[spectre] CFP: Sub(e)merging: Poetics, Temporalities, Epistemologies (Oldenburg, 25-27 May 23)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Marie Sophie Beckmann
Date: Dec 9, 2022
Subject: CFP: Sub(e)merging: Poetics, Temporalities, Epistemologies 
(Oldenburg, 25-27 May 23)

Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, May 25–27, 2023
Deadline: Feb 10, 2023

Call for Proposals – International workshop:

Sub(e)merging: Poetics, Temporalities, Epistemologies.

Organized by the research department Theory and History of Contemporary 
Media, Institute for Art and Visual Culture, Carl von Ossietzky 
University Oldenburg.

Jennifer Mehigan and Bassam Al-Sabah’s animated film A Paradise Out of a 
Common Field (2020) follows a zombie as she emerges from the soil of a 
lush garden and submerges into the glittering depths of the ocean. A 
voice can be heard from off-screen, pondering Irish graveyards as sites 
of class and gender trauma, and forgotten or rather subdued history, but 
also as "pleasure grounds" of metamorphosis and transition, of kinship, 
allies, and, indeed, life: "the gossip in the mass famine grave was 
probably more exciting than the bullshit of the middle-class cemetery."

Tapping into the defiant yet activating quality of the underground and 
its porous line of demarcation, A Paradise Out of a Common Field engages 
with what we might call "submerged modes." Macarena Gómez-Barris (2017) 
introduced the term to describe complex and, above all, resistant forms 
of life and knowledge. These social ecologies exist in specific material 
and media environments; sites of industrial as well as 
digital-capitalist, neocolonialist exploitation, takeover, oppression, 
and surveillance, while also resisting these powers. Through their 
intangible density as well as their illegible heterogeneity, these 
perspectives elude an "extractive view" from above, that is, approaches 
that aim at totalizing representation, (scientific) disciplining, and 
capitalist valorization. Instead, they invite engagement with methods 
and perspectives that are equally submerged: a perception from below. 
These perspectives may be messy or unstable, but by enabling (or rather 
requiring) a mode of "perceiving life differently," (Gómez-Barris), a 
"seeing with one another without claiming to be another," (Haraway 1988) 
much can be learned from them.

Seeking to open and expand the rich repertoire of meanings of 
Gómez-Barris’s concept–and focusing on its generative potential by 
slightly altering its terminology–the international transdisciplinary 
workshop Sub(e)merging invites artistic and scholarly contributions from 
various fields to probe the transformative potentials of operating and 
perceiving from below,  especially in times of political and ecological 
crisis. How can we take seriously the processes of gathering and 
evolving inherent in the term submerging? In other words: What emerges 
in submersion?

We are particularly (but not only) interested in the following aspects 
and questions:

Aesthetic, material and visual aspects of submerging - What does an 
aesthetic of submerging look like? What is its affective dimension?
- What challenge does submerging pose to modes of representation?
- How can submerging be discussed in relation to the role that imaging 
media and technologies play in making "submerged modes" visible?
- What are potential contexts and material environments of submerging; 
the "damaged landscape, beyond the call of industrial promise and ruin" 
(Lowenhaupt Tsing 2015)? The swamp, the soil, the deep sea? The archive, 
the cemetery, the tunnel, the landfill?

Epistemological and methodological dimensions of submerging
- How can going beneath the surface become a position from which to 
perceive, speak, act, and operate (differently) – a site of learning 
with/from buried or disqualified, that is, "subjugated knowledges" 
(Foucault 2003); a way of "recuperating the lost bodies of history" 
(DeLoughrey and Flores 2020)?
- How does submergence destabilize the ground as a site of stability or 
evidence to become a conceptual tool for "milieu-specific analysis" (Jue 
2020) or the study of "liquid ecologies" (Blackmore and Gómez 2020)?

Spatial and temporal layers of submerging - How do the spatial and 
temporal specificities of submerging matter? - To which degree can 
submerging upset normative chronologies and spatial hierarchies?

(Eco-)politics of sub(e)merging
- How can we make productive the tension (and interrelation) between the 
different forms of going below; between chosen/strategic submerging, 
violence or suppression, and submersion as the result of anthropogenic 
climate change that has led to a shift in environmental boundaries (as 
in sea level rise, a flood, or landslide)?
- How does submersion relate to the underground in its many material and 
metaphorical meanings–as porous and paradoxical contact zone of longing 
and mysticism, of rich ecosystems, complex infrastructures (of care), of 
colonization, exploitation and exclusion, of imagination and otherness? 
- In what ways can submerging become an act of resistance, imagination, 
protest, refusal, or revenge, an "emergent strategy from the deep" 
(brown 2017, Gumbs 2020)?

Formally, the workshop is open, meaning that contributions can choose 
the usual presentation form (individual papers of 20-30 min.), but other 
formats like conversations or material discussions are equally welcome. 
Presentations should preferably be held in English, but German is 
possible as well. Please send an abstract (max. 300 words), along with a 
brief biographical note (max. 150 words) and/or queries, by email to the 
following address by February 10, 2023: medienwissenschaft at uol.de. 
Applicants will be notified of acceptance by the end of February, 2023. 
Funding is being applied to run the workshop.

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Sub(e)merging: Poetics, Temporalities, Epistemologies (Oldenburg, 
25-27 May 23). In: ArtHist.net, Dec 9, 2022. 
<https://arthist.net/archive/38131>.

_____________________________________________________________________

ArtHist.net - Network for Art History / Fachforum der Kunstgeschichte
ISSN 2750-5685

Editorial Board Contact Address / Fragen an die Redaktion:
editors at arthist.net

Submit contributions to / Beiträge bitte an:
https://arthist.net/mailing-list/mode=contribute

Update your subscription / Abo-Verwaltung:
https://arthist.net/admin/