Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

The Political Life of Things: Podcasts

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Nagra SNST Recorder
Creative Commons License photo credit: Matt Blaze

As I mentioned in a previous post, on 3rd December the BISA poststructural politics working group and the BISA/PSA Art and politics working group organised a one-day conference entitled ‘The Political Life of Things’ at the Imperial War Museum. The event was a success despite snow disrupting travel plans. Many thanks to all of the speakers for a provocative set of presentations. A final program for the event can be found below.

This event sought to explore questions of materiality, politics and artistic practice within the context of the Imperial War museum. The Keynote was given by Jane Bennett (Johns Hopkins).

Sound recordings of the presentations at the event are now on-line. You can access them here: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2010/12/the-political-life-of-things/; Many thanks to backdoorbroadcasting for recording and posting this archive.
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The Political Life of Things

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

3B
Creative Commons License photo credit: hide99

Along with my colleagues Angharad Closs-Stephens, Debbie Lisle and Emily Jackson, I am organising a one day workshop at the Imperial War Museum London on 3rd December 2010. The workshop will be a joint BISA Poststructural Politics Working Group and BISA/PSA Art and Politics Group event.

Since my work turned to consider critical infrastructure and I encountered Jane Bennett’s thought provoking account of role of thing-power in the North American Blackout of 2003, I have been intrigued by the question of the materiality of political life – a question that is often only obliquely answered in the disciplines of Politics and International Relations. I hope that the discussions that are started in the December workshop will allow further explanation of the complex ecologies of political subjectivity.

I’m very excited by the group of speakers confirmed at the event so far. I also hope that we will be able to add more in the near future.We are very lucky to have Jane Bennett as well as Jeremy Deller – whose work is currently on display at the Imperial War Museum – as keynote speakers.

For those interested, here are the full details:
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Citizenship Without Community

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010


notting hill gate - london tube, england
Creative Commons License photo credit: Paolo Margari

Last week I took part in an extremely interesting workshop at the British Library. Citizenship Without Community was hosted by the Open University in collaboration with the BISA poststructural politics working group. The workshop examined ideas concering citizenship, begining with thoughts from Engin Isin (The Open University) and closing with a paper by Étienne Balibar (University of California, Irvine. In between there were a number of thoughful contributions on the nature of contemrpoary citizenship from Vicki Squire (Open University), Angharad Closs Stephens (Durham University), Joe Painter (Durham University), Jonna Pettersson (Lund University), Andrew Schapp (Exeter University), Cindy Weber (Lancaster University), Rutvica Andrijasevic (Open University), Claudia Aradau (Open University), Umut Erel (Open University), and Jef Huysmans (Open University).

For those who weren’t able to be at the workshop podcasts of all of the day’s contributions are now online along with photos of the event. You can find them here.

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Imagining urban cataclysm

Monday, November 16th, 2009
On Thursday and Friday (19th & 20th November) I will be at the World Politics and Popular Culture conference organised by Newcastle University Politics staff Simon Philpott, Matt Davies and Kyle Grayson. The conference will explore the manner in which

popular culture become[s] a series of sites at which political meaning is made, where political contestation takes place and where political orthodoxy is reproduced and challenged

I will be giving a paper entitled Zombies and flesh eaters: imagining urban cataclysm in the era of metropolitanisation.

The paper will discuss the relation between the politics of global urbanisation and representations of urban cataclysm in the film 28 Days Later, video game Resident Evil; and Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. I argue that novels, films and games are textual artefacts embedded in complex assemblages of things, signs, meanings and affects. As such they are mutually imbricated with the dynamics of delineation and contestation we refer to as ‘politics’.

The paper discusses two particular ideas arising from a reading of these texts:
28 Days Later Poster
The Road

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Radicalisation and the urban environnment

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Mirror_mediator_flyerToday sees the opening of an exhibition based on the ESRC-funded research project The urban environment: Mirror and mediator of radicalisation? The exhibition has an excellent website outlining the various strands in the research project: www.urbanpolarisation.org

The project is based at the University of Manchester and Ralf Brand is the principle investigator (with Jon Coaffee as co-investigator and Sara Fregonese as Research Assistant). Overall the aim of the project is to explore the interrelation between the urban environment and  socio-political polarisation. Polarisation is assumed to have links with political violence (including radicalisation). You can read more about the project here.
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The City and Community, Durham University 18th November 2009

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

In mid-November I will be giving a paper at The City and Community workshop at Durham University. This workshop will focus on the twin questions of the nature of urban community and the role of the city as distinctive site of politics.

Further details including a program for the workshop can be found here. Speakers will include Michael J Shapiro, Ash Amin, Joe Painter, Angharad Closs Stephens, Martin Coward, Steve Graham, Vicki Squire, Jennifer Bagelman and Delacey Tedesco.

The event is being jointly organised the Politics-Space-State research cluster, Durham University & the BISA Poststructural Politics Working Group. Angharad Closs Stephens is the main organiser, with additional assistance from myself, Louise Amoore, Michele Lancione and Eduardo Neve-Jimenez.

Places at the workshop are free but limited. Please contact Angharad Closs Stephens if you would like to know more and/or are interested in attending.

My paper will be entitled ‘Agonism, community, urbanity’. (more…)

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Update: Urban Securitisation and Climate Change

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Crisis Forum have posted some of the resources from the workshop on climate change and violence held last week (9th October 2009). These resources include (or will include in the near future) videos of most of the presentations as well as power-point slides.

You can find the notes for my presentation at the workshop here. Please note that these are rough notes prepared for speaking at this event. They are not an academic paper. As such they do not include the usual references and acknowledgements that would be expected in an academic paper. If you want further details about the sources referred to in the notes, please contact me.

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Urban Securitisation and Climate Change

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Later this week I will be going to London to a workshop hosted by the Crisis Forum as part of their ‘Climate Change and Violence‘ series. The workshop is entitled ‘Securing the State: Domestic Agendas‘ and examines what we can learn from existing security regimes about the way in which governmental authorities may respond to the violence(s) generated by climate change.

I will be talking about what we can learn from the contemporary securitisation of the urban environment. You can find my abstract as well as those of other speakers here. It promises to be a very interesting event.

Although there are many possible themes to investigate regarding climate change and security/violence, I want to explore two in particular: (more…)

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Another Politics, Another Subject

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Over the next month I’ll be working on a paper for a conference at the University of Aberystwyth: Another Politics, Another Subject (you can find details here). The conference runs from 20th to 22nd April.

The paper is initially titled ‘Between-us in the city: materiality and the singular political ecologies of contemporary urban subjectivity‘. (more…)

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Urbicide Syposium

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

CTLab is currently hosting a virtual symposium on my book Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction.

The symposium runs until March 13th and can be found here (with an index of postings here)

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