Thomas Söderqvist The quest for bringing new and unexplored areas of human life and practice under the conceptual reign of the arts and humanities is endless. For example, the “very short conference” organized by Tate Modern (?) on 20 June — on the theme of shortness:
This event will bring together practitioners and theoreticians of the humanities, arts and sciences to extol or berate, to discuss, explore and explain shortness in all its spatial and temporal manifestations. Topics that Shortness aims to cover include: aphorisms, txt msgs, short attention spans, nanophilology, music samples, ephemeral relationships, short narratives, punch lines, orgasms and other short-lived entities and phenomena (insects and fashion).
Sounds like the perfect conference (it will only last a few hours). The organizers invite submissions for presentations or performances of up to 7 minutes to take place during the “very long dinner” after the conference.
The complete list of medical historical or museological topics which I can think of in this context is extremely short but impressive, for example:
- a short history of short-term memory
- dielectric relaxation of short molecules — a science studies perspective
- episodic museum displays of shortening telomers in ageing rats.
Period.
Send a max 200 word abstract (why so long?) + a max 100 short bio to short.at.tate@googlemail.com before 20 March. More here.
The announcement is from here — it’s not on Tate Modern’s website yet, so it may be a hoax — let’s wait and see 🙂
