School for Cultural Analysis University of Amsterdam

Bushuis, KloveniersburgwalASCA 48, room F111B, 1012 CX Amsterdam, The , [email protected],

Nieuwsbrief 208 March 2018

Esther Peeren Professor of Cultural Analysis ...... 1 We are proud and happy that ASCA’s Vice Director Dissertation Defence: Mikki Stelder ...... 1 Esther Peeren has been appointed Professor of KIEM funding For Rachel Esner ...... 2 Cultural Analysis within the University of New ASCA Member: Maria Boletsi ...... 2 Amsterdam’s Faculty of Humanities. She is the first to hold a Chair in Cultural Analysis. Forms of Temporal Complexities ...... 2 Professor Peeren received her PhD degree from ASCA Volume and Vibration ...... 3 in 2005 (cum laude). Two years later she began Poetins rechtbank/Putin's court ...... 3 supervising PhD candidates at ASCA. To date, she has This is Film! ...... 4 been co-promotor of 13 PhD candidates. As ASCA’s ‘Drawd too architectooralooral’ ...... 4 Vice Director, she is responsible for the PhD The Pornification of Culture ...... 4 community at ASCA and conducts their annual Uncertainty of Digital Archives ...... 5 evaluations. Global Critical Pedagogies ...... 5 Last year, her research project "Imagining the Rural in The Urban Commons of Culture, Past & Present ...... 6 a Globalizing World" was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. Recent publications include an (In)Human Time: Artistic Responses to Radiotoxicity article on the affective dimension of the political ...... 6 mobilization of the rural in Landscape Research (2018), a Solid Knowledge ...... 7 volume (co-edited with Robin Celikates, Jeroen de Testimony. Commemoration. Wellbeing...... 8 Kloet and Thomas Poell) on Global Cultures of Posthuman Ethics, Pain and Endurance ...... 9 Contestation (Palgrave, 2018), a volume (co-edited with Master Class with Wendy Brown ...... 9 Hanneke Stuit and Astrid Van Weyenberg) on Cutting Edge Research Fund | Deadline extended .. 10 Peripheral Visions in a Globalizing World (Brill 2016) and Support tracks Grant Team 2018 ...... 10 contributions to the open access publication Symptoms Pre-program PhD in the Arts ...... 10 of the Planetary Condition: A Critical Vocabulary (Meson Press, 2017). Read more. Paris Institute for Advanced Study Fellowships ...... 10 ASCA congratulates Professor Peeren with this well- IFK Research Fellowships ...... 10 deserved appointment! LERU Doctoral Summer School ...... 10

DISSERTATION DEFENCE: MIKKI STELDER ESTHER PEEREN PROFESSOR OF CULTURAL Queering the Occupation: From Zionist Sexual ANALYSIS Politics to Palestinian Decolonial-Queer Imaginaries Supervisor: Mireille Rosello. 6 March 10:00 hrs., Agnietenkapel. Queering the Occupation exposes a gap between the existing critical frameworks that discuss the role of gender and sexual politics in the context of Israel/Palestine and what it calls Palestinian anticolonial-queer critiques. Such critiques emerge from within Palestinian queer communities and offer novel perspectives on the Israel/Palestine crisis. The first part of Queering the Occupation examines the trajectory of Israel’s gay and lesbian movement from the late 1980s until the present in order to understand how a gay subjectivity emerged within the boundaries of the Zionist state. It looks at how gay rights and gay life are employed in Israel’s nation branding campaign Brand Israel. And, it analyzes the cultural, economic, and political impact of Israel’s gay tourism industry on

