NECS Graduate Workshop: “Empty Spaces, (In)Visible Structures"

NECS Graduate Workshop:“Empty Spaces, (In)Visible Structures"
DEADLINE: 31st JANUARY 2010
For more information, visit: http://www.necs-initiative.org/

The topic of this one-day event, “Empty Spaces, (In)Visible Structures”, interlocks with this year’s NECS conference theme. The objective of the graduate event is to intensify debate among young graduate students by focussing – in small discussion groups – on a particular yet expansive theme intersecting with media studies, geography, anthropology and spatial studies.
In recent years media theorists and media artists alike have tried to capture and conceptualize the city, no longer as an inert geographical place, but rather as dynamic flux of relations intersecting various channels of information (for instance, De Certeau, Vlusser, and Augé, among others). The suggested topic invites analysis of both urban empty spaces in traditional cinema (as conceptualized for example by Charlotte Brunsdon), as well as of the (in)visible structures of urban life (as captured in the works of media artists like David Rokeby, Rafael-Lozano Hemmer and Christian Mueller). Empty spaces and (in)visible structures can be analyzed in different media and on different screens, within multiple frameworks, drawing on textual analysis, philosophical examination and geographical investigation. These perspectives converge in reconsidering the intersection of medial and spatial practices as complex, negotiated and contested struggles over meaning and power. 
 
Contact email: graduates@necs-initiative.org