EXTENDED call ∞ STRING FIGURES ∞ transforming together

29 March to 2 April 2023 the By Design or by Disaster Conference will take place at BASIS Vinschgau-Venosta in South Tyrol, Italy. Find out more about it in this first announcement. This time we intergrate an academic track and are looking forward to papers and visual essays inspired by the focus STRING FIGURES – transforming together. Abstracts can be submitted until 8 January 2023 → complete timeline below. Find our call for 7×7 short inputs here, while you can find the call for hands-on workshops here.

∞

STRING FIGURES ∞ transforming together

»sf is a sign for science fiction, speculative feminism, science fantasy, speculative fabulation, science fact, and also, string figures. Playing games of string figures is about giving and receiving patterns, dropping threads and failing but sometimes finding something that works, something consequential and maybe even beautiful, that wasn’t there before, of relaying connections that matter, of telling stories in hand upon hand, digit upon digit, attachment site upon attachment site, to craft conditions for finite flourishing on terra, on earth.«

Donna Haraway, 2016

Social-ecological transformation requires the interplay of many actors, building upon each other,  interconnecting niches, imagining and experimenting care and commoning, criticising and supporting each other, passing on knowledge and narrations in collective actions, joining struggles and creating momentum overcoming patriarchy, capitalism, its power structures and their devastating exploitation of humans and nature, …, in a »process of change towards a Good Life for All based on solidarity. It involves a radical transformation of the global mode of living and production as well as of political institutions, norms/values and the relationship of humans to the living world.« (ILA Kollektiv, 2019). 

In the DoD23 conference we want to focus on practices and related theories of the outlined transformative interplay. We welcome contributions tackling diverse scales, aspects and fields. Relations to design (in the widest sense), are welcome, because »Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones« (Simon, 1996)

»…we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles.« 

Donna Haraway, 2016

Timeline

20 December 2022 8 January Abstract Submission

15 January 2023 Notification of acceptance

29 March – 2 April 2023 Conference

15 April 2023 Submission of final paper or visual essay

1 June 2023 Notification of reviewer comments

Details

Abstracts: 250 – 400 words to be send as an editable document, including title and max. 5 keywords. To be submitted via to  email: stringfigures@unibz.it
In the email please add: author name(s); affiliation(s); and email of all the author(s)

Final papers: 3000-4000 words;
Visual essays: visual storytelling though images plus text; 500-1500 words;

Review Process: The peer-review process is double-blind. Therefore, do not include any names and affiliations and anonymize self-citations for abstract and final paper. After being reviewed, the accepted manuscripts will receive comments for revisions for the final camera-ready submission. In order to include a contribution in the publication,  each full paper must have at least one author registered at the conference. 

Publication: Accepted papers and visual essays will become part of a book to be published by the end of 2023.

Program Committee

Secil Ugur Yavuz 
Ingrid Kofler
Mustapha El Moussaoui
Kris Krois

Haraway, Donna (2016): Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press

ILA Kollektiv (2019): Das Gute Leben für Alle. Wege in die solidarische Lebensweise. Oekom, München, 2019

Simon, Herbert A. (1996): The sciences of the artificial.

Illustration: Federico Bertacchini