Israel’s image globally. In the second part, Queering

2

the Occupation examines critical and liberal responses NEW ASCA MEMBER: MARIA BOLETSI to Israel’s use of sexuality and gender in its nation branding efforts. More specifically, it discerns how these responses determine the conditions of possibility for political action and the political imagination in and about Israel/Palestine in the present. It does so by engaging debates within scholarly, media, and activist contexts in Israel/Palestine, North America, and Europe, which discuss the Israeli state’s uses of sexual politics in the context of occupation. Importantly, Queering the Occupation provides insight into Palestinian anticolonial-queer critiques and decolonial- queer space-making practices that provide central conceptual interventions into how the Israel/Palestine Foto: Dirk Gillissen crisis is assessed and understood both within Since January 2018, Maria Boletsi is endowed professor Israel/Palestine and internationally. In doing so, it (bijzonder hoogleraar) at the University of moves beyond conventional understandings of the Amsterdam, where she holds the Marilena Laskaridis Israel/Palestine crisis, which have thus far failed to Chair of Modern Greek Studies. She is also assistant bring social justice to that context. professor at the Film and Literary Studies department of Leiden University. Her current research explores KIEM FUNDING FOR RACHEL ESNER ‘crisis’ as a framework and the ways contemporary Documenting Curatorial Practices in Dutch Art literature and art intervene in crisis-rhetoric in Europe. Museums (1945-Today) She focuses particularly on subjectivities and forms of The Netherlands has a tradition of innovative literary, artistic, and cultural expression that offer curatorial practice in temporary museum exhibitions alternatives to dominant narratives of the ongoing and collection presentations. Much of this practice – ‘Greek crisis.’ Maria would be interested in starting an once dismantled – has unfortunately become invisible. ASCA research group on ‘crisis’ and invites This pilot-project represents the first step in creating a researchers who have affinities with the topic to get in database that will make available to art historians, touch with her. museologists, curators, educators, exhibition She is also writing a book on spectrality in the designers, and the general public the wealth of modernist poetics of the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy and is photographs and subsidiary material documenting main partner in an international project on the modern exhibitions and displays in Dutch art museums from European history of the concept ‘barbarian.’ She is the 1945 to today. The growing interest in exhibition author of Barbarism and Its Discontents (Stanford UP, history gives this project a particular urgency, as does 2013) and co-author of De lichtheid van literatuur: the realization among museum professionals that their Engagement in de Multiculturele Samenleving (Acco 2015) archives should be accessible to future generations. and Barbarian: Explorations of a Western Concept in Moreover, many current debates surrounding heritage Modern Theory, Literature and the Arts. Vol. 1 (J.B. and identity center around museum presentations and Metzler, in press). She has recently co-edited the their role in creating shared cultural memory. This volumes Subjects Barbarian, Monstrous, and Wild: unique project will make the usually hidden but Encounters in the Arts and Contemporary Politics (Brill, crucial curatorial processes involved in their 2018) and Barbarism Revisited: New Perspectives on an realization available for interpretation. Its realization Old Concept (Brill 2015). will enable comparative research that will lead to new insights into (Dutch) museum and exhibition history, FORMS OF TEMPORAL COMPLEXITIES canon formation, and the history of art. Session #5 Forms of Complexity Seminar. 2 March, 15.00- Starting with the archives of the Museum Boijmans 18.00 hrs., IAS Institute, 0.02 Sweelinck Conference Room Van Beuningen, the pilot will examine the materials (Oude Turfmarkt 145) Contact: Tessa de Vet - available. Since different kinds of institutions generate [email protected] different kinds of documents, a comparison will be In this session we will look at forms of temporal made with the (digitized) archives of the Van Abbe complexities. The reading material is a chapter of my Museum. The aim is to produce research questions book The Neuro-Image (‘Signs of Time’) where I suggest and a glossary of terms that can serve as the basis for a new dominant form of cinematographic temporality the digital infrastructure. These will be presented at in what I call ‘the neuro-image’, cinema of the digital two expert meetings with museum curators, archivists age (which has its precursors in what Deleuze calls the and academics, and the outcomes reported in a time-image and the movement-image). This chapter is scholarly article. inspired by Deleuze’s philosophy of the three syntheses of time that he develops in Chapter 2 of Difference and Repetition, ‘Repetition for Itself’), which

3

is recommended as background reading, although it is For the 1936 Olympic Games in , the Nazis built not a chapter that one reads in a few hours… so I’ve the “Reichssportfeld“ (now: “ Berlin”). added this just for reference if you want to dive into An important part of this gigantic sports field were this material). Deleuze’s philosophy of time is a various loudspeaker systems, which were installed by temporal ontology, not necessarily mediated by the electroacoustic department (ELA) of the company cinema or other technologies, as I propose to do in my Telefunken. In my presentation I sketch a sound and reading of cinema in digital context. The second text music history of these systems that is informed by for this week is of Niklas Luhmann who talks about cultural and media theory. For this purpose, I analyse the specific conception of time of our (techno- different sonic strategies employed for addressing mediated) age, and the special place of the future. I’d open air stages and stadiums and other fields and like to discuss possible connections (or ‘differences rooms circa 1930. To be able to elaborate the and repetitions’) between Deleuze and Luhmann, open aesthetical, political and epistemological implications to further debate and investigation. The final optional of these strategies I analyse the installation, text (‘Cutting and Folding the Borgesian Map’) begins application, use and reception of the sport field’s to explore these connections and serves as optional loudspeaker systems, its sounds between “tender background material as well. outdoor music” (Carl Orff) and monumental “mass Patricia Pisters is professor of film at the Department rally music“ (Friedrich Trautwein) and the of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam and development of powerful tube amplifiers and giant director of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis loudspeakers by the companies Siemens & Halske and (ASCA). She is one of the founding editors of the Open Telefunken. Access journal Necsus: European Journal of Media Via 1920s and 1930s loudspeaker systems, I argue, Studies. Publications include: The Matrix of Visual sound was conceptualised more and more as an entity Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory (Stanford with “volume”. I introduce volume as a productive University Press, 2003); and The Neuro-Image: A and fuzzy, primarily spatial concept that is situated Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture between physics and traditional music theory, (Stanford University Press, 2012). She writes about the between measurable amplitude and musical dynamics. role of film and media in respect to collective What discourses, practices and media technologies consciousness. Currently she is working on a book correlated circa 1930 with a new conceptualization of project about the psychopathologies of contemporary sound as a voluminous entity? media culture; and on a multi-media project about the Jens Gerrit Papenburg studied musicology, filmmaker as metallurgist and alchemist of our times. communication research, and economics in Berlin, See for articles, her blog, audio-visual material and obtaining his PhD in 2012 with the dissertation other information also www.patriciapisters.com. Hörgeräte: Technisierung der Wahrnehmung durch Rock- Readings und Popmusik and his postdoctoral qualification • Luhmann, Niklas (1976). ‘The Future Cannot (Habilitation) in 2016 with ‘Para-auditive’ Subjekte der Begin; Temporal Structures in Modern Society.’ populären Musik: Eine Kultur- und Mediengeschichte, Social Research (43/1), pp. 130-152. 1890–1936. In 2017, he was a visiting professor at the • Pisters, Patricia (2012). ‘Signs of Time: Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media Metaphysics of the Brain-Screen.’ The Neuro-Image. (ICAM) at Leuphana University Lüneburg, and in A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen 2016/17 a visiting professor of History and Theory of Culture. Stanford University Press, pp. 127-155. Popular Music at the Humboldt University, Berlin, • Optional and additional reading material for those where he taught and researched from 2006 to 2016 and interested: again from October 2017. • Deleuze, Gilles (1994 [1968]). ‘Repetition for Itself.’ His research interests are popular music, culture, and Difference and Repetition. Transl. P. Patton. media since 1890; sound studies; sonic media theory Columbia University Press, pp. 70-128. and historiography; and the history and culture of • Pisters, Patricia (2016). ‘Cutting and Folding the engineered music listening. Borgesian Map: Film as Complex Temporal Object in the Industrialization of Memory.’ Ubiquitous POETINS RECHTBANK/PUTIN'S COURT Computing, Complexity, and Culture. Eds. Ekman et March 12, 8pm, De Balie al. Routledge, pp. 324-336. How much space is there in present-day Russia for opposition? What role do court speeches play in the VOLUME AND VIBRATION Putin-era dynamics of protest? At this part-Dutch, A Sound and Music History of Loudspeaker Systems, part-English evening at De Balie, Egor Osipov-Gipsh, circa 1930 Nina Targan Mouravi, and Ellen Rutten present A Colloquium Musicologicum lecture by Dr. Jens G. Poetins rechtbank (transl. Putin's Court; Nieuw Papenburg (Humboldt-Universität Berlin). Room 3.01, Amsterdam 2018), their new book with translated Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, Thursday, 15 March 2018, 15:30 court speeches by Russian citizens, activists, hrs. politicians, and artists. They assess its merit as a

