[spectre] Public conference 'New Materialism: Naturecultures'

[Goda Klumbyte]

(some tags instead of a forenote: Donna Haraway, Adrian MacKenzie, Jussi 
Parikka, companion species, bio-digitality, embodied data, insect media)


==============

Public conference 'New Materialism: Naturecultures' with LeineRoebana and 
opening of art exhibition ‘Companion Sculptures’
 
 
On  7 April, 2011 the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University  organises 
a conference around Donna Haraway's concept 'naturecultures'.  Apart from 
scholars (from all around the world) who will rewrite  Haraway’s concept in 
various practices, dance company LeineRoebana will  perform fragments of recent 
work expressing a similar problematics. The  concepts given rise to (through 
dance) will be elaborated upon by the  choreographers themselves. On the same 
day the art exhibition ‘Companion  Sculptures’ opens which brings together the 
scholarly work of Donna  Haraway and the artistic production of sculptor Piet 
van de Kar. Several  sculptures will be on display in the buildings around Drift 
in Utrecht.  Donna Haraway, one of the most significant science, technology and  
culture scholars in the world, will be visiting the Centre for the  Humanities 
at Utrecht University from 4 to 14 April 
(see http://www.uu.nl/faculty/humanities/NL/Actueel/nieuws/ 
Pages/20110218-donna-haraway.aspx).
 
The  conference takes place in the Nicolaï Church, Nicolaaskerkhof 8,  Utrecht 
from 9:30 to 17:00 on April 7, 2011. All lectures and  discussions are plenary 
events.
 
Participation is free of charge. Please register via cfh at uu.nl with subject 
‘Conference Materialisms’.
For more information: please contact I.vanderTuin at uu.nl or R.Dolphijn at uu.nl
 
 
CONFERENCE
One  of the conceptual innovations stirred by debates in contemporary  cultural 
theory that want to rewrite the linguistic turn concerns  ‘naturecultures’. This 
concept is created by Donna Haraway in The  Companion Species Manifesto (2003) 
in order to write the necessary  entanglement of the natural and the cultural, 
the bodily and the mind,  the material and the semiotic, et cetera. 
‘Naturecultures’ offers us an  important route to rewrite these modernist 
oppositions in such a way  that rather than representing parts of the world, a 
transcription with  the world is being proposed. Concepts thus do not capture or 
mirror what  is ‘out there’, but are fully immersed in immanence. 
‘Naturecultures’  rewrites not only femininity but in the end all subversive 
material  practices as an ethical break through of for instance  
phallologocentrism. Karen Barad would call this  ‘ethico-onto-epistemological’.
 
This  conference uses ‘naturecultures’ as a point of departure. We intend to  
study conceptual innovation in contemporary cultural theory from  seemingly 
different ‘disciplinary’ and ‘paradigmatic’ angles in order to  demonstrate how 
similar movements in thought are at work in the  emerging paradigms of what we 
call a ‘new materialism’, but what is also  referred to as a post-humanism, an 
agential realism, and of which  traces can be found in many contemporary 
intellectual movements that  traverse philosophy, the humanities and the natural 
sciences.
 
 
Programme:
 
Morning Sessions: Rick Dolphijn (chair)
9:30-10:00               Introduction: Dr. Iris van der Tuin (UU)
 
10:00 – 10:45          Playing Cat's Cradle with Companion Species: 
Naturecultures-in-the-making
Prof. Donna Haraway (UCSC)
10:45 – 11:00                      Respondent: Dr. Cecilia Åsberg (Linköping 
University)
 
11:00 – 11:45          “Originary Humanicity”: Rethinking Anthropocentrism
Dr. Vicki Kirby (UNSW)
11:45 - 12:00                       Respondent: Prof. Rosemarie Buikema (UU)
 
12:00 – 13:00          Performance by LeineRoebana (featuring Heather Ware and 
Tim Persent)
With a discussion between Andrea Leine and Dr. Rick Dolphijn
 
Lunch break (not provided)
 
Afternoon Sessions: Iris van der Tuin (chair)
14:15 – 14:45          'Open life'? Embodied data and devices in the making of 
bio-digital materialism
Dr. Adrian MacKenzie (Lancaster University)
14:45 – 15:15                      Media Milieus, or Why Does Nature Do It 
Better?
                                    Dr. Jussi Parikka (Anglia Ruskin University)
15:15 – 15:30                      Q&A
 
15:30 – 16:00                      Vocalities as environmental rhythmics on a 
nature–culture continuum: Rethinking voice studies with new materialism
                                    Dr. Milla Tiainen (Anglia Ruskin University)
16:00 – 16:30                      ‘Civilizing’ Modern Abstractions? A.N. 
Whitehead and the Importance of Religious Vision
                                    Melanie Sehgal (Potsdam University)
16:30 - 16:45                       Q&A
 
16:45 - 17:00                       Closing: Prof. Rosi Braidotti (UU)
 
Reception and opening of exhibition 'Companion Sculptures'
 
 
LEINEROEBANA
During  the conference LeineRoebana, the modern dance company of Andrea Leine  
and Harijono Roebana, will “dance theory” and comment on several  important 
concepts raised in their recent work (the mind-body problem,  Otherness, the 
earth) posed to them by dr. Rick Dolphijn. The dances  will be performed by Tim 
Persent and Heather Ware, who was recently  awarded the Gouden Zwaan for the 
most impressive dance performance of  2010.
 
 
COMPANION SCULPTURES
The  public exhibition ‘Companion Sculptures’ brings together the scholarly  
work of Donna Haraway and the artistic production of Piet van de Kar.  The 
project entails the exhibition of several sculptures of Van de Kar in the 
buildings around Drift in Utrecht.
 
 
ORGANIZATIONThe  conference is organised by Dr Iris van der Tuin and Dr Rick 
Dolphijn.  The first ‘New Materialism’ conference, organized by Dr. Jussi 
Parikka  and Dr. Milla Tiainen, took place in June 2010 at Anglia Ruskin  
University/ CoDE in Cambridge, the UK. This second conference is an  initiative 
of the Center for the Humanities, the Graduate Gender  Programme, and the 
Department of Media and Culture Studies, all located  at the Faculty of 
Humanities of Utrecht University. It is funded by  these three partners, as well 
as by the Netherlands Organisation for  Scientific Research, the Posthumanities 
Hub (Tema Genus, Linköping  University), the Center for the Study of Digital 
Games and Play (Utrecht  University), and the Research Institute for History and 
Culture  (Utrecht University).


      
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