[xmca] Fwd: [Air-L] REFerents: CFP for Neo-Situationist edited book

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Maybe a journal of significant research?
mike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Kreps <D.G.Kreps@salford.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 5:43 AM
Subject: [Air-L] REFerents: CFP for Neo-Situationist edited book
To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org


Dear AoIRists,

“Capitalism transforms life into the money necessary for living. One tends
to do any particular thing towards an end other than that implied by the
content of the activity.” Funding for academic activity that is tied to the
needs of industry ties academic thought to the capitalist system. As John le
Carre put it, once the Cold War against the failings of Communism had been
won it was time to focus on the failings of capitalism, but such a project
is impossible when “the wage system makes one foreign to what one does, to
what one is, to other people.” Research Assessment in such an academic
environment requires each academic, focussed on her/his c.v., to yoke their
thought to the capitalist pragmatic, write what will get into print for the
sake of being in print, bid for funds that are made available in the service
of industry for the sake of having funds to justify one’s continued
employment and progression in academic heirarchies.

REFerents seeks to explore what academics might do in their spare time, so
to speak, to showcase work divorced from the industrial referent, to provide
an unassessed – but peer-reviewed - space for true exploration. REFerents
will be a free bound book, published annually with discretionary funds.
Authors are invited to break free from standard academic paper formats, to
make their work visual as well as cerebral: Information is Beautiful.
Documentation of disruptive events is especially welcomed. REFerents pays
homage to Semiotexte and to the creative naivety of May 1968 and the
radicalism of Seattle 1999. In the Society of the Surveilled, creating GPS
psychogeographies with our mobile devices, the spectacle of hyperreality has
us mesmerised: post-industrial capitalism as counter-revolutionary baroque
inspires a geeked-up awe in our techno-commodity fetishism, dominating our
lives with the exchange of pixels. REFerents invites playful outrage and
Not-Safe-For-Work lampoon.

David Kreps is a cultural theorist, and currently the Director of the
Information Systems, Organisations and Society (ISOS) Research Centre at the
University of Salford, a former Local Authority Arts Centre Director, and
one-time 1980s Glastonbury hippy. Gordon Fletcher is Salford Business
School’s Associate Head of Marketing and unashamedly flirts with the
‘creative industries’ but, after first hand experience with a collectively
managed media outlet, knows that the feelings are only platonic. Marie
Griffiths is a onetime Madchester raver, a technophile and digital society
observer. Bruce Robinson lived through May 68 from the UK side of the
Channel, going on two marches to the French embassy while it was happening.
David, Gordon, Marie and Bruce are all active members of the ISOS research
centre. Paul Sermon is Professor of Creative Technology, both academic, as
Associate Head of School of Art & Design (Research) and practicing artist
and pioneer of telematic artworks, having worked in the field for nearly 20
years.

We welcome all subversive and radical contributions that combine the
immediacy of contemporary communication with questioning of the assumptions
of the information society.

Abstracts for contributions to REFerents should be received by the editors
by 28th February 2011, not limited to but including:

• Documentation of happenings
o Experimental theatre
o Disruptive events
• Write-ups about Academic presentations at conferences turned into
performance art pieces
• Situationism in an “Information Everything” era
• Are we still within the Society of the Spectacle?
• Spectacle : Hyperreality?
• Self-critique of REF – academia succumbing to the Society of the
Spectacle?
• The Society of Surveilled
• Location-based-services / GPS apps Happenings
• DRIFTING and PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY on the internet

Short pieces for a special section title “irREFerents” also welcomed.

If any questions please don't hesitate to contact any of us offlist.

Editors:
David Kreps d.g.kreps@salford.ac.uk, Gordon Fletcher
g.fletcher@salford.ac.uk, Marie Griffiths m.griffiths@salford.ac.uk, Bruce
Robinson bruce@brucerob.eu
ISOS, University of Salford
Paul Sermon p.sermon@salford.ac.uk, Art & Design, University of Salford
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