cultural identities in the age of transnational and transcultural flux (Ekaterinburg, Russia, October 16-18, 2008)

Kseniya Fedorova, ksenfedorova@gmail.com

Ekaterinburg Academy of Modern Art
Ural State University
NeMe (Cyprus)
Ekaterinburg branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art


IN TRANSITION: CULTURAL IDENTITIES IN THE AGE OF TRANSNATIONAL AND TRANSCULTURAL FLUX.
International, Interdisciplinary Conference
Ekaterinburg (Russia) October 16-18, 2008

All forms of displacement are a constant reminder of the multitude of problems facing our contemporary geopolitical state with its unacceptable reality of threats and global dangers. The main objective of the conference is to revise the tradition of transculturalism studies and to define theoretical basis for the further analysis of such important issues of contemporary world as:
- migration and discrimination;
- economic, political, religious, and gender displacement;
- consequences of gentrification,
- the destiny of “imagined communities” – nation-state and formation of “imagined worlds”.

The focus of multidisciplinary project ‘In Transition’ and international conference is a dialectics of mainstream and ethno-cultural marginalia.
The specialists in such fields of knowledge as philosophy, social, cultural and political studies, ethnology, geography, demography, art history, linguistics, project management are invited to take part in the conference.


The conference will focus on but is not limited by the following topics:

1. Displacement, Diaspora and Geographies of Cultural Identities.
§ Displacement as a paradise loss. Urban ghetto: assimilation and alienation of the border. Cultural clusters as a space for reconciliation;
§ Deterritorization and the politics of cultural difference;
§ Polyethnic communities: moulding the space for dialogue between contrasting cultural and ideological constructs;

2. Interdisciplinary cultural theory and the shifting debate on mainstream and alternative identities.
§ Hybridity and multiculturalism and the problem of identity.
§ Suppressed difference: the marginality of the majority in the culture industry. Collective Identity in the age of transnational migration and electronic media.
§ Social inclusion or cultural displacement?
§ Media network as producer of inclusive and displaced identities.

3. Global capitalism and appropriation of language: language as an instrument of geo-economic domination.
§ Semantic structure of language as a resource of identification, self-positioning, and survival in geo-economic competition;
§ Language domination, language aggression, violence and resistance;
§ “Placelessness” (Displaced Space): softening the boundaries of language;
§ Language as Imagination / Memory/ Home.

4. Art practice and cultural industry in the state of transition.
§ Alternative art practices: adaptation strategies and creative resistance;
§ 'Privatization’ and ‘consumption’ as the strategies of contemporary culture industry;
§ “The third world within the first world”: dissolving borders between centre and periphery and the “purveyors of oddities”.

The deadline for abstract submission (texts in Word format up to 250 words) is September 10, 2008.
The deadline for article submission (texts in Word format up to 2500 words) is October 1, 2008.

A volume with selected conference contributions will be will be published after the conference and distributed to the participants.

The materials should be submitted to:
National Center for Contemporary Art (Ekaterinburg branch) 
Dobrolyubova, 19a
Ekaterinburg 620072 Russia

Kseniya Fedorova, ksenfedorova@gmail.com
fedorova_ncca@mail.ru, ksenfedorova@gmail.com
тел. +7 343 372 7964, +7 912 6383 408