In Other Tongues: creating metaphysics, embodying language
June 7-9 2017 [Residential Short Course June 10-14]
Venue: Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EA, UK

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS 22.00 GMT January 5, 2017

We invite you to submit a proposal for participation in the forthcoming summit In Other Tongues to be held June 7-9 2017 at Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.  This event is part of Schumacher College’s Arts & Ecology programme and is produced by art.earth, a family of artists and organisations focussing on the contemporary arts and the world around us.

The summit is followed by a residential short course at Dartington, from June 10-14.

Frame
Our understanding of the world around us has been a constantly-shifting thing. We have always sought to explain natural phenomena we can’t understand and to use myth, ritual and religion to add structure and narrative to this most complex and puzzling place. More recently, as our scientific understanding of the world evolved and its tenets ever more culturally dominant, we fought to dismiss superstition and myth, confident in our new knowledges and delighted with our infinite ability to understand the ineffable. 

Artists never entirely succumbed; some doubtless eschewed enchantment and sentiment –– deliberately ‘courting meaninglessness’ (Gablik 1991) and consciously devoid of soul; but art almost always works with visceral knowledge. The best, the most profound art and science help us touch, taste, feel and smell new understanding.

Ultimately however we rely on stories ever-told to provide a spiritual baseline. The enchanted world dismissed, eviscerated from the Modernist worldview is hungered after and sought out: in different ways, in different languages, in different understandings. Re-discovering ancient knowledges that are still within our bones can only lead to new empathies and translations of other tongues, reinvigorating our connection to the world and everything that lives here with us and alongside us.

Read more at http://inothertongues.info/call-for-proposals/


Possible Topics
Not intended to proscriptive or prescriptive, this list of topics suggests areas we are likely to explore. However we are open to all relevant ideas, from the philosophical to the most practical and pragmatic:

Interspecies language and theory
Interspecies collaboration
Song, cry and voice - utterance and performance
Language and understanding
Morality and ethics
Mourning, death and loss
Consciousness studies
Listening and non-human language
Non-human cognition and philosophy of mind
Fungi, disease and the language of mycelia
Indigeneity
Ritual, myth and metaphor
Post-Batesonian understandings of the world
Animals and play, interspecies gaming
Fairies, monsters, daemons, and gods
Other understandings of natural phenomena
Enchantment and the sacred
Poiesis and other-than-human poetic gesture
The zoomorphic gaze


The deadline for submissions is 22.00 GMT on Thursday January 5, 2017. We are requesting 250-word abstracts or outlines, which must be submitted through the event website at inothertongues.info/proposal-form/. We are unable to accept any submissions after the deadline.

For more detailed information please visit inothertongues.info