Description:

We are looking for a place that resembles the bar at the beginning of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Murky, anonymous, illicit; a place where strangers conspire to trespass in pursuit of higher rewards. Locations like these are central to certain online practices including hacking and trolling, motivations for which span from ‘doing it for the lulz’ to radical polemic disruption. How can these strategies of ad-hoc organization and intervention be leveraged by practitioners in different fields? Bringing together figures from cultural criticism, media theory and contemporary art, this symposium will propose methods by which the urge to disrupt corporate, governmental and media narratives might be channeled into productive (or unproductive) forms of arbitration.

Friday May 29th
6pm - Keynote Lecture by Rob Horning

Saturday May 30th
1:30pm - Light Refreshments and Welcome
2pm - Presentation by Devin Kenny
2:45pm - Presentation by Erkki Huhtamo
3:30pm - Presentation by Beate Geissler
4:45pm - Roundtable Discussion
6pm - Reception

the Gym
Department of Art Theory and Practice
Northwestern University
640 Lincoln St
Evanston, IL 60208

This symposium is made possible by support by The Myers Foundations and The Graduate School, and is sponsored by the Department of Art Theory and Practice, the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, and the Department of French and Italian.