The third Creative Bodies—Creative Minds Conference 2024 will explore the gendered and political aspects of current, historical or everyday creative practices. DIY-making, as a form of everyday creativity, carries a different meaning in different political regimes (such as in the former Eastern Bloc, liberal market democracies, or post-colonial context). Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns exemplify how everyday creative practice is/was an adaptive response to external circumstances. We witnessed how digital media enabled sharing of creative responses to the constraints, including the use of humor (“from zines to memes”) to cope with the situation, express care and solidarity, and maintain relationships. We areinterested in exploring creative adaptations to external circumstances across different political, economic and gender regimes.
Keynote speakers:
Věra Sokolová, Department of History, Charles University, Prague
Milica Tomić, Institute for Contemporary Art, Graz University of Technology
The areas of interest for the CBCM 2024 conference include, but are not limited to:
- creativity and intersectional activism;
- arts, crafts, play as activist and political tools;
- reparative cultural and political practices;
- creative living as an adaptation to different biopolitical regulations;
- (everyday) creativity across different political, economic and gender regimes;
- creative labor (precarity, rethinking work/productivity, collective organizing);
- creative, playful, fun and politicized use of space and time (e.g. festivals, parks and clubs);
- intersectional activism and digital media;
- humor, playfulness and fun in feminist and LGBTQ+ activism;
- creativity as care for others, collective and solidary creativity;
- DIY, maker movement: from knitting, through home-making to open source;
- material, processual and relational aspects of creative practices;
- the place of creative methodologies and creative research in teaching and scholarly research in social sciences and humanities.
We are inviting proposals for presentations from scholars, practitioners and postgraduate students from a wide range of disciplines including, but not limited to: sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, human geography, political science, gender studies, art, performance, history, literary studies, social studies of science and technology and environmental studies.
Please send a 250-word abstract and a 150-word bio note before 10th September 2023 to creative.bodies(at)uni-graz.at
Registration fee: 190 EUR
Registration fee (student presenters): 130 EUR