Convocation II Encuentro

Re: Encuentro on Migratory Politics

Dear participant,
Here is some more information regarding the second Encuentro, to be held in Amsterdam and Enkhuizen from September 19 to 21, 2007.

Content
As you remember from our first message, the subject of the first Encuentro was to reflect in general on what a “migratory aesthetics” could be; in other words, a reflection not on migration per se, but on the culture of mobility that the current state of the world has foregrounded, even if migration is of all times. For this second Encuentro we want to make area of interest more specific. Four topics that came out of the discussions in Murcia - time, technology, metaphor and theatricality - would offer good starting points for such ongoing focusing. An overall consideration that could be the general concept for this workshop would be art and politics in mobility. Hence, we propose to title this second workshop “Migratory Politics”.
Time: questions related with asynchrony, perception and experience of time in situations where not only time zones but paces, life styles and transport, moods and urgencies differ sometimes dramatically from person to person and from moment to moment. Questions of delay, translation, miscomprehension, different receptions have temporal consequences.
Metaphor. The latter are also issues of language, the impossibility of literal language, the indispensable contribution of metaphor, and the need to understand where – from which domain of experience and which material culture – metaphors come from; by which metaphors do we live, to quote Lakoff and Johnson, in times of mobility.
One often-quoted element of the culture of mobility is the mobile phone – which raises the next set of questions, around technology. How to use technology in a world of inequality, and what ideologies do technologies shape, solicit, or impose?
All cultural appearing has a theatrical aspect; and this is even more important in a situation where the traditions and potentials for performance and performativity differ dramatically (to use a word) without the cultural agents necessarily being aware of that aspect. Politics, street life, and commerce all have theatrical aspects and hence, in intercultural situations, can easily generate misconceptions among people.
Because these four topics are clearly related, we do not expect each of you to choose among them. We do hope, instead, that papers will address and frame their reflections in terms of these four areas that characterize migratory culture.

Practical information
All practical details such as travel, accommodation, and equipment will be addressed in a soon-to-follow next message. For now, the most important issues are deadlines.
· Written texts of up to 6000 words in English need to be in our (electronic) hands by August 10 at the latest. Only if you all respect that deadline can we get you a copy of the Reader in time for preparing your short intervention (on which more below).
Please format your text according to the following format:
short references in text (last name, date: page number)
full references separately at the end, including publisher for books, journal year and number for articles; full page span, in the following form: Last name, First name, year title italic for books or artworks, “Title of Article in Quotation Marks with Capitals for Primary Words”, place: publisher for books; year: page span for articles.
Footnotes only for arguments, not references
Do not use endnotes

· Abstract: please send us a 150 words abstract and a title as soon as possible, at the latest by July 25.
Those who come for the second time can recycle their first contribution, focusing it a bit more according to the four topics listed above

Format of the Encuentro
As last time, we will NOT have papers read during the session. Instead, everyone reads all the papers before arrival, and during the sessions, each participant will frame her or his paper in about 15 minutes in relation to the other papers in the session. This way we have a good amount of time for serious and productive discussion.
The first day takes place in ASCA, in a room of the Faculty of Humanities. The second day we will all go to Enkhuizen and have a session in the Zuiderzeemuseum. That day the exhibition 2move will be opened. The third day is again in Amsterdam.

Publication plans
We intend to publish soon after the Encuentro two volumes in Spanish and in English, one on Migratory Aesthetics and one on Migratory Politics. These papers can be longer than the texts for the Reader. More precise instructions and deadlines will be given during the Encuentro. We hope to publish these in 2008.

Please send all e-mail correspondence to both of us.

We look forward to a great event and wish you a productive and relaxing summer.

Miguel Ángel Hernandez Navarro mahernandez@ono.com
Mieke Bal M.G.Bal@uva.nl