[Air-L] IR16 Update #7: Stitching Poetics

[Alex Halavais]

1. REGISTER NOW!

You need no reminder, I assume, that the deadline for registering at
the earlybird rate is August 1. So, this isn't a reminder. It's just a
soothing co-affirmation.

You also already know that if you are presenting, you MUST be
registered by this date and the final version of your submission (for
those of you who submitted a single paper or a panel) must be
uploaded. If not (please excuse the shouting) YOU WILL BE
UNCEREMONIOUSLY DROPPED FROM THE PROGRAM.

There is always a bit of rush right at the deadline; much love for my
fellow procrastinators. However, if it is any spur at all, I will note
that the workshops on the 21st are likely to fill, and when they do,
you will be out of luck...

2. ROOMS AT THE EMBASSY SUITES

As many of you have noted, the (extended) room block is filled at the
Embassy Suites, and the hotel is nearly full as well. I may be able to
eke out another room or two--so it's worth checking back--but beyond
that it's unlikely we'll be able to get more rooms. I am checking into
securing a block at a neighboring hotel, and will announce here if I
can manage that.

3. KEYNOTE

If you needed another reason to be excited about coming to IR16--and
really, how could you be *more* excited, I will remind you that Micha
Cárdenas (http://michacardenas.org/) will be delivering the opening
keynote, entitled "Stitching Poetics: Networked Bodies and Algorithmic
Identity."

The abstract for her talk:

Despite recent legal gains for gay and lesbian couples, transgender
people of color continue to be the number one target of murder among
LGBT people in the US. How can the interaction between speculative
media and social justice be understood, specifically in a context of
the struggle for justice for trans women of color in the Americas? To
do so, I propose the material/conceptual operation of the stitch to
add to the operations of the cut and the fold as discussed by Gilles
Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska. I will
discuss media art by Adam Harvey, Zach Blas and the Electronic
Disturbance Theater, alongside a discussion of my own practice-based
research project, Local Autonomy Networks. These examples are the
basis for a comparison of the practice-based research methods of
speculative design, contestational design and community-based design
with the goal of creating media poetics that can reduce violence
against trans people of color.

Hope you are all enjoying the last gasps of summer. Will be in touch
with other developments shortly, and with the full program in the next
couple of weeks.

- Alex

-- 

// Alexander Halavais, Sociologist, Semiologist, and Saboteur Extraordinaire
// Associate Professor of Social Technologies, Arizona State University
// http://alex.halavais.net/bio     @halavais