CALL FOR PAPERS

POST-INTERNET CITIES | INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology | Lisbon, 26 May 2017

Under the scope of the Utopia/Dystopia exhibition, organised by MAAT, this conference seeks to promote a critical reflection on the way in which digital technologies affect the conceptualisation and life of cities. How can art and architecture respond to this uncertain and unstable condition?

Talking about the present and the future of our cities means, first of all, discussing what the urban space means to us today. Besides having brought about evident changes to our everyday practices, the communication technologies have radically transformed the way in which cities are recognised, appropriated and (re)designed. The globalisation of the Internet and, more recently, the phenomenon of the social media, have reshaped the urban space, dividing it into multiple territories that coexist and intertwine, in a growing ambiguity between the public and private domains, between the real and the virtual.

In a scenario of constant hybridisation and connectivity, physical distances have shortened, giving rise to ubiquitous and parallel cities, mapped by interactive and collaborative systems. This process explains how the main political protest movements of the last decade appeared online first and then only afterwards occupied the symbolic places of our cities. But are these new socio-cultural dynamics calling into question the role of the built public environment? To what extent should the city be understood as an overlapping between the material reality and a collective imagination that has been reinvented on the social media?

Conference topics

– Contemporary architecture as urban utopia/dystopia
– Network cultures and the “right to the city”
– Digital (il)literacy and social exclusion
– Architecture and urban iconography after the Internet
– Architecture, technology and uncertainty
– Contemporary art as urban intervention in a digital age
– Digital art in public spaces
– Urban space as mixed reality

HOW TO SUBMIT A PAPER

Language: English
Abstracts: Title of paper, abstract (350-500 words), 5 keywords, author’s affiliation, e-mail address and short biography (100-150 words)
Format: PDF file – max. 3 pages or 2.00 MB
Full papers: 2000-2500 words (additional guidelines will be provided soon)
E-mail address: all abstracts should be sent to the following e-mail address: postinternetcities@gmail.com

PUBLICATION

A selection of essays on the conference topic will be published in e-flux architecture. This means that some of the proposed papers may be selected for presentation at the conference, but not necessarily for publication. The Programme Committee will select the best paper(s) submitted under the framework of this Call for Papers to be included in the e-flux publication, and these will then receive the corresponding author’s fee.

Deadline for submission of abstract: 26 March 2017

Further information here

Organisation

Partner institutions