Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference 2023
London, UK, 29 August – 1 September, 2023
Call for proposals.
Organisers: Lindsay Bremner (School of Architecture + Cities, University of Westminster), Neal White (School of Arts, University of Westminster), Roberto Bottazzi (The Bartlett, UCL), Kaya Barry (Griffith Centre for Social Cultural Research).
Weather can be experienced; we need media to understand climate (Barber, 2020: 13).
Recent research projects such as Manifest Data Lab (https://www.manifest-data.org/), Monsoon Assemblages (http://exhibition.monass.org/), SOC (Cartographics Objects Society (http://s-o-c.fr/) and others, have explored ways of embodying climate change data in drawings, physical objects, art works and installations. Ranging in scale from the planetary to the microbial and from geological time-scales to the present, these initiatives have been interdisciplinary, involving new alliances between artists, scientists and citizens, humans and nonhumans, and, in some cases, the experimental use, mis-use or creative hacking of software and technology. They have both drawn on and challenged ways in which climate change data has been represented, such hockey-stick graphs and colour saturated maps (Mann 2012, Helmreich, 2021), thereby opening up new questions about the power of representation to shape the experience and politics of climate change (Zylinska, 2021). For the visualisation or representation of climate change data is not a cosmetic operation, but explicates i.e. analyses in detail (Furuhata, 2021) new insights about human and non-human entanglements with climate change, its geographies and its politics and creates new climate change publics.
This panel invites contributions that present, reflect on or critically analyse visual / aesthetic cultures of climate change data, the scientific and artistic imaginaries they draw from, the manners in which they make climate change and its data palpable, the new collaborations and alliances they foster and the new publics they create. Contributions are invited from scholars, artists and arts/science collaborators whose work produces new understandings of climate change through the aesthetic mobilisation of data. Themes include but are not limited to:
- aesthetic cultures of climate change data
- cartographies of climate change
- aesthetic cultures of citizen science
- aesthetic encounters with climate change data
- creating data driven climate change publics
Presentation formats may include, but are not limited to papers, artists talks and fieldwork presentations.
If you are interested in participating, please email a max. 300 word abstract and max. 100 word bio (including affiliation and email address) to Lindsay Bremner (l.bremner@westmisnter.ac.uk), Roberto Bottazzi (roberto.bottazzi@ucl.ac.uk), Neal White (n.white@westminster.ac.uk) or Kaya Barry k.barry@griffith.edu.au) before Friday 3 March 2023. Please indicate presentation format and include whether your participation would be in person or online. Please contact any one of us if you have any questions.
References
Daniel Barber, Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Airconditioning, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2020.
Yuriko Furuhata, Climatic media, Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control, Durham NC, Duke University Press, 2021.
Stefan Helmreich, ‘The Colors of Saturated Seas,’ in Saturation: An Elemental Politics ed. Melody Jue and Rafico Ruiz, pp. 29-44, Durham NC, Duke University Press, 2021.
Michael E. Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines, New York, Columbia University Press, 2012.
Joanna Zylinska, ‘Hydromedia: From Water Literacy to the Erhics of Saturation,’ in Saturation: An Elemental Politics ed. Melody Jue and Rafico Ruiz, pp. 45-69, Durham NC, Duke University Press, 2021.
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