Call for Submissions: Radical Relevances Conference

FIRST GLOBAL RADICAL RELEVANCES CONFERENCE
25–27 April 2018, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

Call for submissions by 30 September

The First Global Radical Relevances Conference asks: How do economic, social, and cultural practices reflect the global uncertainty of today with its shifting geopolitics and environmental realities? How to engage in new ways of thinking about and practicing in terms of human and nonhuman co-existence and flourishing in the midst of vast predictable and unpredictable planetary transformations? How to study the relevances of certain objective realities that nevertheless escape the sensory equipment of an individual?

We call for social and natural scientists, artists, philosophers and activists to go beyond the rational or rationalized to the actual relevances underlying human activity. Such a focus requires not only more attention to everyday life, but also novel methodologies and research designs. We call for thinking about how to mobilize objectively relevant ideas to people so that these become relevant in their everyday life – both at work and home. The conference aims at serious de-normalization of the status quo, yet even more importantly, to explore, formalize, and theorize answers and resolutions to the urgent and massive problems that humanity and the planet face.

The theme for this first conference is open. However, if possible, our interests converge towards two, seemingly unconnected topics: the Arctic region and health-beyond-human. Melting ice caps on Greenland not only dislodge natural resources to mining, drilling and damming, but NATO camps formerly buried by ice now exude toxins into the thawed flows. Inuit women – sharing a similar fate with the ice bear, another large carnivore mammal from the same region – have the largest amounts of heavy metals in their mother’s milk. In addition to the melting ice, global winds converge pollutants from the rest of the world to Greenland and the Arctic Sea. Indeed, we learn from the Inuit and the ice-bear that on this planet, there is no remoteness, no outside.

Submission forms

1. Essay submissions

Please submit your long abstract (of 1 000–1 500 words) or short paper (max. 3 000 words) to [email protected] by the 30th of September 2017. Please, include any images, tables, or diagrams at low resolution at this phase. Please, state Title, Author(s), and Email Address. Upon acceptance to conference we ask you to submit a full paper of max. 8 000 words.

2. Art and other submissions

You may also submit works in other forms – for instance, a poster, performance, workshop, or an intervention. Tell us about the work you would like to present and we will be in touch with you to find appropriate ways to include it in the limited settings of our conference. Please submit your proposal (max 1500 words) to [email protected] by 30th of September, 2017. Please include images only at low resolution at this phase. If applicable, add links to online video and/or audio material. Please state Title, Author(s) and/or Artist(s), and Email Address.

ACCEPTANCE TO THE CONFERENCE notification at the latest 1st of November 2017

Contact:

Pia Lindman
Professor (Artistic Practices), Department of Art
[email protected] +358 50 441 7104

taide.aalto.fi/fi/research/radical_relevances/