Cars In/Of Culture: Mobility, Materiality, Representation

Cars In/Of Culture: Mobility, Materiality, Representation Call for Participation 2016 1st Global Conference Sunday 8th May – Tuesday 10th May 2016 Prague, Czech Republic "[A]part from our own deaths, the car crash is probably the most dramatic event in our lives, and in many cases the two will coincide," remarked J. G. Ballard in 1969, somehow raining on the turn-of-the-decade's consumerist parade and exposing the uncanny potential of an all-too-familiar object: the motor car. No longer seen exclusively as a status symbol, a suburban commuter's necessity or an aesthetically intricate object of teenage desires, the automobile suddenly revealed its dark side, not only that of a life-style giver but also of a life-span taker. Yet, with hindsight, we know today that cars are much more complex entities than even their most sophisticated mechanics would suggest. They have invaded our bedroom walls and our driveways, they sneak into our chats providing stories of glory and shame, they have turned into powerful symbols of environmental decay and of dreamt-of prosperity, they have changed the architecture of our towns and discretely nested themselves in our escapist dreams of hitting the open road. Once domesticated, they become a home out of home, a familiarized workplace, a locus of highway melancholy, traffic-jam anger and intimate conversations, they talk to us in a language of their own. Having marked their presence in almost every sphere of life, regardless of one's geographical location, political views, gender, ethnic background, sexual preferences, religion, social positioning, etc., it is perhaps surprising that the automotive environments and the ensuing cultures of contemporary mobility have been given a rather modest theoretical reflection. After all, the automobile in its entirety not only invites numerous interdisciplinary approaches, but first of all, it constitutes an interdisciplinary object per se, a palpable prism overlooking a variety of social, environmental, technical and even political landscapes. Landscapes, which seem to have been either bypassed in contemporary cultural discourses, or, at best, approached from isolated perspectives, reducing the motor vehicle to a tool useful in demonstrating other social phenomena but hardly ever deserving sufficient attention in itself. And much is at stake in the realm of automobility. As silent partners of our daily routines, cars often decide about our social positioning, offering a variety of identity-forming choices, which inevitably classify us along the lines of communal hierarchies. Motoring subcultures, either challenging or solidifying neoliberal expectations, form new leisure communities. Cinematic and TV representations of cars and car cultures fill up a significant portion of our media horizon eventually feeding on and inspiring our motoring dreams and fears. And somehow underneath the globalized imagery, cars still form part of our national history and therefore shape our sense of national identity. Hence, bearing in mind both the need to fill up the critical gap, as well as to explore the interdisciplinary multitude of possible contexts and approaches towards motoring and mobility in general, we welcome presentations, papers, reports, performances, work-in-progress and workshops from all academic and non-academic disciplines, whose subject-areas may include but are by no means limited to the following topics: - Cultures (and subcultures) of Automobility - Cars and Neoliberal Paradigms (citizenship, consumerism, pro-environmental awareness) - Cinematic/Literary Representations (technophilia, technophobia, escapism, life-style) - Cars in Popular Media (Top Gear cultural impact, video games, car-based TV shows, popular advertising, celebrity culture) - Motoring Culture and National/Individual Identity - Cars and Gender Identity/Machismo Culture - Car Cultures and the Colonial Legacy - Car Semiotics/Aesthetics/Art - Accident Culture/Risk Society - Automotive Cultures and the Urban Space - Cars and Material Culture/New Materialism - Car Cultures and/in Totalitarian Regimes - Highway Culture and Redefined Landscapes - Social Location of Car Travel - Automobility and the Environment Further details and information can be found at the conference website: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/cars-inof-culture/call-for-presentations/ The Project welcomes critical evaluations and analyses from two major groups of prospective participants. The first one includes representatives of almost all fields of contemporary humanities including cultural and literary theorists, psychologist, psychotherapists, sociologist, architects, urban studies specialists, art and media critics, historians and political science specialists. Still, bearing in mind the Project's multi-disciplinary dimension, the participants are by no means expected to have an academic background. Hence, the second group may embrace specialists, enthusiasts and practitioners of any social or technical activity related to, informed by or connected with various embodiments of motoring cultures and as such include architects, journalists, authors, environmentalists, NGO members, infrastructure specialists, urban designers, industrial designers, representatives of car industry, traffic management specialist and members of related business environments. Call for Cross-Over Presentations The Cars In/Of Culture project will be meeting at the same time as a project on Apocalypse and another project on Social Media. We welcome submissions which cross the divide between both project areas. If you would like to be considered for a cross project session, please mark your submission "Crossover Submission". What to Send 300 word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday 4th December 2015. All submissions be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed. You will be notified of the panel's decision by Wednesday 16th December 2015. If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 18th March 2016. Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords. E-mails should be entitled: Cars In/Of Culture Abstract Submission Where to Send Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs: Organising Chairs: Marcin Mazurek: marcinmazurek@interia.pl Rob Fisher: cars1@inter-disciplinary.net This event is an inclusive interdisciplinary research and publishing project. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference. Ethos Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation. Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.