatory Practice

[Tatiana Bazzichelli]

Researching BWPWAP: The Reinvention of Research as Participatory Practice

Call for Participation for International Research Conference and PhD 
Workshop to be held at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany, 22-24 
November 2012.

Organised by:

Digital Aesthetics/Participatory IT Research Centre, Aarhus University
reSource transmedial culture berlin/transmediale festival
Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University of Lüneburg

We hereby invite proposals for participation in a research workshop 
around the 2013 theme of the transmediale festival, BWPWAP (Back When 
Pluto Was A Planet). We are addressing researchers with diverse 
backgrounds interested in opening up some of the paradoxes of 
contemporary digital art and culture. Although the workshop is primarily 
aimed at international PhD researchers, it is also open to researchers 
who are pursuing research without institutional support.

The workshop aims at researching concepts and phenomena that, in the 
light of the festival's thematic framework, have become destabilised by 
network culture and digital media (see below). Thematically, these may 
include – but are not restricted to:

/ techno-cultural displacement and invention
/ fragility of networks
/ disruptive potential of artistic practice
/ paradoxes of digital art and culture
/ organisation after networks
/ participatory research practices
/ research beyond academia
/ network epistemologies
/ networks after social networks

BWPWAP

In referring to the cancellation of Pluto's planetary status in 2006, 
BWPWAP (Back When Pluto Was a Planet), the 2013 theme of the 
transmediale festival, interrogates techno-cultural processes of 
displacement and invention, asking for artistic and speculative 
responses to new cultural imaginaries. Back When Pluto Was a Planet, 
life might have seemed more innocent, yet whole cultural imaginaries, 
like planetary systems, may change overnight, and technical and cultural 
paradigms along with them. The festival will take this fragility of 
culture as a point of departure for exploring the disruptive potential 
of technological development and artistic practice. Can we act like 
BWPWAP and at same time redefine present and future cultural practices, 
inventing networks out of place and out of time?

This conference and workshop, which precedes transmediale, asks how 
BWPWAP can be interpreted in the context of research culture that has 
been significantly destabilised by network culture and digital media. If 
Pluto didn't exactly fall prey to an epistemological break or a 
scientific revolution, but rather to a mundane administrative procedure 
– a redefinition of what constitutes a planet and the invention of the 
category "dwarf planet" – then what does this say about contemporary 
research culture? Is research today occupied more with mundane acts of 
recategorisation, and – after Bologna – with what Lyotard already called 
performativity? Or does it still engage the kind of marvel and wonder 
that so many ascribe to Pluto and that BWPWAP captures as a cultural 
term? If BWPWAP captures a time when transmedial culture was researched 
outside academia, how does network culture and digital media then 
contribute to and transform research culture, forcing it out of its 
closet and, if not into the solar system, then at least beyond the academy?

BWPWAP, network culture was already becoming subsumed by social media 
and more recently mobile media. Networking and other strategies within 
software and net culture have become enmeshed with everyday life and big 
business. Research culture was visited by a similar fate: conferences 
reduced to networking events to foster cultural capital, and scholarly 
communications reduced to impact factors measured by grant givers. In 
light of this, what complicity can be constructed, with or without 
Pluto, between network and research cultures? Can digital culture save 
research from itself, and vice versa? What kinds of technological and 
artistic practices are suggested by BWPWAP and might produce rhizomatic 
effects for research and digital culture?

WORKSHOP EVENT AND PROCESS

In the context of developing a platform for knowledge exchange, and 
research across the arts and sciences, transmediale and research groups 
at Aarhus and Leuphana universities have established a partnership to 
foster new forms of collaborative research, peer-review, publication and 
performative knowledge dissemination. The international research 
conference and PhD workshop takes transmediale's thematic framework as a 
broad starting point, and is a chance for researchers to share ideas and 
development processes across and beyond the time/space of academic 
research paradigms. The challenge is to salvage what there is to be 
salvaged from network culture and digital media for research, and vice 
versa.

The workshop forms part of a series of events initiated by reSource 
transmedial culture berlin, which is an initiative of transmediale based 
on continuous network knowledge development and community involvement 
around the festival throughout the year. The event itself will be an 
interdisciplinary conference and workshop where PhD students and other 
participants can engage with members of the three participating 
institutions and invited international guests. One aspect of the 
conference will be a writing workshop wherein new digital writing 
practices and forms of collaborative writing will be explored. Ahead of 
the conference, invited participants will be asked to take part in an 
online discussion and collaboration process as an experiment in the peer 
production of knowledge. After the conference, participants will be 
involved in the production of a peer-reviewed research newspaper – 
itself an experiment in new forms of scholarly publication, and to be 
presented and distributed at transmediale 2013.

The event follows on from similar events organised in 2012 and 2011 at 
Universität der Künste (Berlin), and Aarhus University, respectively. 
For the publication resulting from the last events, visit the following.

http://darc.imv.au.dk/worldofthenewspaper.pdf

http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces

PARTICIPATION AND SUBMISSION

We invite proposals that take diverse perspectives to open up some of 
the paradoxes of contemporary thinking and anachronisms of practices 
that employ communications technologies. In the selection of 
participants, we are looking to assemble a diversity of research 
traditions and disciplines represented, including 'practice-based 
research'. The aim is to develop participants' individual research 
projects as well as foster networking. PhD students can be awarded 5 
ECTS for their participation. Although the workshop is primarily aimed 
at international PhD researchers, it is also open to researchers who are 
pursuing research without institutional support.

We are seeking proposals consisting of a biography (500 characters), a 
statement on current research/description of PhD project (1000 
characters), and an abstract for a short presentation (1500 characters). 
The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2012.

Here you can submit your proposals.

http://www.transmediale.de/node/18472/

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More info:
http://darc.imv.au.dk/
http://www.transmediale.de/resource
http://www.leuphana.de/inkubator/digitale-medien.html
Partners: Hybrid Publishing Lab, Segmented Media Offerings and 
Post-Media Lab as part of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg Digital 
Media Incubator

-- 
Tatiana Bazzichelli // curator and programme developer
reSource transmedial culture berlin // http://www.transmediale.de/resource
BWPWAP - transmediale 2013
29.01 – 03.02, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin // 
http://www.transmediale.de
http://twitter.com/transmediale

transmediale | festival for art and digital culture berlin
Klosterstr. 68 10179 Berlin, Germany | fon +49 30 24749 761 | fax +49 30 
24749 763
Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH
Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender Volker Heller | Geschäftsführer Moritz van Dülmen