Summer symposium:

What a waste: surplus art, theory and tékhnē

Date: July 27th– August 3th, 2023, Palanga Lithuania

Deadline, for abstracts: Friday the 12^rd of May, 2023 (details below).

Invitation

We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in our study circle Cybioses – life in the future imperfect, part of the summer session of the Nordic Summer University (NSU), a migratory non-hierarchical group of international researchers. Each summer the various symposium series (circles) meet at the same location. Since its inception, the primary aim of NSU has been to provide a forum for experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration, welcoming members both from within and outside of universities and other institutions.

“Cybioses” / “life in the future imperfect”

The aim of the Cybioses circle is to bring together theorists, practitioners, and technologists. Together we want to discuss practices of making and the social and cultural impact of future technologies. How can philosophical questions support the development of technologies? How in turn can technological practices and development inform philosophical, aesthetic, and sociological theories? And how can both making and theorizing help us imagining future technologies and their impact on societies? Is it possible to extrapolate from making? Guided by these questions we want to develop a philosophy for makers and a better practice for philosophy.

The name of the circle, ‘Cybiosis’ (pl. cybioses), is a neologism, based on ‘cybernetic’, ‘symbiosis’, and ‘bio’, and it embodies the new technological modes of living that we aim to investigate. It is a speculative metaphor in the sense that the term ‘Cybiosis’ is intended to support an imagination of the ambivalent co-relation between (cybernetic) systems of symbioses and inclusion, on the one hand, and the relentless drive to commodify life forms and extend the networks of technological control, on the other. Accordingly this last part about commodification and control, in the previous sentence, is captured in the subtitle’s reference to “imperfection”. It refers to our shared investigation of the status of the “open future” in today’s technological world.

We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists, theorists, and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in our study circle.

Theme: What a waste: surplus art, theory and tékhnē

Waste, in its narrow sense, refers to trash, to something unwanted, to unusable materials; simultaneously the seminar revolves around waste as a deeply cultural and meaningful intellectual category.

We are, therefore, interested in waste and its materialistic characteristics, referring to wasted food or electricity, to nuclear waste, giant trash belts, plastic in the oceans and so on. These types of examples allow us to consider the material conditions of consumption and production, the processes, standards and infrastructure involved, and, ultimately, how modern societies and its inhabitants (us) revolve around waste, with as its bleak implication that people are wasting away. In this sense the title, “What a waste”, already begs the question of how to act with a less obvious lack of care, and to act with purpose. This applies to the “matter” involved – as being out of place – and the questions “where should it be?” or more conventionally “how can we become less wasteful?”

Such an aspiration – to find new ways to engage with what we consider as waste – also applies to “art, theory and tékhnē”, mentioned in our subtitle. Here we ask “what is waste?” in a more philosophical register, questioning how tempting it is – when dealing with our own chosen fields, identities and interests – to suddenly see the future with a nostalgic gaze or regretful eyes, unable to realize the potential there once was. What intellectual concerns and related practices should have value, which should not? How do we decide what about “art, theory and tékhnē” is a waste, and what is not? What is a waste of time and resources? Given that waste is deeply cultural, how does that include the value given by us to whatever is “new” and to whatever is seen as having a claim on the future?

These questions are how we refer to cybioses, as a speculative metaphor that aims to imagine mutually beneficial relationships between cybernetic systems and human life. Waste, as a concept, is, therefore, not just an accidental output of technological modes of living, within a materialistic worldview or reductive methodologies. Rather, waste changes its meaning from place to place, within fields and societies, between individuals and so on. The goal to an open-ended and speculative investigation is a renewal of agency, as a necessary step when trying to act differently, whether as theory, through invention or by means of reflective artistic practices. Making the category of waste the focal point of our summer symposium challenges the language of value and promise as well as what is to be lost, forgotten, and thrown away or what counts as excess and surplus. And, why not, what type of cybioses to aim for.

Proposals are encouraged within the following topics:

• ethical & philosophical perspectives on waste
• technology and waste
• wastefullness in art, theory and technology
• cybernetic thought and waste
• hard/soft/wetware in relation to waste
• the value (or lack thereof) of conceptual work or experiential knowledge on waste
• histories and practices that involve waste or challenge what counts as waste
• speculative design and cultural readings of what is waste
• “failed” technologies and their relation to waste
• critical examinations of “waste” within neoliberal and authoritarian systems
• alternatives that challenge how we consider waste
• waste in (science) fiction

Submission

Please send a short motivation letter and bio to eric.deibel@nsuweb.org by the 12^thof May 2023.

1. A written proposal (max. 350 words) with a title and descriptive subtitle. This text should include your presentation proposal, its format, its duration, facilities you need (e.g., space, technical equipment)
2. A short bio (max. 200 words)

It is possible to attend the symposium without presenting. In this case, please just email us a short bio.