4

rhetorical and literary genre, and its function as In collaboration with the University of Amsterdam political tool in the run-up to the presidential elections and the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis of March 18. Speakers include the authors, Arnout (ASCA). Brouwers (Volkskrant), Tatyana Glushkova (Memorial Moscow), and Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal ‘DRAWD TOO ARCHITECTOORALOORAL’ (Nieuwsuur). Tickets can be ordered via De Balie Ambiguous Architecture in Charles Dickens website. For questions, please contact Barbara English Department Lecture by Ben Moore (ASCA) Roggeveen at [email protected]. Thursday, 15 March at 17:00 hrs., P.C. Hoofthuis 5.59, Spuistraat 134. THIS IS FILM! This paper considers architecture in Dickens’s writing, Film Heritage in Practice is a six-session series at EYE starting from Joe Gargery’s claim in Great Expectations offering insight into what happens behind the scenes (1860-61) that the Blacking Warehouse he visits in in film archives, museums and cinemas. Each session London does not come up to its likeness as portrayed will cover a different topic and feature an introductory in shop doors, since ‘it is there drawd too lecture by Giovanna Fossati (Chief Curator at EYE and architectooralooral’. With Joe’s term Professor of Film Heritage at the UvA), followed by an ‘architectooralooral’, architecture becomes an eruption extended Q&A with an invited (inter)national expert of excess and ornamentation which language cannot on the session’s topic and a film screening. control, while at the same time being no longer #1 Found Footage: Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: confined to grand monumental buildings, extending Frozen Time. Wednesday, March 14, 15:30 hrs. instead to everyday warehouses and shops. Joe’s This lecture will focus on various practices that make perspective counters the outlook of Mr Pecksniff from use of found footage film. Bill Morrison will address Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44), for whom architecture and present his documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time, consists of Gothic churches and little else, and who featuring archival footage from the infamous Dawson serves to satirise the Gothic architect A.W.N. Pugin. City collection. Joe’s comment, the paper argues, can be taken as a key #2 Large Film Formats: Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm to Dickens’s approach to architecture, which undoes Wednesday, March 28, 15:30 hrs. the solidity and boundedness typically associated with This session will address the recent revival of large the built environment, making Dickens a writer of film formats. René Wolf, Head of Acquisitions & ‘anti-architecture’. The paper expands on this theme Programmer at EYE will present one of his latest with reference to a wide range of Dickens’s novels and acquisitions: a new restoration of Lawrence of Arabia letters, culminating in a comparison between Dickens (1962) on 70mm. and John Ruskin’s descriptions of St Mark’s Cathedral #3 Film Projection: The Dying of the Light. in Venice. Wednesday, April 11, 15:30 hrs. Ben Moore is Assistant Professor in English Literature This session will offer any cinema visitor insights into at the University of Amsterdam. His work focuses on the generally invisible world of the film booth. Former the modern city, architecture, and forms of 19th- projectionist Leenke Ripmeester will speak about her century modernity, often in relation to Marxism and personal experience with projecting films. psychoanalysis. He has published on topics including Attend the event on Facebook Charles Dickens and childhood, Benjamin Disraeli’s #4 Colour in Film: The Technicolor Reference novel Sybil, Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, and Collection Show. Wednesday, April 25, 15:30 hrs. evolution in Charles Kingsley. He has also written This session will focus on the magnificent world of several short pieces of contemporary cultural criticism colour in film, and more specifically on Technicolor. as part of the Everyday Analysis group. His next major Michael Pogorzelski (Director of the Academy Film project will consider money in nineteenth-century Archive) will address and showcase the ‘Reference literature. Collection’. #5 Silent Cinema: The Polish Dancer THE PORNIFICATION OF CULTURE Wednesday, May 9, 15:30 hrs. Prof. Greta Olson, University of Giessen, Leiden University This lecture will be dedicated to the challenges of Eyckhof 3, 002, 21 & 22 March, 10:00 hrs. Registration: restoring and presenting silent films. Elżbieta [email protected]. Wysocka, Head of Film Restoration & Digital Porn, this seminar maintains has gone mainstream. Its Repository at FINA, will discuss and present the tropes and narratives increasingly appear as recent restoration of The Polish Dancer (1917). unmarked in everyday culture. This pornification of #6 Film Restoration Laboratories: Cinemateca Western post-industrial cultures includes the Portuguesa Wednesday, May 16, 15:30 hrs. emergence of phenomena such as do-me or fuck-me This session will focus on the work of film laboratories. feminism, erotic capital, and the sporno (sport + porn) Tiago Ganhão, film restorer at the Cinemateca body type as a new masculine ideal. In terms of Portuguesa, will discuss the laboratory’s history and cultural practices, this trend comprises the visual self- expertise. stylization of one’s fuckability particularly in digital

