Media Archaeology & Technological Debris Conference - June 21, Goldsmiths

This workshop aims to bring established academics, PhD students, and early career researchers together to discuss emerging research projects on the field of media studies. It means to combine the thriving approach of media archaeology with the growing environmental concerns about technological debris, emphasizing the complementary character of these topics in the construction of a material understanding of media practices’ past, present and future. We expect to gather a number of emerging investigations that can shed new light over the socio-political, economic, cultural, technological, material and aesthetic dimensions of the continuous phenomena of novelty and obsolescence of media systems. In doing so, we also hope to create conditions to examine the systems of relationship formulated around these topics, paying particular attention to the regimes of value that define media objects either as museum artifacts or as rubbish in different global/local contexts (such as Europe and Latin America). 

16 researchers were selected to participate. The workshop itself will last for two days: the first one will be composed of closed reading groups in which the seasoned researchers will act as respondents and mediators for the presentation of the participating students, while the second day will be a small conference open to the public. As such, the workshop intends to create a platform for exchanging ideas and research methods upon this interdisciplinary field.

Conference organizers: Stefania Charitou, Gabriel Menotti, and Corey Kai Nelson Schultz.

The event is being organized by students and graduates of Goldsmiths' Department of Media and Communications, and is sponsored by Goldsmiths' Graduate School.  Part of the programme is supported by Goldsmiths' Radical Media Forum.

Conference speakers: Sean Cubitt (Media & Comms, Goldsmiths); Graham Harwood (Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths); Jennifer Gabrys (Sociology, Goldsmiths); Gabriel Menotti (Audiovisual, UFES); Jussi Parikka (University of Southampton); and James Wallbank  (Access Space, Sheffield).