You will be sent an acknowledgment that your abstract has been received. Within a week after the deadline you will hear whether it has been accepted. At that point you will be asked to proceed with the payment. The preliminary program will be announced as soon as payments have been processed.

Registration and fee

(includes membership, accommodation and food)

– single rooms for 575 euros per person.

– double/twin rooms for 425 euro per person.

– family rooms for 950 euros (family of 4).

– scholarship and grant recipient in a twin room: 175 euros.

(see https://www.nsuweb.org/activities/summer-session/ for more information)

The rooms are all equipped with their own private bathroom (shared with only the people on the room). All rooms at Vyturys Hotel are of modest to good quality. The rooms include bed linen and towels, and all food is also included in the price. The cost includes accommodation for the week, 3 meals and 2 coffee breaks a day, and access to the full NSU program during the summer session. Participation in the summer session requires NSU membership, and the cost also includes NSU membership.

As indicated above Cybioses can assist with a limited amount of scholarships and grants:

– Scholarships: exclusively for Nordic/Baltic students

– Grants: inclusive for all other students and people in need, also non-Nordic participants. Criteria for each are described in detail here: https://www.nsuweb.org/support_pages/arrkom/scholarship-and-grant-program/

Important dates:

Submission deadline for abstracts: May 12^th 2023

Acceptance decision and notification: May 15^th, 2023

Payment deadline: May 22^th, 2023

About NSU

The Nordic Summer University (NSU) is a Nordic network for research and interdisciplinary studies. NSU is a nomadic, academic institution, which organises workshop-seminars across disciplinary and national borders. Since it was established in 1950, Nordic Summer University has organised forums for cultural and intellectual debate in the Nordic and Baltic region, involving students, academics, politicians, and intellectuals from this region and beyond.

Decisions about the content and the organisational form of the NSU lay with its participants. The backbone of the activities in the NSU consists of its thematic study circles. In the study circles researchers, students, and professionals from different backgrounds collaborate in scholarly investigations distributed regularly in summer and winter symposia during a three-year period.

For more information and to sign up to the NSU newsletter go to: www.nordic.university

We look forward to your submissions.

Eric Deibel

(Lecturer in Science, Technology and Society, engineering faculty, asst. prof. political science faculty, Bilkent University)

Palle Dahlstedt

(Professor of Interaction Design Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Gothenburg / Chalmers University of Technology)

Maru Mushtrieva

(Researcher and text and sound artist with a background in literature and based between Berlin and Brussels)

Upcoming symposia:

“Viral catastrophes, existential risks and the open future” WS23

“Object, Subjects, Rejects: The art and tékhnē of being on the outside” SS24

“Speculative technologies and future frictions: Artistic forks and theoretical schizms” WS24

“Existential risks and the critical posthumanities: Towards a future for human nature?” SS25

Previous symposia:

Winter Symposium, NSU: March 2nd – 5th, 2023 in collaboration with Constant, Specxcraft & au jus

Symposium theme:

Slow Futures

Invitation

We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in our study circle Cybioses – life in the future imperfect, part of the Nordic Summer University, a migratory non-hierarchical group of international researchers.

The aim of the Cybioses circle is to bring together theorists, practitioners, and technologists. Together we want to discuss practices of making and the social and cultural impact of future technologies. How can philosophical questions support the development of technologies? How in turn can technological practices and development inform philosophical, aesthetic, and sociological theories? And how can both making and theorizing help us imagining future technologies and their impact on societies? Is it possible to extrapolate from making? Guided by these questions we want to develop a philosophy for makers and a better practice for philosophy.

Our circle takes place within the Nordic and Baltic framework of Nordic Summer University (NSU). Since its inception, the primary aim of NSU has been to provide a forum for experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration welcoming members both from within and outside of universities and other institutions.

Theme of the symposium

The winter symposium on “slow futures” will be the first session of our new three-year symposium series called: Cybioses – life in the future imperfect.

If you click on the link below you can find all the information about us here.

Deadline, for abstracts: Friday the 23^rd of January, 2023. (see details below)

Date, the winter session will be held from Thursday, March 2^nd to Sunday March 5^th 2023.

Location is Brussels, Belgium.

The symposium is part of the Nordic Summer University (NSU), which organizes Nordic networks for interdisciplinary study and research, pioneering topics like technology, environmentalism, feminism within its tradition (see www.nsuweb.org) and will be organized in association with artist-run space “au jus” and “Constant”, specifically their subproject Spexcraft ). The Spexcraft, or Speculative crafting for un/common futures is an artistic research project between 4 Brussels-based organisations: Urban Species, Natagora, Centre Vidéo Bruxelles, and Constant. Specxcraft starts from the hypothesis that the capacity of imagining futures and projecting oneself into the consequences of present situations and choices is a citizen’s pivotal skill in the current context, continuously confronted with the threat of crises; and that the pluralisation of imaginaries of futures, working with underrepresented publics, constitutes a cornerstone of the democratic character of Brussels public action. More specifically, can the co-creative training and crafting of a ’speculative imagination’ reconfigure aspirations, fears, and values that are opposed – or on the contrary allied – in Brussels debates today? Their project is funded by the Innoviris Co-create grant.

