GRIDLOCK: A Graduate Student Conference hosted by Stony Brook University

GRIDLOCK | October 14-15, 2011 | New York City
Keynote Address: Eugene Thacker

Welcome! GRIDLOCK is a 2-day graduate student conference and 3-day art
exhibition (October 13-15) hosted by the Department of Cultural Analysis
and Theory (previously the Department of Comparative Literary and
Cultural Studies) at Stony Brook University. This year, we have the
amazing opportunity to host our conference in collaboration with the AC
Institute, a premier gallery space in
the Chelsea arts district of Manhattan. Our entire conference will take
place on-site in the gallery location, surrounded by the works of
emerging artists and graduate students.

We are very excited to
welcome Eugene Thacker as this year's keynote speaker, presenting his
talk "Frozen Thought; or, the Horror of Philosophy". Dr. Thacker is an
Associate Professor of Media Studies at The New School. This talk is
related to his upcoming book, In the Dust of This Planet: The Horror of
Philosophy, Vol. 1. A small number of these books will be on sale at our
conference.

Artist Talks and Kick-off Reception | Friday | October 14, 2011
6:00pm - 7:30pm | Artist Talks
Moderator: TBA

Presentations by John Gourley, Mauricio Herrero, Jonathan Jackson, Anna Kell + Jon Frey, Nobi Nagasawa

7:30 - 8:30 | Kick-off Reception

All-Day Conference | Saturday | October 15, 2011
8:15am - 9:15am | Welcome Breakfast + Registration
Light pastries, fruit salad, juice and coffee will be provided.

9:15am - 10:40am | Grids and Gridlock in Contemporary Art
Moderator: Megan Craig | Assistant Professor | Department of Philosophy

Banksy, Street Art and the Outlaw in the Logic of Late Capitalism
Jarrod McCartney | University of Oklahoma | Department of English

Tracing the Horizontal and the Vertical in Agnes Martin's Paintings, Prints, and Film
Berit Potter | New York University | Institute of Fine Arts

Traveling Indexicality: The Auto-Centric Photography of Ed Ruscha and William Eggleston
David Smucker | Stony Brook University | Department of Art

10:50am - 12:30pm | The Technologies, Politics, and Poetics of Gridlock
Moderator: Lisa Diedrich | Associate Professor | Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory

Co-opting Individuality, Aestheticizing Responsibility: A Poetics of Starbucks
Darla Migan | Stony Brook University | Department of Philosophy

The Triumph of the Individual within the Failure of the Political:
Towards a ‘Post-Political’ Reading of J.M. Coetzee, Pat Barker, and Don
DeLillo
Yoav Fromer | New School for Social Research | Politics Department

Stretching the Stutter: Towards the Unmeaning of Language
Erin Mizrahi | University of Southern California | Department of Comparative Literature

Database Normalization: Technologies of Self-Storage
Rory Solomon | New School for General Studies | Department of Media Studies

12:30pm - 2:10 | Lunch Break
A list of local restaurants will be provided.

2:10pm - 3:30pm | "Reading" the Grid
Moderator: E.K. Tan | Assistant Professor | Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory

'A Manhattan of Your Own Devising': Strategies for Repurposing Urban Space in Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City
Jeffrey Nathan Mickelson | CUNY Graduate Center | Department of English

Getting Off The Grid: ‘Unhoming’ and the Space of Critique in the Novels of W.G. Sebald
Aengus Woods | New School for Social Research | Department of Philosophy

3:40pm - 5:20pm | The Grided Globe, Urban Gridlock
Moderator: Raiford Guins | Associate Professor | Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory

Highgate Cemetery: Providing Eternal Rest and Rational Recreation
Marisa Balsamo | Stony Brook University | History

Distributed Intelligence, Dispersed Power: Experiments on the Azorean Electric Grid
Canay Ozden | MIT | Department of History, Anthropology, and Science

A New Model for Postmodern Urbanism
Brian Irwin | Stony Brook University | Department of Philosophy

High-Speed Collisions: Grand Army Plaza and Conflicting Urban Mobilities
Meg Rooney | New York University | Department of Media, Culture, and Communication

5:45pm - 7:00pm | Keynote Address
Frozen Thought; or, the Horror of Philosophy
Eugene Thacker | The New School | Department of Media Studies

Keynote Introduction by Andrew Uroskie | Assistant Professor | Department of Art
Introductory Remarks by Laine Nooney

7:00pm - 8:30pm | Reception