Seismopolite Journal of Art and Politics - Reimagining The Political Geography Of Place And Space :: Call for Papers - Deadline: March 5, 2012.

In the coming issue we wish to focus on political geographies, as well as artistic interventions in, and reimaginations of, such geographies. The distinction between “place” and “space” is of particular interest, as it is fundamental not only to much art, but also to our global situation within neoliberal political geography. If time has come for us to reimagine this geography, as well as the interrelationships between, and definitions of “space” and “place”, is it thinkable that art could be an ideal site for such reimagination?

The construction and exploitation of a particularism of the local also seems indigenous to the logic of neoliberalism, in the sense that it relies on the opposition between place and space to be able to expand in the first place. Continue reading

The Departments of Intermedia and Fine Art Theory and Curatorial Studies of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts initiate the seminars Mapping the Local and Site Specific Interventions in Public Space :: Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Andrássy út 69-71, 1062 Budapest, Hungary.

Mapping the Local presents an overview of the major phenomena, trends and issues of contemporary art based on various subjects in each semester; a special emphasis will be placed on the East European region, in the form of seminars, presentations held by invited lecturers, field trips to museums, institutions and artist studios. The course is primarily directed towards Erasmus students as well as local students of the Intermedia and Fine Art Theory and Curatorial Studies departments. Continue reading

GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place; Edited by Michael Dear, Jim Ketchum, Sarah Luria, Doug Richardson; Routledge:

In the past decade, there has been a convergence of transdisciplinary thought characterized by geography’s engagement with the humanities, and the humanities’ integration of place and the tools of geography into its studies.

GeoHumanities maps this emerging intellectual terrain with thirty cutting edge contributions from internationally renowned scholars, architects, artists, activists, and scientists. This book explores the humanities’ rapidly expanding engagement with geography, and the multi-methodological inquiries that analyze the meanings of place, and then reconstructs those meanings to provoke new knowledge as well as the possibility of altered political practices. Continue reading

Mediating Place — curated by Meredith Hoy and Kevin Benisvy :: October 5 - 25, 2011; Monday - Thursday, 12:00 - 7:00 pm :: Opening Reception: October 5; 5:00 - 8:00 pm :: Harbor Gallery, UMass Boston, McCormack building floor 1, 100 William T. Morrissey Blvd., Boston MA.

The show seeks to address issues of place in the environment, politics, the home, media and technology with work like Ben Bray’s periodic streaming video updates from his current expedition in the Arctic, John Craig Freeman and collaborators’ augmented reality installations famed for using their politically-minded virtual exhibitions to crash renowned venues such as the MoMA and the Venice Biennial, Ann Torke’s residual accumulation sculptures from the home, and much more. Continue reading

Sensing Place | Placing Sense :: September 3-4, 2011 :: afo architekturforum oberösterreich, Herbert-Bayer-Platz 1, Linz, Austria.

The mental image of the city has become more complex. Since mobile phones have become geo-social devices, location-based data is increasingly shaping the way we navigate, experience and define the urban environment. Media art practices have played an important role in shaping, investigating and problematizing this development. The Symposium and the exhibition will investigate the potential of experimental and artistic forms of inquiry for helping us making sense of the city, and discuss practices that create new public infrastructures and define new places. Continue reading

[Edward Hopper, Gas (1940)] Place and Placelessness in America, The New Atlantis: Journal of Technology and Society:

In the 1990s, the mavens of high technology praised in breathless tones a new “placelessness.” Thanks to the Internet and the forces of globalization, we were told, physical location would become irrelevant to our public and private lives.

Perhaps these claims were exaggerated. Indeed, place has urgently reasserted itself in the last decade — most powerfully after deadly world events, from terrorist attacks to massive natural disasters. Still, a subtler kind of placelessness does seem to be growing. The ties of social stability and economic security that bind us to places are weak. Continue reading

Suffolk Psychogeophysics Summit with Graham Harwood, Eleonora Orreggia, Wilfried Hou je Bek, Stephen Fortune, Suzzanne Treister, Mike Challis, Cad Taylor, Ryan Jordan, Andy Bolus, Martin Howse, Kathrin Guenter, Jonathan Kemp, John Bowers, Mariko Ogawa, Laetitia Barbier :: August 28 - September 4, 2011 ::

The Suffolk Psychogeophysics Summit presents an intense week-long series of interventions, field trips, open workshops and evening discussions led by international artists and researchers exploring the Suffolk countryside through the interdisciplinary lens of psychogeophysics, defined as the combining of psychogeographic techniques (methods of wandering) with the study of geophysical traces (geophysical archaeology, the revealing of place). Continue reading

Symposium Datapolis Mark Shepard: Pathetic Fallacies and Category Mistakes from CIANT Prague on Vimeo.

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Systems/Layers Walkshop :: May 11, 2011; 10:00 am - 1:00 pm :: Innovation Centre, Central Saint Martins, Southampton Row, London.

Systems/Layers is a half-day ‘Walkshop’, held in two parts. The first portion of the activity is dedicated to a slow and considered walk through a reasonably dense and built-up section of the city. What we’re looking for are appearances of the networked digital in the physical, and vice versa: apertures through which the things that happen in the real world drive the ‘network weather,’ and contexts in which that weather affects … what people see, confront and are able to do. Continue reading