University Symposium 2012-14
Site and Incitement
Planning meetings will be held on Thursday, February 23 and Friday, April 6 12-1:15 p.m. in 125 Nolte Center. Planning meetings are open to all.
The concept of “site” is crucial to the way we know and negotiate the world. It is now commonplace to move between physical sites and virtual sites many times in a single day. The 2012-14 University Symposium on Site and Incitement will look at ways “site” may be defined, expanded, critiqued, and applied to physical (outdoors/indoors), virtual, temporal, and /or imaginary sites. One may also choose to see “site” in much more conceptual or expanded ways—for example, a novel or poem may be focused on “site” or the text itself may be seen as “site.”
The term “incitement” is catalytic. What are the various possibilities for a “site” to “incite”? What are the various meanings, histories, and complexities overlaid on the same site? How are these ideas foundational to negotiations related to political, artistic, designed, and civic interactions? The symposium welcomes contributions and proposals that explore ideas of site and incitement from the perspectives of multiple disciplines and diverse communities.
Sites are variously thought of as storehouses of cultural knowledge, dense event-spaces of pervasive relations, locations of unpredictable eruptions of specific and transformative theoretical and political solutions, or anchors of memories representing both good and evil, to name just a few. Sites may encompass a shared community or be designated by one person. Archaeologists and heritage professionals study sites as places of human activity and meaning making over time, and may think of a site as the embodiment of broader, and often global, ideas of human achievement or suffering, encompassing both tangible and intangible heritage (Lucas 2004, Truscott 2011). Artists are critiquing the term “site-specific” and reassessing the relationship between an art work and its site (Kwon 2004). Site matters to the disciplines and professions concerned with design of the physical environment, as well, not only as the context for a specific project, but also in discourses that renegotiate the relationship between theory and practice (Burns and Kahn 2005). Geographers, too, interrogate and renegotiate alternative meanings of site as a formulation that holds infinite possibilities of social and political life (Woodward, Jones and Marston 2009).
The University Symposium, coordinated by the Institute for Advanced Study, explores critical issues from a variety of vantage points through a series of connected events, including public lectures, conferences, and research and creative collaboratives. Launched in 2006, the first symposium focused on the Politics of Population. Other symposium topics have included Time, Body & Knowing,” and Abundance & Scarcity. The 2012-14 University Symposium Site and Incitement continues this tradition, offering an opportunity to incite creative interactions and innovative thinking through interdisciplinary endeavors, ranging from public lectures and exhibits to faculty fellowships and research initiatives.
Our first planning meeting will be on Thursday, December 1, 12-1:30 p.m., in 235 Nolte Center. Other meetings will be scheduled for spring 2012. At these meeting participants will refine topics, suggest speakers and events, and discuss how their own work relates to the proposed themes.
If you would like to be on the IAS Site and Incitement email list, please send an email to Susannah Smith: slsmith@umn.edu. If you have questions, please contact Ann Waltner: waltn001@umn.edu.
References cited:
Burns, Carol J., and Andrea Kahn (editors). 2005. "Why Site Matters." In Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories, and Strategies, edited by Carol J. Burns and Andrea Kahn, pp. vii-xxix. Routledge, New York .
Kwon, Miwon. 2004. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Lucas, Michael T. 2004. "Applied Archaeology and the Construction of Place at Mount Calbert , Prince George 's county, Maryland." In Places in Mind: Public Archaeology as Applied Anthropology, edited by Paul A. Shackel and Erve J. Chambers, pp. 119-134. Routledge, New York .
Truscott, Marilyn C. 2011. "Peopling Places, Storying Spaces: Heritage Sustaining Human Development? (forum)."Heritage & Society 4 (1) :125-134. Left Coast Press, Inc., Walnut Creek, California.
Woodward, Keith, John Paul Jones III, and Sallie A. Marston. 2009. "Of Eagles and Flies: Orientations toward the Site." Area (Journal compilation of the Royal Geographical Society) 42 (3) :271-280.
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