CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: PLAYING FIELDS SESSION

We invite you to RENEWABLE FUTURES Conference Participatory Session that will take place on Saturday, May 17 15:30 - 18.00, led by FIELDS exhibition curators: Armin Medosch and Raitis Smits.

PLAYING FIELDS – Plant It! Wild Ontologies in the service of activating history

The making of taxonomies as a creative practice, as an embodiment of desires for change and more renewal and sustainability.

Part 1 Playing Fields – a language game

Starting in May 2013, artists and theorists were invited to join public participatory sessions with the purpose of discussing the transformative potential of art and the creation of impromptu taxonomies. The aim was and is to develop a critical vocabulary for the discussion of art and technology, art and science topics.

Part 2 Wild Ontologies

In Riga in May 2014 a new Playing Fields session will be played. For this purpose, the game will be developed further starting to create a matrix of transformative practices. This new game has the title: "Plant It! Wild Ontologies in the service of activating history" 

This time, the search is for qualities. The session will consist of two parts. Artists will briefly present their work. They will discuss, together with the jury, which term is most suited to describe their work, and which fields are involved in making it. They will then, together with artists and audience, brainstorm qualitative terms - terms or concepts that connote the most desirable qualities they aim at achieving with their work. In a further step, people can step up to select and take charge of a quality. They will have to argue their decision - why this quality is desirable, and why they are best placed to take responsibility for it. They will also suggest a plant that will embody the quality and the taxonomy based on it. This plant will then be planted at a chosen location and will from there on symbolise the chosen quality and taxonomy based on it. The final decision about the selection of qualities and caretakers is with the jury.

Plant it! Wild Ontologies in Riga is the start of a new project series as a continuation of FIELDS exhibition, curators of which – Armin Medosch and Raitis Smits invite artists, scientists and theorists to enter a collaboration on a transdisciplinary art and science research on the topic of "Wild Ontologies" (working title). The idea is to work on several layers at the same time. Works by artists, agriculturalists, designers, technologists and scientists that are of a truly transdisciplinary character, that blur the boundaries between different disciplines or fields in a very profound way, and that are of a socially transformative character are taken as inspiration for creating Wild Ontologies on- and offline. Via a website, the wider public can also join in suggesting terms. Those emerging "wild ontologies" are then re-implanted in nature. Practitioners, together with Armin Medosch, curator and project initiator, and Raitis Smits, curator, will develop ontologies and the modalities of their embodiment.

The outcomes of this session – new terminologies, articles based on the discussions in this session, as well as theoretical analyses of the FIELDS artworks presented at the conference, will be published in one of the forthcoming issues of Acoustic Space, peer-reviewed journal series (Vol. 15), edited by Raitis Smits, Armin Medosch and Rasa Smite.

The Acoustic Space journal is published by RIXC (Riga) and Art Research Lab of Liepaja University (Liepaja).

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CALL FOR CONFERENCE PROPOSALS 

We are announcing a CALL for presentation sessions of a new conference series on art and science research and cultural innovation – RENEWABLE FUTURES, the launch of which will take place in Riga and Liepaja, May 15-18, 2014, on the occasion of the FIELDS exhibition opening programme. 

We especially encourage to apply artists working with science, researchers engaged with sustainability issues from different perspectives, as well as doctoral students – to share their research ideas and results in relation to the following topics:  

* building new sustainability theories
* art as research,
* art and science
Please send your submissions – short abstract (100-200 words) and bios to rixc@rixc.lv

Deadline: Expired (April 15, 2014)

We will be able to support participants from the Baltic and Nordic countries, and partly also from other European countries. Academic researchers are encouraged to apply for travel support in their universities, we can provide you with invitation / confirmation letters, if necessary.

The Renewable Futures conference takes place in the framework of Renewable Network – long-term collaboration project supported by Nordic Culture Point.