5

forums. For women and girls, this quality is attested to GLOBAL CRITICAL PEDAGOGIES in FaceBook and other forums through poses featuring Fifth Annual ACGS Conference Amsterdam, 18-19 October pursed lips, deep breast and bottom cleavage, and 2018. Keynote speakers: Maggie Berg (Queen’s University, come-hither facial expressions. For men, this trend is Kingston, Canada) and Barbara Seeber (Brock University, manifested in selfies that feature the subject’s hairless St. Catharines, Canada), Jack Halberstam (Columbia six or eight pack abdomen, juxtaposed above his open University, New York City, US), Elisio Macamo (Zentrum pants. It is also manifested in pole dancing having für Afrikastudien Basel (ZASB), Basel, ), become a regular form of sport. Françoise Vergès (Collège d’études mondiales, FMSH, The seminar analyses specific texts in which porn Paris, France). Deadline for proposals: 1 April 2018. tropes and narratives are carried over into mainstream In a time of fake news, internet memes, and a global culture and are thereby commodified or re- information overload, questions of education and commodified. These texts include popular singers such pedagogy have become all the more pressing. as the US American Minaj’s highly sexualized video Globally, institutes of higher education are under Anaconda (2014) or the Swedish singer Tove Lo’s short threat, facing budget cuts and an increasing demand film, Fairy Dust (2016), in which the singer is filmed for directly and immediately applicable knowledge while masturbating. We will also examine the instead of open-ended critical reflection. In the context adaption of porn tropes in various forms of self- of discussions about the Anthropocene and current fashioning, such as selfies. geopolitical changes – including the upsurge of The pornification of culture has been variously populisms and nationalisms worldwide, and the described as “the rise of raunch culture” (Ariel Levy alleged rise of Asia – there is a renewed urgency to 2005), “the new sexism” (Rosalind Gill, 2011), or as re/thinking knowledge production and dissemination. “the diversification of the pornographic” (Susanna How to re/think pedagogy in the midst of all these Paasonen 2014). The seminar will discuss these developments? And what specific role can the social theoretical texts to better comprehend why porn has sciences and the humanities play in this? become so ubiquitously visible that its presence is The fifth conference of the Amsterdam Centre for rendered invisible due to its regularity. Globalisation Studies (ACGS), organised in cooperation with the Humanities across Borders UNCERTAINTY OF DIGITAL ARCHIVES network of the International Institute for Asian Studies Exploring Nostalgia and Civic Engagement (IIAS), focuses on critical global pedagogies. It does so MAP Lecture by Ekaterina Kalinina, Leiden University, along the lines of four interrelated themes: Lipsius Building Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden, room 227, 28 (1) Pedagogies beyond the classroom March 2018, 17:00 - 18:30 hrs. The secluded environment of the classroom is a In this talk, Ekaterina Kalinina (Södertörn University/ privileged space. Increasingly, the need to move University of Copenhagen) looks into online archiving beyond and outside the classroom is articulated. How practices on social media as specific practices of civic can everyday practices, such as craftsmanship and engagement. Focussing in particular on Russian vernacular knowledge, be integrated into the community sanctioned archives, she explores how curriculum and how can the boundaries between the these archives serve to collect and preserve teacher and the student be destabilised – as information on, and memories about, vanishing propagated, for example, by Rancière in his The architectural gems by soliciting contributions from Ignorant Schoolmaster (1987)? We are particularly community members, as well as by actively protesting interested here in two domains that may help to blur against the demolition of urban landscapes in Russia. the boundary between theory and practice, and Rather than documents in a strict sense, these archives’ between the university and the everyday: art and content, Kalinina argues, form a collection of activism. Action research and artistic research have nostalgically tainted monuments to a transient present, slowly gained momentum in curricula across the therewith functioning as a medial infrastructure in the world, but how do we transform these research staging of a new conception of communal relations, practices into critical pedagogies? And how do we and as a device to frame a newly emerging conception forge creative synergy between academic knowledge of individuality. and artistic and activist practices? Ekaterina Kalinina is a postdoctoral researcher at (2) Decolonizing knowledge and worlding Department of Art and Cultural Studies at pedagogies Copenhagen University, Denmark. In her current The spectre of Europe continues to haunt knowledge project on the Uncertainty of Digital Archives she production worldwide, with its implicit claims of explores the role of affective mnemonic experiences, universalism. As Chen writes in his Asia as Method, such as nostalgia, in triggering social mobilization in “Universalist arrogance serves only to keep new digital and physical environments. possibilities from emerging, since it allows only one set of accepted analytic language to enter the dialogue and is itself a product of a specific set of historical experiences” (2010: 245). While postcolonial scholars

