About the AG3:Online Conference

REGISTER FOR THE AG3 ONLINE CONFERENCE TODAY! REGISTRATION IS FREE AND YOU MUST BE REGISTERED AND LOGGED IN TO ACCESS THE EVENTS.

Conference Description: We are pleased to announce an international online Conference on the works and writings of the visionary architects Arakawa and Gins. This Third International Conference follows the conference at the University of Paris X-Nanterre (2005), and at the University of Pennsylvania, with the Slought Foundation (2008). The official home for this Conference will be at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, whose Centre for Public Culture and Ideas has committed to supply all hardware, software and technology management for the operation of the conference’s online features.

Registration & Submission of Abstracts: There is no registration fee. To submit you will be asked to register and supply a few details. We will begin accepting abstracts immediately with a final deadline of December 1st, 2009 (NOW EXTENDED UNTIL DECEMBER 15) and notification of acceptance by December 15th, 2010 (NOW EXTENDED UN TIL DECEMBER 30). Manuscripts for the conference will be reviewed by the conference committee. When you submit, you will be asked to identify the conference STREAM that best suits the point of departure for your submission. You must register to participate in the forums. TO VIEW CONFERENCE EVENTS AND PARTICIPATE IN THE CONFERENCE FORUMS, YOU CAN REGISTER AT ANY TIME- EVEN UP TO AND DURING THE CONFERENCE.

AG3 Online: conference structure: All conference events will take place online. For example, video presentations by the Keynote speakers will be scheduled to come online at a certain time (8:00 am in Brisbane, Australia on March 13, 2010 = 5:00 pm in New York, USA on March 12, 2010). Each keynotes video presentation (30-40 minutes) will be followed by a live chat open to all registrants. Similiarly, the Conference Streams will consist of an invited video presentation (15-20 minutes) followed by a live chat, a set of conference papers (word docs) and a Stream discussion forum (asynchronous) to encourage ongoing dialogue. A countdown clock will indicate when events on the program (a Keynote presentation or a Conference Stream) will go "live to the web". Once content - whether Keynote presentations Conference Streams videos or papers - go "live" on the AG3 website, they will remain accessible for viewing. The forums will remain open for interaction throughout. After the confence, all content will be archived and accessible as a resource.

Committed Keynote Talks:

Erin Manning: University Research Chair, Associate Professor, Film Studies and Studio Arts, and Director of the Sense Lab, Concordia University.

Tom Conley: Abbot Lawrence Lowell Professor of Romance Languages and Literature, and Chair of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University.

Shaun Gallagher: Chair and Research Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences, Senior research Faculty, Director of the Cognitive Sciences Program, University of Central Florida.

McKenzie Wark, together with Donald Byrd: Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Eugene Lang School of Media and Cultural Studies, the New School for Liberal Arts, and the New School for Social Research, in New York City; and, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Albany, respectively.

Fumi Tsukahara was born in Tokyo, Japan, and studied at the University of Tokyo and the University of Paris. His numerous publications include:"La tragectoire merveilleuse de Shusaku Arakawa"(2009), "AEsthetics of Revolt"(2008),"Age of Dada and Surrealism"(2003). He has co-authored "Dada circuit total" "L'Age d'Homme" (2005) and translated Jean Baudrillard's works "The Consumer Society","The Symbolic Exchange and the Death".

These keynote presentations will underscore the prolific creativity and interdisciplinary reach of Arakawa and Gins, from their beginning contributions in conceptual art and poetry, to their collaborations on architecture, to their theoretical speculations on embodiment, cognition, ageing and sustainable human communities.

Theme:

While we have subtitled this conference “Architecture and Philosophy,” we intend this conference to broaden the focus of contributions to reflect how the writings and architectural works of Arakawa and Gins have made significant impact on numerous areas of research. We hope that contributors to this conference will reflect the many points of departure that their work has stimulated in the research of others: language and meaning, cognition, embodiment, human/environmental interdependence, ecology, health, ageing, sustainability—not to mention architecture itself. The conference topic streams have been conceived as portals from which contributors from at least five continents, attracted to the work of Arakawa and Gins, may offer new insights. While many scholars, architects, artists and poets may already be familiar with their work, we are especially interested in offering a forum for those new to their work. Finally, AG3—Online wishes to encourage engagement with the work of Arakawa and Gins that may offer insight into procedures and interpretations that have pragmatic application to social, public health, educational, ecological as well as humanistic domains.

