[Air-L] CFP: Digital Media and Borders: Infrastructures, Mobilities, and Practices across Asia and Beyond

[Rolien Hoyng]

 *Digital Media and Borders: Infrastructures, Mobilities, and Practices
across Asia and Beyond*

*Workshop*
* 7-9 December 2017*
* Lingnan University, Hong Kong*

Invited speakers: Brett Neilson, Jack Qiu, Ned Rossiter, Nishant Shah, Ravi
Sundaram
Workshop organizers: Rolien Hoyng, Iam-chong Ip, Lisa Leung, Yvonne Yau
Sponsored by: Lingnan University and Kwan Fong Cultural Research and
Development Programme.

Digital communication, despite its apparent immateriality, remains
dependent on infrastructure placed somewhere. This workshop focuses on the
intersection of urban situatedness and geo-location in order to examine the
spatial relations that digital infrastructures either make part of or
generate, especially in Asia. The internet features a layered design,
including undersea cables, Cloud architecture, platforms, and apps. In what
ways does this design reproduce or undo borders and territories?
Relinquishing assumptions of a singular global regime of cybernetic power,
how does the internet as stack transform the governance of populations, now
addressed as “users,” and what contradictions emerge in this process?
Moreover, considering that different bodies relate to digital
infrastructure differently, how do users negotiate and exploit the modes of
power afforded by digital infrastructure? How do these processes amount to
either the reproduction of dominant formations of citizenship or
alternative identifications and subjectivities, for instance for migrants
or “uncivil” users?

We welcome critical scholarship and non-traditional inquiries that help us
reflect on digital infrastructures and practices in relation to the
production of space and the particularities of place and context in Asia
and beyond.

Topics include but are not limited to:

   - Digital infrastructure, (extra)statecraft, urbanisms
   - Local or global apps, platforms, and data-driven governance
   - Speculative digital culture
   - “Uncivil” webs: hacking, porn, radical free speech, trolling
   - Digital media, citizenship, populism
   - Digital media, migration, and belonging

A conference dinner is planned for the evening of 7 December. On the
morning of the 9th we invite you to join a local excursion exploring
digital infrastructure and borders in Hong Kong. There is no conference fee.

Abstracts of max. 500 words are due by 15 July and should be sent to
digitalmediaonsite at gmail.com. Authors will be notified of acceptance via
email by the end of July. Full papers are expected no shorter than 10 days
before the start of the workshop. Please provide full name, affiliation,
contact information, and a short bio with your abstract submission.
Guidelines for presentation will be provided upon acceptance of the
abstract.

Event webpage: http://www.ln.edu.hk/ihss/crd/CFP2017.html
Inquiries: digitalmediaonsite at gmail.com



My best,

Rolien

Rolien Hoyng
Assistant Professor
Department of Cultural Studies
Lingnan University, Hong Kong