[-empyre-] WELCOME TO THE NOVEMBER DISCUSSION ON EMPYRE:

Tue Nov 6 01:04:30 EST 2012

Hi, everyone.  We're looking forward to this month's discussion of Risk: From Culture to Practice.  This is a topic that I've been discussing since September with the international residential Fellows at Cornell's Society for the Humanities, many of whom are working on research topics touching on new media, from robotics to contemporary art.  This year we have Fellows who have travelled from Spain, Mexico, and Canada and others who live between international cultures in their daily lives.  Even though we will feature the thoughts about Risk of many of our Fellows this month, Renate and I felt it would be particularly fitting to turn the list's attention to this challenging topic in the wake of the devastation in our region brought about by Hurricane Sandy and by the risks facing the global community by tomorrow's US Presidential election.  Many of our subscribers in the New York metropolitan area still lack electricity and, we fear, many also are homeless.  We seem to be enveloped by the consequences of risk at all turns.  Or worse, what may have been the risks of living in areas threatened, perhaps, by the possibility of 100 year megastorms could well be the new normal as a result of the risky behaviors of pollution encouraged by our postcapitalist normal.

It so happens that I'm on my way this morning to the defense of Ph.D. dissertation on immunology and late 19th- and early 20th-century British literature that recounts the risks faced by colonial travelers to Latin America.  Kate Hames, who is now studying medicine in Canada, maintains that British immunologists worked especially hard to control typhoid and other tropical fevers in order to maintain the economy of British imperialist production in Latin American.  What's fascinating about her dissertation, moreover, is her account of how Virginia Woolf's female protagonist in The Voyage Out chose to run the risk of living counter to the imperatives of safety (which included not climbing mountains in the heat...) in order to 'risk living' freely and fully.  So as we reflect on the parameters of risk, we might also include the empowerments of certain practices 'risky living' or 'risky choices,' perhaps say the Occupy Movement, that run counter to the global risks now confronting us as the result of decades of attacks on the environment.

This week's guests,  Bishnupriya Ghosh and Bhaskar Sarkar, should be posting today, but I thought I'd open things up with some of our thoughts about why Risk: From Culture to Practice might serve our community well this month.

All my best,  

Tim

characters
Director, Society for the Humanities
Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
A. D. White House
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York. 14853
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Renate Ferro [rtf9 at cornell.edu]
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 12:24 AM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] WELCOME TO THE NOVEMBER DISCUSSION ON EMPYRE:

November on –empyre- soft-skinned space:
Risk: From Culture to Practice

Moderated by Timothy Murray (US) and Renate Ferro (US) with invited discussants
Week 1 November 3rd
 Bishnupriya Ghosh <bg366 at cornell.edu>,
 Bhaskar Sarkar <bs668 at cornell.edu>,

Week 2 November 10th
"William C. Leiss" <wcl54 at cornell.edu>,
“Stewart Ayash” < auyash at ithaca.edu>

Week 3:  November 17th
To be announced

Week 4: November 24th
Paulina Aroch Fugellie <pa288 at cornell.edu>,
Patty Keller <keller.patty at gmail.com>,

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Risk:  From Culture to Practice

Responding to issues that surfaced in last week’s Cornell University
conference on Risk at Humanities on the eve of Superstorm Sandy, which
has rocked New York and New Jersey, -empyre- will spend the month of
November holding a discussion of “Risk: From Culture to Practice.” We
have invited participants in the conference at the Society for the
Humanities to reflect on the conceptual
notion of risk, from the historical to the theoretical, from the
biological to the ecological.  This month moderators Tim Murray and
Renate Ferro ask how risk dialogues with broader  artistic,
biological, ecological, economic, and technological approaches to
culture and practice.

Given the recent devastation of the hurricane and tropical storm
Sandy, we anticipate continued reflection on accident, danger, and
uncertainty. How
might risk lie at the heart of ritual and religion / legislation and
government / letters and art, technology and science?
How do scholarly and artistic practices cut across and against
boundaries depend on and profit from risk?

Risk @ empyre soft-skinned space this  month sits on unstable terrain.
What might it mean to research risk in relation to economic collapse,
environmental degradation, immunological threat, or military
incursion?

Artistic form and practice themselves also contribute to an ongoing
understanding of risk. How might experiments in new media articulate
aesthetic interventions across the topography of risk? Might new
electronic and digital networks, mobilities, and artistic projects
threaten or empower the arts?

Our –empyre- subscribers are invited to share their own ideas,
instances, and inferences of risk across geographies, historical
periods, disciplinary boundaries, social contexts and digital
networks.  In the face of superstorms, global warming, and
geopolitical instabilities, we look forward to a dialogue between
empyreans and our guests currently researching Risk at Cornell's
Society
for the Humanities.

Biographies will follow.

Our heartfelt thoughts go out to all of our colleagues and friends in
the greater New York, New Jersey area as well as the other areas that
were ravaged by the storm, Sandy. Many of you remain without power and
electricity.  Others of you are dealing with damage and devastation to
your homes and your work. Please know  that we are thinking of you
all.

Renate Ferro and Tim Murray

--

Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art
Cornell University
Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420
Ithaca, NY  14853
Email:   <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net

Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre
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