Conference STREAMS:

Philosophy and Linguistics: The work and writings of Arakawa and Gins have engaged with major issues in philosophy and linguistics from sources in Zen Buddhism to contemporary social theory, yet, one can say that many of these figures have, in turn, been influenced by Arakawa and Gins’ work and writings. We welcome any explorations of the many intersections between these artists and the fields of philosophy and linguistics, and especially ask for new and unsuspected alliances.

Philosophy of Science: Many recent scholars of Arakawa and Gins’ work and writings delve deeply into the sciences in order to elucidate the sometimes obscurely hermetic vocabulary in Arakawa and Gins’ writings. We welcome searches for resonances between the articulated issues in their writings, and those issues addressed by philosophers of science and scientists who seek to rethink the relationship of the human body and its cognitive processes with the world within which it finds itself embedded.

Life Sciences and Medicine: Arakawa and Gins reveal a sophisticated understanding of larger social and ecological concerns over human habitation and quality of life for all living entities on the planet. The concerns over health and longevity raised by their work address not only the ways in which their architecture forces embodied cognitive processes to navigate their purposefully difficult terrains, but also bring into focus the fate of human life on a planet undergoing enormous human-originating stresses, and the potential for a reversal of destiny.

Poetry and Poetics: The volume Architectural Body appeared in the University of Alabama Press series on Poetics, and speaks to the range of talents that Arakawa and Gins bring to their theoretical writings It speaks as well to how influential this work has become for poets and for the cluster of theoretical humanistic writings that come under the rubric of “poetics.” We welcome wide-ranging and culturally engaged investigation into a poetics at work in their writings as well as their architecture.

Art and Architecture—History, Theory and Practice: Since Arakawa and Gins may be the first major visionary architects since Buckminster Fuller, much work needs to be done to understand the relationship between their notion of architecture as hypothesis, and the array of “architectural procedures” that have been elucidated in their writings. What are the heuristic goals of their architectural procedures, and what might these procedures have to do with the role of architecture in motivating evolutionary processes within the users of that architecture?

Education and Leadership: Arakawa and Gins mean to enact embodied cognitive experiences that short circuit the distinction between conceptual and experiential learning. How might the work of Arakawa and Gins open up new domains of research in the education of children, tackle problems of ageing, or for adult education and adult development?

Translation: Arakawa and Gins’ language blurs the distinction between possible and impossible semantic structures. So not only do we hope to encounter scholars grappling with the problem of translating the writings of Arakawa and Gins (as well as Madeline Gins’ poetry), but to also ask fundamental questions about their semantic tactics of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural conceptual daring associated with their notion of “terminological junctions.”

Publications:

Collected volume: A peer-reviewed volume after the event, which will be published by the journal Inflexions, founded by Erin Manning and Brian Massumi (University of Montreal), and associated with the Sense Lab, will be co-edited by Jondi Keane and Martin E. Rosenberg.

Creative Responses: The work of Arakawa and Gins has been extremely influential for poets and artists. At the Second International Conference in 2008, a number of distinguished poets, performance artists, and media artists contributed to the program. We invite new creative responses that develop, investigate, explore and inflect aspects of Arakawa and Gins' written, drawn, built and unbuilt works. We can accept creative responses in the following forms: textual or graphic (which could include poetry in any form, visual works and/or image/text hybrids); net-based interactive works (flash, etc.); net-based video. In addition to the web exhibit, University of New Orleans Press has committed to publish a collection of the creative responses in book form. The Creative Responses section of AG3 is curated by Bill Lavender, Alan Prohm , and Jason Nelson. AG3-Online will run from March 12-26, 2010. Submit creative response proposals via email to ag3art@gmail.com by December 1, 2009, with final projects due February 1, 2010. Send queries to bill.lavender@uno.edu

AG3 in 3D - Special features of Conference: To intensify the virtual experience of the conference, Masters Students from RMIT (conference co-host) will create immersive surrounds for the user-participants, including the re-creation of Arakawa and Gins built and unbuilt works as well as design responses that reference their work in creative and unusual ways. The course will also explore the potential of Second Life as a design platform for real time virtual events. Course Convenor: Russell Hughes with contributions from Dr. Jondi Keane, Dr. Pia Ednie-Brown, Dr. Helene Frichot, Mike Hornblow, Michael Spooner, and Greg More.

