CAA News Today

Jacki Apple and Mat Rappaport, the producers of a 2014 ARTspace session, seek your participation for “Designing a Better Future: A Participatory Platform for Exchange,” taking place at the 102nd CAA Annual Conference in Chicago on Saturday, February 15, 10:00 AM–2:00 PM. Deadline for proposals: June 1, 2013; notification of selection: June 20, 2013.

Designing a Better Future: A Participatory Platform for Exchange

Artists and designers operating as thinkers and communicators, visualizers and producers, can be leaders in changing how we think, live, and act in order to make a better world. Are we ready to discuss cultural production and the arts as viable and meaningful practices beyond the established system of commodity trading? What potential models of an effective creative practice can we envision and develop?

Artists, designers, media producers, photographers, filmmakers, architects, writers, theorists, educators, and cultural historians are invited to submit proposals for presentation and discussion that will inspire others to join them in imagining, inventing, and actualizing a more sustainable and enlightened possible future, whether it be local or global.

What would you do to effect change? What would that look like? Do aesthetics matter?

We seek provocative and challenging theoretical concepts and/or models for practical application. Encouraged are visionary, daring, and unconventional ideas and collaborations across fields in the arts, sciences, and humanities that conceive different ways to address social, economic, and environmental realities.

General topics and themes to consider may include:

1. Climate change, the environment, and sustainable living: consumption, energy, waste, food, water, air, and economic and social consequences
2. The culture of violence: all its social, political, cultural, and economic manifestations
3. Technology and human rights: biological, political, intellectual, and spiritual

Presentation Format

The format for presentation will be an interactive forum of exchange between speakers and audience. There will be no podium. Speakers will be placed within the audience. Presentations may include visuals such as images, texts, charts, etc.

Each speaker will be given seven minutes to present his or her proposal. The audience will then have equal time—seven minutes—to respond and discuss. Time may be slightly less or more depending on the number of outstanding proposals selected.

Submission Instructions

Please send a description of your topic and the theoretical concepts and/or model that you intend to propose in approximately three hundred words, plus a brief biography or CV of no more than two pages. The written proposal must include a title, name(s) of author(s), address, email, and phone number. Please submit all proposal files as PDF documents to studio@meme01.com. Deadline for proposals: June 1, 2013; notification of selection: June 20, 2013.