Dear all,
	please find enclosed a call for papers for the Border Aesthetics conference in Tromsø, 5-7 september 2012 - with an extended deadline, 20 June. Please also further to any other colleagues who might be interested.
	kind regards
		Johan Schimanski

		http://uit.no/hsl/borderaesthetics



Border Aesthetics International Conference

Call for Papers WITH EXTENDED PROPOSAL DEADLINE

5-7 September 2012

University of Tromsø, Norway

Keynotes:

Debra A. Castillo (Cornell University)

Ulrike Hanna Meinhof (University of Southampton)

Frederik Tygstrup (University of Copenhagen)

Resident artists:

Chto Delat? / What is to be Done?



This conference will investigate how changing perceptions of borders relate to shifting aesthetic practices. In so doing, it draws upon two guiding observations that must inform any notion of a border aesthetics, these being a) that aesthetic theories and practices regularly invoke and engage with notions of the border; and b) that borders are in turn capable of producing aesthetic effects and can themselves be conceived of as aesthetic objects. Papers can focus on the literature, film, photography, visual design, urban planning, and video art to name but a few examples. Also work produced by creative artists working in or imagining border regions will be welcomed. In particular, the Barents Region and the Mediterranean are important areas of study but we also will consider – and encourage – investigations of other regions.

Our concentration on border regions enables the Conference not only to explore and develop further the relatively new field of migratory aesthetics, but it will also formulate what might provisionally be called a zonal aesthetics. Indeed, one of its principal goals will be precisely to establish how a new ‘aesthetics of space’ of a kind likely to be required by the study of the divergent groups, objects, values and activities that inhabit and pass through border zones can be described, explained, negotiated, and evaluated.

In the process, the conference will explicitly address the question of how aesthetic activity participates in the processes by which people relate to the real and conceptual geographies in which they live and through which they move. This focus is both socially engaged and inquisitive about the dynamic ways in which cultural phenomena are ascribed value through aesthetic practice. At the same time, it situates the conference at the vanguard of current thinking about aesthetics.

Panel proposals, especially from existing border studies groups, are especially welcome, as well as proposals for individual papers focusing on:



·       shifting aesthetic practices: changing perceptions of borders?

·       aesthetic categories and ethical values in presentations of border zones

·       emerging medial and aesthetic techniques in presentations of border zones

·       aesthetic activities in lived border regions

·       from migratory aesthetics to zonal aesthetics

·       the aesthetic activity of migrants, minorities, and trans-national identities within border zones

·       liminality and relationality in border films, literature, art and music

·       aesthetic consumption: border festivals, border tourism

·       the theory of aesthetic and spatial boundaries

·       visuality, visibility and memory in border zones

·       the role of aesthetics and cultural production in the bordering process

·       aesthetics and the politics of borders



We are seeking proposals for 20 minute papers in English by 20 June 2012. Please include the following information in your proposal:



1. Provisional title

2. 5 keywords

3. An abstract, including an account of the subject matter and methodology of research of not over 200 words

4. Brief CV in 2-3 sentences 



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