[Air-L] Against Catastrophe: Ukraine Dispatch (Website Launch)

[Sudipto Basu]

*Project Launch for AGAINST CATASTROPHE**: UKRAINE DISPATCH*

Hi everyone,

Hope you all had a pleasant summer break.

We are happy to launch the website for our multimodal research
project, ‘Against
Catastrophe’ <https://againstcatastrophe.net/>, with the *Ukraine Dispatch*.
Our project challenges the normalization of catastrophic thinking and
necropolitical designs in the contemporary world. It does so through the
histories of science and technology, infrastructure studies, environmental
criticism, research-based art and speculative design. The project outputs
<https://againstcatastrophe.net/about> will include an edited volume,
offline and online art/design exhibitions, and a series of online
publications.

As we were conceptualizing the project, Russia invaded Ukraine. Faced with
the resulting humanitarian and geopolitical crisis, we felt a need to
respond to the unfolding tragedy. With ‘Dispatches’ – a short-form,
multimedia, online publishing format – we hope to move past the news
cycle-based temporality of contemporary catastrophism, but faster than
traditional academic publishing, to shed light on the longer-term
structural causes and implications of catastrophes.

In the first dispatch, on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, our
intention is not to offer a single response to the immediate human tragedy,
but to explore the war in and beyond the multiple catastrophes it has
wrought. The six collected dispatches here – by Asia Bazdyrieva
<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/of-brushwood-reeds-and-foil>, Anna
Engelhardt
<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/adversarial-infrastructures>,
Krolikowski
Art <https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/start-over>, Katarzyna Nowak
<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/mourning-a-forest-road>, Oleksiy
Radynski <https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/nord-stream-studies>,
and Jonathon Turnbull et al.
<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/the-dogs-that-survived> –
examine the infrastructural and environmental antecedents and impacts of
the war. You can read the full editorial statement here:
https://againstcatastrophe.net/editorial

‘Against Catastrophe’ is led by Dr. Orit Halpern, Lighthouse Professor and
Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität
Dresden. The core project team <https://againstcatastrophe.net/ac-team> is
based out of Concordia University (Montreal), MIT, and TU-Dresden.

‘Against Catastrophe’ is funded by Fonds de recherche du Québec and the
Swiss National Science Foundation, and is part of the larger Governing
Through Design research cluster.

[Our apologies for crossposting]


Regards,

Sudipto Basu and Jan Dutkiewicz, on behalf of the 'Against Catastrophe' team


Sudipto Basu
PhD student, Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia
(Montreal / Kolkata)
https://concordia.academia.edu/SudiptoBasu