Forthcoming Conference

In collaboration with Fed Square PL, managers of Melbourne's public square and large screen, Scott McQuire and Nikos Papastergiadis are convening the Urban Screens Melbourne 08 conference: Mobile Publics.

Urban Screens Melbourne 08 is the third, ground-breaking international conference and multimedia exhibition in a series of worldwide Urban Screens events. It will mark the official launch of the International Urban Screens Association and will take place 3rd-8th October at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Conference: Mobile Publics 3-5 October 2008
Outdoor Multimedia Program: 3-8 October 2008

The event will promote a lateral trans-disciplinary approach to exploring the growing appearance of moving images in urban space and the global transformation of public culture in the context of large new multi media precincts such as Federation Square and various networked forms of urban screens. It will build on the successful events held in Amsterdam in 2005 and Manchester in 2007 and will be the first Urban Screens held in the Asia-Pacific region.

Through an integrated program of keynote lectures, panel sessions, workshops, curated screenings and multimedia projects, it will bring together leading Australian and international artists and curators, architects and urban planners, screen operators and content providers, technology manufacturers, software designers and public intellectuals.

Keynote speakers include:

Prof. Saskia Sassen (Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University)

Aaron Tan (Director, Research Architecture Design)

Andreas Broeckmann (Independent Curator)

For registrations and more information: http://www.urbanscreens08.net/

Conference Archive

Scott McQuire and Nikos Papastergiadis have convened two conferences as part of the ARC project, 'The Spatial Impact of Digital Technology on Contemporary Art and New Art Institutions': Empires, Ruins + Networks (2004) and Mobility, Culture and Communication (2006). An Urban Screens conference is planned at Federation Square in Melbourne in 2008 as part of the ARC project 'Public Screens and the Transformation of Public Space'.

The Empires, Ruins + Networks: Art in Real Time Culture conference was held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in April 2004 as a result of a partnership between the Australian Council, the Australian Research Council, ACMI, and the Australian Centre and Media and Communications Program at the University of Melbourne.

The conference sought to provide a forum for the reframing of debates on art and cultural difference in the context of new border crossings by migrants and refugees and the increased complexity of cultural flows and exchanges sustained through new media practices. Empires drew together leading artists, curators and cultural theorists such as: Okwui Enwezor (USA) Artistic Director Documenta; Carlos Cappelan (Uruguay / Spain) artist; Kendall Geers (South Africa) artist; Eddie Berg (UK) Executive Director FACT; Virgina Pérez Rattón (Costa Rica) Director of TEOR/éTica; Marina Fokidis (Greece) Director, Oxymoron Artist Space; Lisa Reihana (Aotearoa/New Zealand) artist; Ross Gibson (Aust) Research Professor of New Media and Digital Culture, UTS; Simryn Gill (Aust) artist and Tony Birch (Aust) poet and lecturer in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Melbourne.These participants sought to explore the shifting forms of otherness and the new modes of cultural production in contemporary culture, proposing new models of artistic and cultural collaboration that might expand the democratic principles of public culture.

The proceedings of the conference (with selected additional essays) were published as Empires, Ruins + Networks: The Transcultural Agenda in Art by Melbourne University Publishing in 2005.

To order Empires, Ruins + Networks please go to the Melbourne University Bookshop:
http://www.bookshop.unimelb.edu.au/

The Mobility, Culture and Communication Symposium was held at the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne in June 2006, with the assistance of the Australian Research Council and the Australian Centre and Media and Communications Program at the University Program. Presenters and respondents were invited to present ten-minute papers, followed by round-table discussion with invited guests engaging the thematic of mobility, culture and communication around the following key questions:

• How are transnational spaces emerging in contemporary society?

• Is cosmopolitanism a useful concept for re-thinking belonging?

• What are the limits to theories of mobility?

• What role do new technologies play in sustaining trans-cultural networks?

• How are art institutions situated in relation to global flows?

Professor Harald Kleinschmidt (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan) then gave a keynote public lecture entitled ‘Migration and the Making of Transnational Social Spaces.

This lecture may be downloaded in PDF format (PDF link)

Presenters and respondents included:

• Professor Harald Kleinschmidt (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan)

This paper may be downloaded in PDF format (PDF link)

• Dr John Cash (Director, Ashworth Centre of Social Theory, University of Melbourne)

This paper may be downloaded in PDF format (PDF link)

• David Elliott (Director, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan)

• Professor Ien Ang (Director, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney)

• Dr Dennis Del Favero (Co-Director, Centre for Interactive Cinema Research)

• Charles Merewether  (Artistic Director and Curator, 15th Biennale of Sydney 2006)

• Dr R Harindranath (Acting Director, Media and Communications Program, University of Melbourne)

• Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (Chief Curator, Castello Di Rivoli-Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy)