RESEARCH VALUES

Research/PhD Workshop 2018
29–31 Jan 2018
Brandenburg Center for Media Studies – ZeM  

Presentations at transmediale
31 Jan – 4 Feb 2018
HKW

The research/PhD workshop RESEARCH VALUES contributes to the transmediale festival program of 2018, which takes place under the title of face value. Workshop participants take part in closed seminars and talks at the newly founded Center for Media Studies in Potsdam, contribute to online and offline publications, and participate in public presentations at the festival in Berlin.

“Taking things at face value” seems to have become the norm of public discourse amidst today’s reactionary and algorithmically guided communication practices. transmediale wants to challenge this impulse to judge things by their immediate appearance and instead look at less visible issues, which run deep across all sectors of society. These include power relations rarely discussed at digital culture events, such as contemporary imbalances of class, gender, and race, which are also being built into technological systems.

We welcome research that reflects on and extends the festival’s theme, which interrogates value and values in contemporary media and digital culture, and questions cultural and technological shifts against the background of economization and changing value systems. Topics may include the economies of utility and expenditure that pervade digital culture—currencies, semantics, identities, and their interrelations. At the same time, the workshop raises the question of how research can move out of its own self-reaffirming loop,in which it mostly fulfills an economic function. What does it mean to take research at face value? What lies beneath its surface in terms of the wider social, cultural, economic, and environmental forces it generates? In times of immediate and reactionary responses to complex realities, we urgently need to provide alternatives to this urge towards simplification, and reinvent the notion of research value/s.

Organized by

– APRJA, A Peer-Reviewed Journal About_

– Aarhus University (Geoff Cox & Christian Ulrik Andersen)

– transmediale – festival for art and digital culture (Kristoffer Gansing & Daphne Dragona)

– Brandenburg Center for Media Studies – ZeM, Potsdam (Marie-Luise Angerer & Jan Distelmeyer)

For the workshop, we will be joined by other invited guests (TBA).

Important Dates

– Deadline for abstracts: 1 November 2017

– Notification of acceptance: 15 November 2017

– Submission of draft paper (2000 words): 15 December 2017

– Online activity: 15 December 2017 – 27 January 2018

– Workshop in Potsdam: 29–31 January 2018

– transmediale: 31 January – 4 February 2018

– Final submission of full paper to APRJA: 2 March 2018

Venue

Brandenburg Center for Media Studies – ZeM in Potsdam, Germany

Workshop Details

– The workshop itself will unfold over three days as a research and publication sprint.

– In the first part, participants will present their papers and receive verbal feedback, building on the preliminary work online.

– After presentations and as a consequence of feedback, participants will be asked to reduce their texts from 2000 to approx. 1000 words for publication.

– At the end of the workshop, we will produce a pdf publication with the 1000 word texts that will be printed for distribution at the festival, alongside a further public presentation.

– In addition, participants will be invited to contribute longer academic papers (of 4000 words) to the associated open access online journal APRJA.

The workshop aims to provide a forum for emerging researchers to enter into speculation, critique, exchange, and dialog about their research topic.

The primary focus is on the participants’ individual research projects, as well fostering networks, knowledge exchange and widening dissemination. Although it is primarily aimed at international PhD researchers, the workshop is also open to artists, curators, and programmers who are pursuing research outside an academic context. The workshop is free but we cannot cover travel or other costs, whichare expected to be met by participants or their institutions.

Workload and Credits

Expected workloads include the production of a short text prior to the workshop, the presentation of research, response and dialog with other participants, the creation of content for a publication, and the writing of a lengthier research article invited for submission to APRJA. PhD students can be awarded 5 ECTS for their full participation.

Submission

We are seeking proposals consisting of a biography (500 characters), a statement on current research/description of PhD project (1000 characters), and a short description of how this research relates to the workshop theme (500 characters).

– Deadline: 1 November 2017

– Notification of acceptance: 15 November 2017

Submissions will be possible using an online form.

The Call has been closed. Submitting is not possible anymore.

Supported by

The Graduate School, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, transmediale, and Brandenburg Center for Media Studies – ZeM.