6

like Chakrabarty call for a provincialization of Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and short knowledge, Chen’s plea for inter-Asia referencing bio (max. 100 words) by 1 April 2018 to acgs- suggests an even more radical turn away from ‘the [email protected]. Panels can also be submitted with a West’ as the primary interlocutor. Simultaneously, in maximum of four papers. Please indicate to which of the West, universities are proving very stubborn in the four themes your contribution belongs. their refusal to allow different forms of knowledge Notice of acceptance will be given by 1 June 2018. from different locations to be integrated in curricula. Conference fee: 50 Euros (25 Euros for PhD students). Indeed, most curricula continue to centre on Western Conference dinner: 25 Euros. knowledge and Western cultural forms, with "the rest" Organisers: Jeroen de Kloet, Esther Peeren, Leonie being relegated to at most a case to prove Western Schmidt (University of Amsterdam) in cooperation theory. How can we decolonize our universities and with the International Institute for Asian Studies. pedagogies, and how can we move towards more worlding pedagogies geared towards resisting the THE URBAN COMMONS OF CULTURE, PAST & danger of intellectual parochialism? PRESENT (3) Contesting the neoliberal university We are delighted to invite you to the launch of the The In the past years, we have witnessed different protests Urban Commons of Culture, Past & Present, our new at universities across the world, ranging from the online platform for reflection and exchange on how Sanctuary movement at NYU to the Rethink culture and creativity can thrive in cities in an open movement at the University of Amsterdam, and from and inclusive way. the Umbrella protest movement in Hong Kong to Fees The launch will take place on Wednesday, 4 April, Must Fall in South Africa. Both students and teachers 13:00-17:00 hrs. at A-Lab (Overhoeksplein 2, 1031 are asking for structural reforms in education and Amsterdam). research. While universities increasingly focus on Confirmed speakers: making profit – through attracting more and more Elizabeth Currid-Halkett (Chair in Urban and Regional students, through real estate speculation, or both – on Planning and professor of public policy at the Price increasing productivity, and on global rankings and H- School, recent book The Sum of Small Things. A Theory of indexes, the call for a sustainable, workable, slower- the Aspirational Class); paced, and less neoliberal alternative is getting louder Tim Verlaan (assistant professor, Urban History, and louder (Berg and Seeber 2016). What strategies University of Amsterdam, recent book De have been developed to work towards this alternative, ruimtemakers. Projectontwikkelaars en de Nederlandse and how do these strategies explore different critical binnenstad 1950-1980); pedagogies? Roel Griffioen, (journalist/PhD researcher, Department (4) Pedagogies of failure of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, The global, and arguably neoliberal, mindset of higher recent book De Frontlinie: Bestaansonzekerheid en education institutions has excluded the possibility of gentrificatie in de Creatieve Stad); failure through the constant validation and celebration And a panel discussion with representatives from local of notions of progress, development, innovation, arts, culture, and creative industries, chaired by excellence, and improvement. But is more always Marielle Hendriks of De Boekmanstichting. really better? How can we rescue failure from its You can register for the event here (free of charge). negative connotations? How can we bring it back in More information on the programme will follow and beyond the classroom as a valuable tool for shortly. thinking, for knowledge production, and also for creative production as well as political activism? (IN)HUMAN TIME: ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO According to the late Marc Karlin, politics is a learning RADIOTOXICITY process about how to live with pessimism and how to Junior Researcher Workshop organised by ANDRA (French work on yourself in relation to that pessimism. We National Agency for the Management of Nuclear Waste) may think the same of failure. In the words of Jack 23 May 2018, 13:00 - 18:00, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Halberstam, “…failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, In association with “As Slowly as Possible”: A Symposium undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, more creative, more cooperative, more surprising 24-26 May 2018. ways of being in the world” (2011: 2). How can we Radiotoxicity – the toxic effects of a radioactive bring failure back into our pedagogies? substance on living cells or tissue – is notoriously We invite papers that explore the complexity of critical intangible. Not only is ionizing radiation imperceptible pedagogies in their interaction with processes of to the unaided human senses, diseases caused by globalisation and world-making through theoretical radiation exposure often develop only years or and empirical analyses. decades later, making it hard to make juridical claims. Contributions from fields from across the social To complicate matters, radiotoxicity does not only sciences or humanities are invited. rupture human time, but opens the inhuman perspective of a deep future, forcing thousands of

