[csaa-forum] Call for papers: Making Badlands Conference

[Warwick Mules]

Call for Papers


Making Badlands	1 - 2 December 2005

A conference hosted by Transformations and the Bundaberg Media 
Research Group, Central Queensland University.

To be held at Central Queensland University, Bundaberg campus, 1 - 2 
December 2005.

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Ross Gibson, New Media and Digital Culture, 
Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of 
Technology Sydney.

Ross Gibson's book Seven Versions of an Australian Badland (UQ Press, 
2002) describes the central Queensland region as haunted by a violent 
colonial past and fraught with troubling incidents that make it an 
Australian badland. This conference will address the concept of an 
Australian badland. What it means to speak of a space as a badland, 
its relation to history, the imaginary, and to questions of 
regionality, representation, myth, archival authority, and the 
formation of narrative and discursive knowledge.

The conference will also examine how imaginary spaces are actively 
produced through technological, aesthetic, conceptual, visual, audio 
and other sensory engagements with the materiality of regional 
contexts, and develop ways in which these may be contested through 
alternative practices of making that may lead to more progressive and 
empowering visions of regions.

A region may be considered as a space of multiplicities, greater 
than, and hence excessive to, the centres found within it - a site of 
boundaries, margins, peripheries, and frontiers, with contingent and 
transversal relations to any 'core' centre. All centres are regional, 
and all regions have their centres. Urban, suburban, inner and outer 
metropolitan, town and country, outback, bush, are all regions 
capable of both producing and resisting badlands as cultural 
imaginaries.

The conference will be divided into a critical, reflective component 
consisting of panels and individual papers presented and discussed on 
the first day, and a practical component in which specific projects 
and material practices will be workshopped and examined on the second 
day. This second component will include the work of artists and 
cultural workers, as well as other stakeholders in the production of 
regional imaginaries. These may include members of indigenous 
communities, social and welfare activists, environmental workers, and 
others concerned with implementing new ways of thinking about and 
perceiving badland regional imaginaries.

We invite papers from academics, researchers, writers, artists and 
cultural workers on any topic related the making of badlands, both 
past and present. A selection of papers will be published in the 
refereed journal Transformations.

We also invite similarly-themed proposals for WWW/CD/DVD-based
audiovisual or multimedia projects, to be presented during the
conference; please submit either written proposals, URLs or CD/DVD
media. Multimedia projects will also be considered for exhibition in the
ArtSpace section of the Transformations website.

Bundaberg is a regional coastal city some five hours drive north of 
Brisbane. Its subtropical climate and pleasing town and country 
aspects, close to beaches and hinterland scenery, make it an ideal 
place to sojourn and to make new friends and gain new perspectives in 
a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere.

Details concerning registration, travel and accommodation will follow shortly.


The Badlands conference is run conjointly by Transformations and the 
Bundaberg Media Research Group. Links at

http://www.cqu.edu.au/transformations
and

http://bmrg.cqu.edu.au


For further details please contact one of the conference organisers

Warwick Mules 	w.mules at cqu.edu.au	(ph: 07 41507142)
Phil Roe		p.roe at cqu.edu.au		(ph: 07 41507088)
Grayson Cooke	g.cooke at cqu.edu.au	(ph: 07 41507136)

School of Humanities/School of Contemporary Communications
Faculty of Arts, Health and Sciences/Faculty of Informatics and Communication
Bundaberg Campus
Central Queensland University
Locked Bag 3333 DC
Bundaberg Qld 4670

Ph: 07 41 507177
Fax: 07 41 507090







-- 
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Warwick Mules				Editor Transformations
Cultural Studies, 
	http://www.cqu.edu.au/transformations
Humanities, Central Queensland University
Bundaberg Campus,				email: w.mules at cqu.edu.au
Locked Bag 3333 DC				phone: 0741 507142
Bundaberg, Queensland,			mobile: 04122 92541
Australia  4670				fax:   0741 507080
_______________________________________________________________________________
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