DEFENSE: MODELS, STRATEGIES, MEDIA

Announcing an International Conference on

DEFENSE: MODELS, STRATEGIES, MEDIA

UC Irvine, March 7-9
Humanities Instructional Building, Room 135

Can immuno-defensive mechanisms teach us something about the media? Does national security dogma find representation in current culture? To what extent do computer games draw on military training? How does bio-defense policy fertilize art? - The conference will focus on defensive modeling and critical thinking on defensive modes: investigating the relevance, for contemporary culture, of concepts and metaphors ranging from military tactics and security policy to the analysis of social, biological, psychological, technological, and other forms of protection against stimuli.

Conference topics will include representations of immunization, exclusion, projection, denial, prevention, prophylaxis, control, isolation, etc. in public policy and media politics; paranoia as a control fantasy and a symptom of the networked society; bioengineering and critical art practice; information warfare and info-peace; the epistemology of secret intelligence (and counter-intelligence); the visualization of biotechnology; the psychoanalytical registers of conceptualizing ego defense; cybernetics and computer science in their process of institutionalization; the media metaphorology of viral infection; anthrax and other (real and imaginary) threats of bio-terrorism; volumetric display as a technology of localizing the opponent in military technology; bio-robotics; the cultural cold war; alternative cartography focusing on the "secret" military bases in the Southern California desert; and technological and political defenses against crimes of identity theft.

Speakers include Etienne Balibar (Paris), Beatriz da Costa (UC Irvine), Chris Csikszentmihalyi (MIT), James Der Derian (Brown), Garnet Hertz (UC Irvine), Eva Horn (Basel), Natalie Jeremijenko (UC San Diego), Julian Klein (Berlin), Peter Krapp (UC Irvine), Trevor Paglen (UC Berkeley), Claus Pias (Essen), Mark Poster (UC Irvine), Laurence Rickels (UC Santa Barbara), Stefan Rieger (Erfurt), Felicity Scott (UC Irvine), Jens Schroeter (Siegen), Jennifer Terry (UC Irvine), Eugene Thacker (Georgia Tech), Brigitte Weingart (Cologne).

Supported by the Humanities Center, the Vice Chancellor for Research (RGS), Cal-(IT)2, the Dean of Humanities, the International Center for Writing and Translation (ICWT), the Critical Theory Institute (CTI), the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), and the Department of Visual Studies, as well as by the German Foundation Junge Akademie.


Details/Itinerary below and at http://www.humanities.uci.edu/visualstudies/events

Please post this announcement widely, thank you very much in advance.

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Monday, March 7:

17:00 WELCOME: opening remarks

17:30 Etienne BALIBAR: "Europe as Borderland: models of transnational citizenship"

Tuesday, March 8:

9:00 Stefan RIEGER: "Techniques of Self-Defense and Self-Preservation"

9:45 Laurence RICKELS: "Schreber Guardian"

10:30 coffee break

11:00 Trevor PAGLEN: "Goatsucker: secret landscapes, invisible deaths, and conspiracies of silence surrounding military 'stealth' programs since the 1970s"

11:45 Jennifer TERRY: "Boosting Morale: Entertainment as an Art of War"

12:30 lunch break

13:30 Jens SCHROETER: "3Defense. Volumetric display and the localization of the other"

14:15 Garnet HERTZ: "The Animal-Machine: Biorobotics, War and Animalized Technologies"

15:00 coffee break

15:30 Chris CSIKSZENTMIHALYI: "Freedom Flies: Throwing money at the problem of military solutions"

16:15 Claus PIAS: "The Defense of Cybernetics"

17:00 pause

17:30 James DER DERIAN: "Defensive Terror and Model Threats: Virtual/Actual/Banal"

Wednesday, March 9:

9:00 Eva HORN: "Black Box, Nets, and Swarms. Models of the Enemy in Secret Intelligence"

9:45 Mark POSTER: "Who Controls Digital Culture?"

10:30 coffee break

11:00 Peter KRAPP: "Acts of Oblivion: Human Rights and the Indefensible"

11:45 Felicity SCOTT: "Defense Against the Environment"

12:30 lunch break

13:30 Eugene THACKER: "Biology, Code, and War: The Biopolitics of U.S. Defense Policy"

14:15 Beatriz DA COSTA: "Narrating BioTerrorism - Framework, Responses, Counteraction?"

15:00 coffee break

15:30 Natalie JEREMIJENKO: "Social Security: open scripts of participation towards the demilitarization of interaction"

16:15 Brigitte WEINGART: "Unseen Threats: Viral representations in popular discourse"

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Contact:
Peter Krapp
Assistant Professor, Film and Media Studies / Visual Studies
& Program Faculty Member, Arts Computing Engineering
235 Humanities Instructional Building
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-2435