7

future generations to live with the radioactive sensible? This workshop welcomes papers exploring contaminants released today. What role does art and one or more of the following themes around deep time visual culture assume in debates on radiotoxicity and and/or radiotoxicity in art: its complex temporalities? How have artists responded · Deep timescales, including deep pasts and futures, historically to the phenomenon of radiotoxicity and and their conceptual and aesthetic challenges; how has this changed with major ‘nuclear events’ like · Radioactive waste and radiotoxicity in the arts and the detonation of the atomic bomb, the Three Mile popular culture; Island accident or the Chernobyl and Fukushima · The (in)human temporalities of radiotoxicity; nuclear disasters? And what aesthetic strategies do · The aesthetic, ethical and/or political dimensions of artists develop to make radiotoxicity tangible? These nuclear waste repositories; and related questions form the frame of this workshop. · The representation of radio-contaminated While the term ‘deep time’ has been introduced by landscapes; John McPhee as recently as 1981, the concept was · Historical perspectives on radiotoxicity in art. developed more than two centuries ago in early We are open to proposals coming from contemporary modern British and Scottish scholarship and has arts but also to papers offering a historical perspective. undergone several transformations since (see for Following up on earlier meetings that were part of the example Paolo Rossi 1984 and Martin J. S. Rudwick Nuclear Waste Weeks at the ‘Environmental 1995, 2002). In the last couple of years, the concept of Humanities Center’ at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, deep time has gained unprecedented momentum with this junior researcher workshop takes the ASAP the Anthropocene debate that was kicked loose in the Symposium as an opportunity to bring together PhD year 2000 by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and his students, advanced Master students, and early career colleague Eugene Stoermer. The Anthropocene is the researchers from various disciplines within the most recent proposed geological time period Humanities and Sociology to share their research. superseding the Holocene. Notwithstanding the many This workshop aims to be a working session in which problems this term raises, the Anthropocene urges us there is ample time to discuss the participants’ to think beyond human timescales without losing sight research and their questions in-depth. Papers will be of the human legacy within them. circulated two weeks before the workshop, and during One of the practices to which this kind of the workshop we will have 10-minute (max!) understanding is pertinent is the long-term storage of presentations in which participants are encouraged to radioactive waste. High level radioactive waste and its highlight problems and questions. After each inconceivable aftermath brings us into proximity with presentation we will have about 30 minutes for each deep time and urges us to find long-term storage individual paper to give feedback and discuss in depth solutions for the countless generations to come. In this the issues raised. If you wish to participate, please regard, not only does it point to a deep past (the send an email with a short description of your research Uranium Oxide that is used to fuel reactors is mined and an abstract of 250 words to [email protected] until from deposits as old as the Earth) but importantly 26 March 2018 on one or more of the suggested poses the challenge of engaging with a deep future, themes. The deadline for the full papers (3000-5000 that is, the millennia to come in which waste elements words) is 7 May 2018. like plutonium pose a threat to the living environment. Organisers: Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou (Georg Simmel In many ways, then, thinking nuclear matter’s Centre, EHESS), Anna Volkmar (LUCAS, Leiden temporalities means to think across timescales, University), Ruby de Vos (ICOG, University of inviting questions about the social obligations toward Groningen). future generations. At the same time, radiation’s temporality is also an inevitable part of the current SOLID KNOWLEDGE moment: all over the world, bodies and environments Bunkers, data and the materialities of information carry the traces of the radiation they were exposed to a hands-on transdisciplinary research seminar by decades earlier (Joseph Masco 2004). In the face of this PRAXXstudio see http://www.praxxstudio.nl ‘slow violence’ (Rob Nixon 2013), we might consider PRAXXstudio is excited to extend a call for ‘staying with the trouble’ (Donna Haraway 2016) to participants for a hands-on transdisciplinary research engage with the ways in which nuclear matter not only seminar. Extending over six sessions, between the end opens up the inhuman perspective of deep time, but of April and early July 2018, the seminar will explore also disrupts biological time and human rhythms, as the constellations of knowledge, design, security becomes evident in reproductive issues and disease. practices that cement around the figure of the bunker. In the light of the above, we ask: What role could art Bunkers and visual culture play in the discourses surrounding The bunker has encapsulated, molded, and stunted the radioactivity and -toxicity and its complex imaginaries of the 20th century as an architectural temporality? How have artists responded historically byproduct and illegitimate spawn of aerial war, cabin to radiotoxicity and how has this changed over the ecology, cybernetic systems, and modernist brutalism. past decades? How do they render radiotoxicity But, far from being abandoned, the current return of

