ACCELERATED LIVING CONFERENCE
In the context of the programme “Accelerated Living”, part of IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2009, 14-18 October 2009, Utrecht, NL. Full Program (including exhibition, screenings, performances, lectures): www.impakt.nl.
Thursday 15 October 2009 / Filmtheater ‘t Hoogt / 10:00 – 18:30.
Free entrance. Prior registration recommended via rsvp@impakt.nl (please indicate your full name and contact details).
The Italian media philosopher Franco Berardi aka Bifo recently wrote in his 'Post-Futurist Manifest' (2009) that «the omnipresent and eternal speed is already behind us, in the Internet, so we can forget its syncopated rhymes and find our own singular rhythm». During the past decade the spread of neo liberal globalisation and the revolution of information and communication technologies have led to a new temporal dynamics, both in terms of our personal lives and for society as a whole. The rise of communication networks, stretched accross time and space, has brought us to realize that clock time – the long-time regulator of our social lives – is not an absolute backdrop against which to communicate and synchronize time, but a human construction which has little to do with our experience of and in time. Contemporary science and technology have made possible a temporality which though still based upon clock time, has exploded into countless different time fractions and speeds beyond human comprehension. Today we seem to live in several time zones at the same time, propelled by a variety of internal and external time mechanisms and innumerable rhythms which continuously vibrate, resonate, connect, oscillate and disconnect. How to grasp the temporal complexity that surrounds and occupies us? What sort of ecologies of time and speed have we developed under the influence of new technologies and what is their impact on our body and senses? This conference brings together a number of international thinkers who offer new perspectives on our contemporary experience of time and speed.
In collaboration with the MA New Media & Digital Culture, Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University. Introduction: Ann-Sophie Lehmann (Utrecht University). Moderation: Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Virtueel Platform, Amsterdam) & Mirko Tobias Schaefer (Utrecht University).
Participants: Mike Crang, Dirk de Bruyn, Charlie Gere, Steve Goodman, Carmen Leccardi, Glenn Kaino, Sybille Lammes, Stamatia Portanova, Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead, John Tomlinson.
Mike Crang (UK) is Lecturer in cultural geography at Durham University. His research is concerned with social identity and perception of space, as well as the transformation of space and time caused by electronic technologies. For years he co-edited the journal Time & Society and in 2005 he participated in the project Multispeed Cities and the Logistics of Living in the Information Age.
Dirk de Bruyn (NL/AUS) teaches animation and digital culture at Deakin University in Melbourne, Victoria. The past decades he has produced a number of films, videos and performances dealing with the feeling of trauma and disorientation. His recent research focuses on the functioning of memory systems and perception strategies in situations of sensorial excess.
Charlie Gere (UK) teaches New Media Research at the Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University and is Chair of the group ‘Computers and the History of Art’ (CHArt). He’s interested in the cultural effects and meanings of technology and media, in relation to art and philosophy. His book Art, Time and Technology (2006) explores artistic responses to the increasing speed of technological development.
Steve Goodman (UK) teaches music culture at the School of Humanities & Social Sciences, University of East London. He runs the master “Sonic Culture” and is now working on Sonic Warfare, a theoretical research on the intersection between war and sound culture. A member of Ccru (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit), under the name of Kode9 he is a main figure in contemporary breakbeat culture.
Carmen Leccardi (IT) is Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Milan-Bicocca. She has researched extensively in the field of time, youth cultures and gender. Recent publications include Il tempo nella società (Time in Society) and A New Youth? Youth, Generations and Family Life (2006). She’s the co-editor of the journal Time & Society since 1999.
Glenn Kaino (US) is not easy to pin down. A former creative director for Napster, mastermind of ueber.com, co-founder of the Deep River Gallery in Los Angeles, visual artist... Much like Andy Warhol, he effortlessly crosses the borders between art and entertainment, using a variety of media and cultural references. His installation series ‘Time Machines’ is the result of a pronounced fascination with the complexity of time.
Sybille Lammes (NL) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Culture Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University. She is interested in SF film, games and digital cartography. In recent years, her research has focused on the function of computer games as cultural spaces and the impact of digital maps on the meanings of media and cartography.
Stamatia Portanova (IT) received her PhD in Digital Cultures from the East London University, and is now a Honorary Fellow in English Language and Literature at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. She is a member of The Sense Lab (Concordia University, Montreal) and of the editorial board of Inflexions, the online journal of the Sense Lab. She is working at the preparation of a monograph on the relationship between choreography, science and philosophy.
Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead (UK) have been working together since the beginning of the 1990s on an idiosyncratic oeuvre, situated in the twilight zone between visual art and online media. Most of their work deals with the influence of new technologies on our experience of time and perception of the world around us. Thomson teaches at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, and Craighead lectures at the University of Westminster and Goldsmiths, University of London.
John Tomlinson (UK) is Professor of Cultural Sociology and Director of the Institute for Cultural Analysis, Nottingham (ICAn). He has published a number of books on the themes of globalisation, cosmopolitanism and cultural modernity, including Globalization and Culture (1999). His recent book The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy (2007) explores the place of speed within modern telemediated culture.