CFP: Spectacular/Ordinary/Contested Media City -- May 15-–17, 2013 -- Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

CALL FOR PAPERS

Spectacular/Ordinary/Contested Media City

May 15-–17, 2013
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland

In contemporary cities, the effects of advanced telecommunications and
commodified media exist everywhere around us. In both eye-catching and
oblique ways, mass and personalised media forms reshape our spatial
practices and perceptions of specific milieus and the city as a whole.

We invite presentations that deal particularly with the following issues:
• role of media and surveillance technologies in the spectacularisation
of urban public spaces and events the ways in which media technologies
and representations become part of the taken-for-granted perceptions
and routinised practices and rhythms of urban life the actual and potential
contributions of mass and personalised media forms to the contestation
of economic, political and cultural hegemonies in cities

Throughout the interdisciplinary symposium, the spectacular, ordinary
and contested aspects of the media city will be brainstormed through
questions such as: What is the relationship of materiality of media
and symbolic media representations in the construction of densely
digitalised urban milieus? To what extent and how is media-saturation
steering people’s urban activities towards automated and un-reflected
modes? Or do the “urban media affordances” open room for creative
place-making practices, new amalgamations of technology and
corporeality, and even chances for alternative decoding and political
resistance? In which ways do different forms of art and popular
culture (cinema, literature, theatre, digital games etc.) articulate
and intervene in the media city? What ethical and political issues
lurk behind the pecuniary motifs of the ongoing mediatisation of space?

Invited keynote speakers:
• Anne Cronin, Lancaster University, UK
• Stephen Graham, Newcastle University, UK
• Scott McQuire, Melbourne University, Australia
• Shannon Mattern, The New School, USA

If you would like to present a paper at the
Spectacular/Ordinary/Contested Media City symposium, please send an
abstract (max. 300 words) to mediacity-2013@helsinki.fi by 14 January
2013. A narrative bio (max. 100 words) describing the author’s
background and research interests should also accompany the proposal.

For more information, visit:
http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/events/mediacity2013

The organising committee: Jani Vuolteenaho & Outi Hakola, Helsinki
Collegium for Advanced Studies and Seija Ridell & Sami Kolamo, University
of Tampere.

Contacts / conference secretary:
Kirsi L. Reyes-Anastacio / Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Email: mediacity-2013@helsinki.fi