8

looming apocalyptic futures lets new lives crawl and TESTIMONY. COMMEMORATION. WELLBEING. move into the empty spaces and deep figures of The Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade, the underground shelters. While humans are still the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, the Historical beneficiaries of the security of these spaces, other less Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo and the fleshy kinds are increasingly making their way in: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade will knowledge, information, data are all crowding into the hold a conference on “Testimony. Commemoration. narrow niches of old and new shelters. Wellbeing”, 20-27 April (20-24 April in Sarajevo and 26-27 Bunkers nowadays are meant to protect, hide, manage April in Belgrade) as part of the project “Testimony – Truth and make accessible the circulation of knowledge. or Politics: The Concept of Testimony in the These spaces represent a useful vantage point to Commemoration of the Yugoslav Wars”. consider current articulations of theories and practices This conference aims to democratize the historical of knowledge, and their various materialities. While narrative building in the region and to strengthen the modernity relies on its profession of faith in the inclusion of the Yugoslav Wars in the European immateriality of information - especially in the remembrance practices. excitement of the coming singularity, it simultaneously Witnessing is a participative act, testifying is an act of grounds itself in very specific and solid material speech with multiple addressees at once, at least those infrastructures. Attending to the contemporary relating to the situation testified upon, the situation of transformations of bunkers as part of these testifying and a self-address which constitutes infrastructures, the seminar will focus on this figure, multiple speakers. The simultaneity of time and space object, and space to unfold the ways in which creates an ever-changing assemblage of singular-plural knowledge is materialized today; and will ask what social relations, intimate and political, at work much these materializations do to modernity, and how after the testimony has been given and anew each time playing and tinkering with them might allow us to it is heard. The diversity of social relations at the base undo modernity. of testimony makes its relation to reality, both that The first three sessions will be dedicated to building a experienced and that in which testimony is heard, shared conceptual infrastructure to approach this complex. This trait makes it unstable for the purpose theme. We will read accounts and explorations of the of the listener whose demand is for the Truth, i.e. a convergence of ideas and practices of knowledge, comprehensive meaning which would constitute the design, security and access that will help us elaborate a person testifying as Subject and/or as a generic Subject, theoretical toolkit to approach (data) bunkers. also constituting both testifying and testified factual Following this more conceptual phase, three more situations as Events. sessions will be devoted to specific cases - also with Michel Foucault describes the role of institutions in the help of invited speakers. These will emerge from which testimony takes place as follows: “The archive is the discussions and interests of the group, but will also first the law of what can be said, the system that include cases like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, governs the appearance of statements as unique CyberBunker, the bunkers of the UvA collections, or events. But the archive is also that which determines other examples of encounters between data and that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly bunkers. Aim of the seminar is to develop the in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed in an conceptual and material tools to rethink the unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the mercy articulations of knowing, designing, protecting, of chance external accidents; but they are grouped accessing and bunkering, that will be assembled in a together in distinct figures, composed together in collaborative virtual exhibit-repository. accordance with multiple relations, maintained or We encourage those seriously interested in these blurred in accordance with specific regularities [...]. It themes, from a variety of disciplines and practices – is that which defines the mode of occurrence of the from design, architecture, data management, arts, to statement-thing; it is the system of its functioning. Far anthropology, history, archeology, critical heritage from being that which unifies everything that has been studies, science studies – to contact us for more said in the great confused murmur of a discourse, far information at [email protected] from being only that which ensures that we exist in the Duration: end of April - July 2018 (6 sessions) Location: midst of preserved discourse, it is that which PRAXXstudio, Singel 425, Amsterdam differentiates discourses in their multiple existence About PRAXXstudio and specifies them in their own duration.” In 2017 Tjitske Holtrop, Filippo Bertoni and Jeltsje (Archaeology of Knowledge 145-6). Stobbe started a research initiative named Among the initial linguistic-theatrical settings of PRAXXstudio. The studio functions as a pilot project testimony are the court room and the legal system. for the central library of UvA on hosting They bind the speech act of testimony to the demand transdisciplinary and artistic research lab initiatives. of providing evidence for factual truth and regulate For more info on the studio, the multiplicity of social relations at the base of testimony. By defining the witness as disinterested they dismiss the claim and demand that any speech

9

act, including that of the witness, puts forth. In return facetted challenges of the contemporary world, caught for these restrictions the judicial system offers its idea between the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the of justice, even if justice is attainable. However, is that Sixth Extinction? How does the neo-Spinozist notion of all that is necessary? In the post-WWII period there endurance foster the project of constructing an was a rapidly growing use of the international judicial affirmative ethics for posthuman subjects, at a time of system to provide justice for the victims of human social and political regression on so many fronts? How rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against does this vital ethics of affirmation help us confront humanity, with newly-coined terms such as suffering, death and dying? What does it mean to lead transitional and restorative justice. an anti-fascist life in brutal times? The conference will examine how different global Please go to the registration link if you are interested ideological paradigms (human rights, Holocaust in participating: commemoration, conflict management, reconciliation, https://www.utrechtsummerschool.nl/courses/culture/ Marxism) and institutional regimes (local and posthuman_ethics_pain_and_endurance_how_to_lead international courts, NGOs, archives, state and private _an_antifascist_life_in_brutal_times or send an e-mail educational institutions) act as regulative measures to to receive more information to: [email protected]. produce adequate testimonies. The main question Please note that all participants are expected to have which the conference focuses on, is what are the read Braidotti’s book The Posthuman (Polity Press settings in which the excess that testimony always 2013). See already produces as settings that can create a http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=978074564158 possibility for alternative social relations? These 4 plus several selected entries of The Posthuman relations could then, in the context of the Glossary (Bloomsbury 2018). See commemoration of Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, allow https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/posthuman- for a common life and wellbeing. glossary-9781350030244/ We invite abstracts of maximum 250 words to be sent Please note that the course fees (excluding housing) to [email protected] by 5 March. We welcome are 300.00 euros. You can receive 2.0 ECTS for active papers from various fields of study as well as from participation during this summer school. practitioners sharing their experience with testimonials. Applicants will be notified about their MASTER CLASS WITH WENDY BROWN participation by 15 March. Where Liberal Once Was: Liberal Other project partners are: The Ignorant Schoolmaster Authoritarianism in the Twenty-First Century and his Committees, Belgrade; The Museum of 29 May – 3 June 2018, Lucerne, Switzerland. Application Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Boem, Vienna, Austria; Deadline: 31 March 2018. Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT Lucerne Master Classes offer doctoral students from Transeuropa), Rovereto, Italy; Historical Museum of Switzerland and from abroad an intensive exchange Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo; Centre for Cultural with internationally renowned researchers. Doctoral and Social Repair, Banja Luka; The Leibniz-Institute students will receive the opportunity to present their for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, work to the other participants and to discuss it with Germany. Further information: http://svedocanstvo- the guest expert. imenovatitoratom.org/en/conferences. The Master Class 2018 addresses doctoral students from disciplines such as Political Science, Philosophy, POSTHUMAN ETHICS, PAIN AND ENDURANCE Sociology, Cultural Studies, and Economics as well as The 2018 summer school, entitled “Posthuman Ethics, other fields from within the Humanities and Social Pain and Endurance: How to Lead an Antifascist Life Sciences. Applications from international and EU in Brutal Times,” which will take place 20-24 August doctoral students and doctoral students from 2018 at Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands. It Switzerland are welcome. combines an introduction to the basic tenets of Wendy Brown is Class of 1936 First Professor of Braidotti's brand of critical posthuman theory with an Political Science at the Charles and Louise Travers overview on contemporary debates about the ethical Department of Political Science at the University of implications of post-humanism and the so-called California, Berkeley. A renowned political theorist, ‘posthuman turn’. Brown is an equally influential thinker when it comes While the emphasis of the course will be on the to the study of nineteenth and twentieth century mutually enriching relationship between the continental theory, critical theory, and theories of posthuman, neo-materialism, and the ethics of contemporary capitalism. Her oeuvre constitutes an affirmation, this year the main topic will be both the important source for both critically reflecting on and practical and theoretical issues around the notions of standing in opposition to developments within pain and endurance in the contemporary world. Western over the past two decades: How does a vision of the posthuman subject as a Politics Out of History (2001), Regulating Aversion: process of interaction between human, non-human Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (2006), Walled and inhuman forces help us cope with the multi- States, Waning Sovereignty (2010), and her latest

