CFP: Terror On Tour 2018: Anthroposcreams, Desert(ed) Destinations & Wilding Weather...Wish You Were Here

Terror On Tour 2018:

Anthroposcreams, Desert(ed) Destinations & Wilding Weather...Wish You Were Here 

Nov. 8, 9, 10, 2018, HEAD-Genève/Geneva School of Art and Design

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Lorenzo Chiesa (GSH – Genoa School of Humanities)

Federico Luisetti (University of St. Gallen)

Michael Marder (University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz)

Terror On Tour is an international network of interdisciplinary scholars and artists whose research engages with the interstices of terror, travel, tourism, mobility and migration. After three successful conferences - at the University of Roehampton, UK (2015), the University of Chichester, UK (2016) and the University of Innsbruck, Austria (2017) – 

Terror on Tour 2018 seeks to further cross physical, conceptual, and disciplinary borders in an event convened at HEAD-Genève/Geneva School of Art and Design.

Anthroposcreams, Desert(ed) Destinations & Wilding Weather... Wish You Were Here      

proposes a conceptual consideration of terror and travel in dialogue with climate concerns. Terror and touring in all forms are irreducible to the so-called Anthropocene: as the stable, mild climate state of the Holocene recedes, change is imposed under looming threats of extinction and disaster. Increased tourism adds more carbon dioxide to the problems, even as one new climate refugee is displaced every second. While scholars rethink longstanding assumptions about progress, history and the human, entrepreneurs develop new niches in dark, disaster, misery and extinction tourism. Meanwhile, activists call for slowing and de-growth, residents of Venice and Barcelona organize anti-tourist protests, whilst proposed airport expansions provoke militant citizen resistance (such as ZAD in France).

Terror on Tour 2018 invites proposals for original papers, performances, and projects (art installations, videos, screenings, etc.), to be presented in a spirit of interdisciplinary exchange, conviviality and focused concern.

Proposals should address one of the three thematic streams of the event:

Anthroposcreams, Screens & Scenes seeks a questioning of the aesthetics and imaginings of art and popular culture (such as cli-fi) within ecological terror. The expression “it’s a scream!” already presents a conflation of the imaginary and real through an enjoyment of spectated terror, horror and the sublime.  

·        How might the sounds of survival and extinction be (de-)composed through aural considerations of what Andrew Whitehouse terms: anthrophony (human generated sound, sonic disruption, noise pollution), biophony (animals and plants) and geophony (physical environment)?

·        What metaphors and narratives inform the visual and filmic re-presentations of the Anthropocene? In what ways has geoengineering become a standard of pop culture envisioning the futures of technofixation (The Day After Tomorrow, Solar, Geostorm, Tomorrowland, Downsizing) and the posthuman planet (Aftermath: Population Zero, Life After People, What Happened to Monday, Blade Runner 2049)?

Desert(ed) Destinations, Detours & Derangementsseeks to traverse the ethics and (bio)politics of movement, mobility and migration in the Anthropocene.

·                      Who is left behind, and who “arrives,” in the multispecies climate migrations now taking place?

·                      What forms of travel are induced, incentivised or prohibited by the shifting sands of the Anthropocene?

·                      Who is “learning how to die” and who is becoming fossil in the Anthropocene?

·                      What is desert(ed) within the Anthropocene?

Wilding Weatherseeks a critical forecast of the tempestuous and feral becomings in the Anthropocene’s unprecedented extremes such as superstorms intensified by warming and rising sea levels, earthquakes fostered by fracking, wildfires, melting permafrost and drought.

·        To what extent does Nature persist, or has it been “disappeared”?

·        What interests are served and what concerns are ignited by consideration of the wild, the re-wilded and the tamed? 

·        What are the statuses of Life and Nonlife displaced by environmental changes? What happens to the Human, within the interstices of zöe, bios and geos?

The above questions are intended to be illustrative and by no means exhaustive where potential relationships between the Anthropocene, terror and travel, may be appropriate in addressing the areas of study. Proposals should ideally engage with the interrogation of assumptions catalyzed by pressures of planetary meltdown in re-envisioning terror and touring as exemplary Anthropocene phenomena.

Abstracts:

Proposals for academic papers should be for 20-minute presentations. Final papers should be original and neither under submission for publication, nor previously published. Please email an abstract (max 250 words) with a short biographical note (max 100 words), plus details of institutional affiliation (if any) to the organising committee: 

Paul Antick ([email protected]) 

Gabriella Calchi Novati ([email protected]) 

Gene Ray ([email protected])

Andrew Wilford ([email protected])

Please write ‘TERROR on TOUR 2018’ as the email subject.

Deadline for Abstracts:

Monday 9th July 2018. Notification of final decisions will be sent by Monday 30th July 2018.

Logistics:

There will be no registration fee for this event. All travel expenses and hotel costs will be covered by the participants (or their home institutions). The organisers will help locate less expensive hotels in Geneva and provide some meals during the conference. Please note that the conference working language will be English.

Sponsors:

Terror on Tour 2018 is co-organised by the University of Chichester Theatre Department and The Anthropocene Atlas of Geneva, the Visual Arts Department of HEAD-Genève/Geneva School of Art and Design, with support from The Swiss National Science Foundation and the Italian Cultural Institute.