<nettime-ann> Walter Benjamin and the Virtual: Politics, Art, and Mediation in the Age of Global Culture

[John Grech <jgrech@dds.nl>]

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Title: Walter Benjamin and the Virtual: Politics, Art, and Mediat

Transformations is seeking abstracts for the following issue:

Walter Benjamin and the Virtual: Politics, Art, and Mediation in the Age of Global Culture

What does Walter Benjamin offer for critical thinking and creative practice in an age increasingly mediated by virtual technologies?

Much Benjaminian scholarship proposes a Benjamin at best ambivalent to, and at worst, in recoil from modernity. Yet, recent critical thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben and Jean-Luc Nancy provide new possibilities in approaching the analysis of contemporary culture inspired by Benjamin's insights and arguments. These suggest innovative ways of reading and incorporating Benjamin, ways that re-engage an active configuration between politics, art, and representation in response to the shift from mass to global culture.

Increasingly it seems possible to reconsider the role art can, and may be already playing, in such a configuration. This issue of Transformations seeks submissions that address these ideas. In the light of Benjamin's thought, and those who take that thought further, we want to look at what the concept of virtuality- the tendency in mediated contexts towards disembodied interactions and ways of being human-- does to Benjamin's ideas of politics, art, and media?

Call for abstracts: abstracts of 500 words due end of November 2006

Papers due: March 2007

Publication: mid 2007

Submissions: Submissions should be sent to the
Issue editor: John Grech, at
John.M.Grech@alumni.uts.edu.au
Or alternatively, to the
General editor: Warwick Mules at
w.mules@cqu.edu.au

For full details please visit the Transformations website at
http://transformations.cqu.edu.au

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