CFP: Lifelikeness & beyond

We would like to share with you the Call for contributions for the international conference Politics of the Machines, which next year will be hosted by the Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Research at RWTH Aachen. With the overarching theme “Lifelikeness & Beyond” the 4th Conference of this series will take place from April 22-26, 2024.

PoM „Lifelikeness & beyond“ seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners from a wide range of fields across the sciences, technology and the arts to develop imaginaries for possibilities that are still to be realized and new ideas of what the contingency of life is. The call also seeks to question what the limits between reality, fiction and imagination can be when we look for sources of action or new forms of collective action and of creating collectivities. What kind of imaginaries are needed to think of new forms of research and practice that effectively act as a counterbalance to the many crises of the present? What can we learn from a performed contingency about the community of the living and the non-living? How is the idea of contingency transformed when life and non-life are embedded within each other?

Tracks
Based on a call for topics

Track 01- Holistic life of the machine – The machinic beyond – What is it like to be a machine?

Track 02 - Artificial Entities, Contemporary Archetypes and Model Organisms

Track 03 - Body Imaginations

Track 04 - Organize!

Track 05 - Models of Life – Models of Research 

Track 06 - Vulnerability and Caring: Perspectives and Challenges

Track 07- Shifting Cosmologies: More Than Human XR

Track 08 - In/Different Imaginaries: Parasites and the Politics of Relations

Track 09 - Worlds of Camouflage: Environment, Technique, Response-ability

Track 10 - Environmental Attunement as a Strategy for Ecological Engagement

Track 11 - Death, degrowth, and finitude in the age of the lifelike

If you’re interested to participate in one of the conference tracks, you are invited to submit a 500-word abstract by December 4th.

You can read the full call for contributions here:https://www.pomconference.org/pom-aachen-2024/