<nettime-ann> Call for Papers: Activist Media and Biopolitics Conference

[Wolfgang Sützl <wolfgang.suetzl@uibk.ac.at>]

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CALL FOR PAPERS

International Conference

ACTIVIST MEDIA AND BIOPOLITICS: CRITICAL MEDIA INTERVENTIONS IN THE AGE OF BIOPOWER

University of Innsbruck, Austria, 12-13 November, 2010

Following the decline of tactical media as a guiding concept in media of resistance, many of the key concerns articulated in tactical media seem to have migrated to the intersection of informatics and the life sciences. Paralleling a shift of interest from hard/software to “wetware” in information technology, and from territorial to biopolitical regimes, activists, artists and scientists began developing networks of collaboration across disciplines, institutional settings, and economic frameworks, questioning the workings of biopower by introducing discontinuities in a new hegemony of knowledge. Interventions have targeted biopolitical areas such as precarious labor, technologies of security, asylum policies, health care reforms, body politics, gendering, racial profiling, genetic engineering, cellular research, nutrition, biopharmaceuticals, and many others. Carrying forward the interventionist practices of tactical media, biopolitical activists have surprised the mainstream by engaging in dissident practices at the very core of scientific knowledge formation and the related constructions of political/social realities. Outside the laboratories, they have challenged established categories about food, plants and animals through direct actions.

This conference brings together theoreticians, practitioners and activists whose work focuses on challenges to the hegemonic biopolitical discourse, and on developing tools for a critical understanding of biopower.

Contributions might address, but are not limited to:

New questions in media theory in the light of biopolitics
Forms of media activism in the life sciences
Current questions in gender and biopower
Current activist and artistic practices in the field of biotechnology
Body politics
Current anti-racist activism
Forms of activism after tactical media
Relational activism
Bio media
Media activism and precarious labor
Media activism and genetic engineering, pharmaceutical technologies, health reforms
Interventions in asylum and migration


Invited speakers: Marie-Luise Angerer, Carolyn Guertin, Joshua Atkinson, Paul Venouse, Geoff Cox


The conference is hosted by the interdisciplinary forum Innsbruck Media Studies at the University of Innsbruck. It is focused on discourse and will primarily consist of delivered papers with plenary discussions and workshops.

Conference languages are English and German. Conference organizers: Prof. Dr. Theo Hug and Dr. Wolfgang Sützl (Institute of Educational Science, University of Innsbruck). 
Conference website: http://medien.uibk.ac.at/amab2010 (upcoming)

Dates and deadlines:

15 July, 2010:                        submission of abstracts (max. 500 words, to wolfgang.suetzl@uibk.ac.at)
30 July, 2010:                        notification of speakers
15 October, 2010:            	 submission of manuscripts

                                              	(max. 5000 words incl. references, abstract of 150 words, 
                                               a style-guide will be available in due time)

20 December, 2010:            notification of papers accepted for publication



Contact:
Dr. Wolfgang Sützl
wolfgang.suetzl@uibk.ac.at

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