10

monograph Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth 1 April: deadline proposal PhD in the Arts Revolution (2015). 1 May: answers to proposal-writers For further information, please visit the Lucerne Master Class Website. Questions may be addressed to PARIS INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY [email protected] FELLOWSHIPS The Paris Institute for Advanced Study is launching CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH FUND | DEADLINE two calls for applications for research fellowships in EXTENDED 2019-2020 open to researchers of all nationalities. The deadline for submitting applications for the UvA - one call for a 5 or 10-month fellowships in the "Blue FGw Cutting Edge Research Fund has been extended. Sky Research" program, is open to all disciplines and Applications can be submitted continuously until no themes in the humanities and social sciences. later than 30 June 2018. - one call for a 5 or 10-month fellowships in the “Brain, The UvA Faculty of Humanities offers the funding Culture and Society” program. This call is for scheme 'Cutting Edge Research Fund' that fosters researchers willing to conduct a project at the interface international collaboration aimed at innovative, between neuroscience, cognitive science, the cutting edge research. The Fund was made available humanities and social sciences. by the Sustainable Humanities Programme (Duurzame The deadline for submission for both calls is 3 April. Geesteswetenschappen). Please circulate the information widely. If you have Applications are invited for two types of grants: 1. any question, contact [email protected]. Network Grants and 2. Research Fellowships. Read more: http://aihr.uva.nl/content/news/2018/01/cutting- IFK RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS edge-research-fund-reopened-copy.html IFK Research Fellowships are intended for postdoctoral researchers who are at an early stage of SUPPORT TRACKS GRANT TEAM 2018 their scientific careers. Qualified applications can be In 2018 the grant team from will again organize several submitted regardless of the nationality and support tracks for scholars who are planning to submit institutional or professional affiliation of the applicant. a grant proposal. Austrian applicants with comparable qualifications are We will offer a combined Rubicon/Marie Curie given preference. support track. The first information meeting will be Research fellowships are awarded for an academic held on Thursday, 5 April from 13.00-15.00 hrs. at the semester (1 October to 31 January or 1 March to 30 BG2, room 0.12. June). In April we will also start our combined Vidi/ ERC IFK Research Fellowships include an expense staring support track, which will consist of 5 allowance of max. €2,325 monthly (€ 75 / day) as well specialised meetings. The first of these meetings will as a workspace at the IFK with EDP and internet be held on Thursday, 12 April at the Bushuis room access. For Fellows with a proper residence outside E1.01E from 11.00-13.00 hrs. Vienna, the one-off arrival and departure costs to and The final support track we will offer in 2018 will be for from Vienna and free accommodation in a 35 m2 the Veni 2019. The first meeting will be held on apartment for one person are covered. Costs for health Tuesday, 11 September from 11.00-13.00 hrs. More and social insurance are not covered by the IFK. information about the location and further meetings The application process for the 2019/20 academic year will follow as soon as possible. begins in May 2018. Information: www.ifk.ac.at. If you are interested in following one of these support Contact: [email protected] tracks please send an email to [email protected] to Application deadline: 1 July 2018. apply. For more information about the support tracks and LERU DOCTORAL SUMMER SCHOOL further dates follow the link below to the grant team The 2018 LERU Doctoral Summer School, to be held website: from 9 to 13 July 2018 at the KU Leuven. The theme of https://secure.uva.nl/cas/login?service=https%3A%2F this year's edition of the Summer School is: ‘The Global %2Fmedewerker.uva.nl%2Flogin%2Fother Society – The Importance of Interdisciplinary Collaboration to Tackle Societal Challenges’. PRE-PROGRAM PHD IN THE ARTS Interested candidates are requested to apply by Deadline: 1 April sending the following documents latest 19 March 2018 In 2018, ARIAS will start a pilot for researchers to UvA Academic Affairs (secretariaat- interested in a pre-PhD in the arts and PhD in the arts. [email protected]): CV in English; Brief summary of ARIAS operates as a connecting point between the five the candidate’s PhD project, including title/description ARIAS institutions. To find supervision within the of the theme (half A4 max.), in English; A motivation ARIAS network, please hand in a PhD proposal and letter in which candidates explain why they’re portfolio before 1 April 2018. For information about interested in the theme of the 2018 Summer School the proposal format, email [email protected] (100 words max.), in English; Contact details.