Concluding Events at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum and at the Los Angeles County Museum:

We can now confirm that concluding celebratory events after the online conference has concluded will occur at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum on May 1, 1-5pm; and, at the Los Angeles County Museum on May 8, 1-5pm. The celebrations will continue in the evening. In addition, a possible evening event may occur Friday April 30--details to be announced, and a bus charter is planned for Sunday, May 2, to visit the Biosleave House in East Hampton, LI.

Arakawa and Gins can attend, and we will have guest speakers to honour them. Further Details to be announced.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

Call for Papers: September 15, 2009.
Official Conference Website Begins October 21, 2009.

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: ** EXTENDED UNTIL December 15, 2009.

Notification of Acceptance: December 30, 2009.

Due Date to upload finished papers: February 15, 2010

Conference Duration: March 12 -March 26, 2010.

CLOSING EVENTS:

Barnard College, NYC: 4-8pm, April 30, 2010
Solomon Guggenheim Museum, NYC: 1-5pm, May 1, 2010.

Bus Charter to Bioscleave House, May 2, 2010.

Please join the “Arakawa and Gins Discussion Group” on Facebook, now almost 380 members strong!

History

Video presentations by the Keynote speakers will be scheduled to come online at a certain time (8:00 am in Brisbane, Australia on March 13, 2010 = 5:00 pm in New York, USA on March 12, 2010). Each keynotes video presentation (30-40 minutes) will be followed by a live chat open to all registrants. Similiarly, the Conference Streams will consist of an invited video presentation (15-20 minutes) followed by a live chat, a set of conference papers (word docs) and a Stream discussion forum (asynchronous) to encourage ongoing dialogue. A countdown clock will indicate when events on the program (a Keynote presentation or a Conference Stream) will go "live to the web". Once content - whether Keynote presentations Conference Streams videos or papers - go "live" on the AG3 website, they will remain accessible for viewing. The forums will remain open for interaction throughout. After the confence, all content will be archived and accessible as a resource.

This Third International Conference follows the 2005 conference at the University of Paris X—Nanterre (organized by Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Françoise Kral); and the 2008 conference at the University of Pennsylvania/Slought Foundation (organized by Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabaté). Interest in the work of Arakawa and Gins has expanded greatly in recent years, and not only because of the attention created by the architectural visions introduced during their Guggenheim Museum Retrospective and Catalogue (1997), that have been realized at Yoro Park, Japan (landscape architecture), the Reversible Destiny Lofts - Mitaka (in Memory of Helen Keller), Japan (a multi-family living complex), and Bioscleave House in East Hampton LI—USA (single family residence). In addition, Arakawa and Gins have co-authored two significant manifestos --Architectural Body (2002) and Making Dying Illegal (2006)--that have had significant impact on research in numerous academic disciplines. In the ways that works and writings by Arakawa and Gins confront fundamental assumptions concerning embodiment and cognition, language and meaning, quality of life and the aging process, as well as human habitation with respect to ecology and sustainability, one may find philosophers of language, philosophers of science, literary and art historians and theorists, medical professionals, psychologists, cognitive scientists, biologists--and architects--engaging with their concepts and using their architecture to illustrate an array of intellectual work. The seven topic streams through which we solicit submissions speak to the diversity of their impact. Not only the content of the conference reflects these concerns, however, for the decision to hold the event online speaks to the ecological impact of travel and consumption that conferences create.

The official home for this online Conference is Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, whose Centre for Public Culture and Ideas has supplied all the hardware, software and technology management for the operation of the conference's multi-purpose website. The features of this website will include in part: online self-registration; email updates; discussion forums; real-time events involving video streaming of keynote talks, as well as real-time synchronous formal responses and break-out discussions; the posting of accepted papers in time slots associated with specific topic streams; and comments on specific papers by specific respondents as well as conference participants. This website will be user-friendly in the extreme, allowing full flexibility for global participation as presenters or attendees.

Selected proceeds from this conference will be edited by Jondi Keane and Martin E. Rosenberg for the journal Inflexions, associated with the Sense Lab, a Montreal research center on philosophy and embodied cognition founded by Brian Massumi of the University of Montreal and Erin Manning of Concordia University. In addition, Bill Lavender, Alan Prohm, and Jason Nelson are curating submissions of Creative Responses to the Work of Arakawa and Gins, to be exhibited at Netpoetics. Subsequent print publication is also likely from University of New Orleans Press. Poets, graphic artists, and multi-media artists interested in submitted proposals should see the call for work at http://netpoetic.com/ag3art/call.html.

Global links