We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists, theorists, and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in our study circle.

“Cybioses”: what is it?

The name of the circle, ‘Cybiosis’ (pl. cybioses), is a neologism, based on ‘cybernetic’, ‘symbiosis’, and ‘bio’, and it embodies the new technological modes of living that we aim to investigate. It is a speculative metaphor in the sense that the term ‘Cybiosis’ is intended to support an imagination of the ambivalent co-relation between (cybernetic) systems of symbioses and inclusion, on the one hand, and the relentless drive to commodify life forms and extend the networks of technological control, on the other.

“life in the future imperfect” and “slow futures”: what are they?

This last part about commodification and control, in the previous sentence, is captured in the subtitle’s reference to “imperfection”. It refers to our shared investigation of the status of the “open future” in today’s technological world. Alternatively, “slow futures”, the theme of this winter symposium, characterize science, technology, media, and art in various ways. Bringing the potential of such slow futures to the foreground undermines the premise that speed is characteristic of technological change and that constant social pressure underpins technological disruption, economic growth, and an ability to be detached from its impact on material worlds of great complexity.

Therefore, we welcome both critiques of such “linearity” and affirmation of the value of slow futures, their imagination, and practice. We hope this topic will continue, deepen and renew our collaboration with artists, hackers, designers, technologists, theorists, and more. We also hope for contributors with experimental approaches to presenting and collaborating. In the past, there have been long and short presentations, textual (read out) and performative, theory-based, and practical, with artistic and aesthetic aims. Feel free to contact us if you are wondering how you would fit in.

Please send a short motivation letter and bio to eric.deibel@nsuweb.org by the 23^rd of January.

Proposals are encouraged within the following topics:

• ethical & philosophical perspectives on slow futures
• non-linear technological evolution
• artificial intelligence and its conceptions of speed and progress
• slow futures in hard/soft/wetware
• conceptual and experiential knowledge & slow futures
• histories and practices for the production of “originality” and “novelty”
• slow futures in the arts, theory, tech, and the sciences
• slow futures and speculative design
• failed technologies and their “slowness”
• critical examinations of “fast futures” as a neoliberal practice
• critical alternatives
• projections and actualities

Submission

To submit a proposal please send via email in PDF format to the coordinators or the circle email below (we will confirm receipt of submission within a day):

Please send your submission to: eric.deibel@nsuweb.org. If you prefer, of course, you can contact any of us directly at Palle Dahlstedt (palle@chalmers.se), Eric Deibel (eric@fripost.org), Maru Mushtrieva (m.mushtrieva@gmail.com). Please, cc the submission to Eric for convenience sake.

1. A written proposal (max. 350 words) with a title and descriptive subtitle. This text should include your presentation proposal, its format its duration, facilities you need (e.g., space, technical equipment)
2. A short bio (max. 200 words)

It is possible to attend the symposium without presenting. In this case, please just email a short bio.

The deadline to submit proposals is January 23rd, 2023.  The preliminary program will be announced here on February 15th, 2023, where you can also find more information about NSU and sign up for the newsletter.

Registration and fee

Students and independents: €25

Those associated with institutions or companies: €35

West Nordic & Baltic residents: €25

Participants should apply to their institutions, Art Councils, local foundations or sponsors to have their travel costs covered. For those not affiliated with an institution or in a precarious economic situation, it is possible after the symposium to apply to NSU for a partial travel refund (as available).

Important dates:

About NSU

The Nordic Summer University (NSU) is a Nordic network for research and interdisciplinary studies. NSU is a nomadic, academic institution, which organises workshop-seminars across disciplinary and national borders. Since it was established in 1950, Nordic Summer University has organised forums for cultural and intellectual debate in the Nordic and Baltic region, involving students, academics, politicians, and intellectuals from this region and beyond.

Decisions about the content and the organisational form of the NSU lay with its participants. The backbone of the activities in the NSU consists of its thematic study circles. In the study circles researchers, students, and professionals from different backgrounds collaborate in scholarly investigations distributed regularly in summer and winter symposia during a three-year period.

For more information www.nordic.university

We look forward to your submissions.

Eric Deibel

(Lecturer in Science, Technology and Society, engineering faculty, ass. prof. political science faculty, Bilkent University, assistant professor)

Palle Dahlstedt

(Professor of Interaction Design Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Gothenburg / Chalmers University of Technology)

Maru Mushtrieva

(Researcher and text and sound artist with a background in literature and based between Berlin and Brussels)