[Anarchafeminists] Fwd: Call for Participants: Experimental Knowledge Lab, Lancaster, July 7-9, 2010

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Hi,

There are a handful of places and travel bursaries left for the event
described below (and in the attachment).

If you are interested: Get in touch with a few lines about your
involvement with social struggles and why you are interested in the event.

Forward as you see fit!

-martin
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Dear friend, activist, ally, organic intellectual, colleague and comrade,

You are herewith cordially invited to an Experimental Knowledge Lab to
collaboratively reflect on a series of questions and present the outcome
as a radical intervention at an international conference on The
Experimental Society at Lancaster University, July 7-9. The Experimental
Knowledge Lab is a permutation of the Knowledge Lab series that took
place at Lancaster between 2005 and 2007.

See http://knowledgelab.org.uk for more information.

The conference is the culmination of Lancaster’s year-long research
programme Experimentality (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/experimentality),
which in six two-day workshops and a range of arts events in the North
West has been exploring the varieties and transformations of
experimentation. The idea of experimentation was always at the heart of
modernity’s promise of human freedom and self-determination, yet its
power to shape the future has largely remained in the hands of the few
rather than those of the many.  Participants at The Experimental Society
will explore the different forms that experimentation takes in science,
technology, the arts and wider culture, and debate different visions of
an experimental society in which the emancipatory potential of the
experiment might be renewed.

Keywords:	science / politics / economy / publics / religion / music / art
education / design / media / advertising / technology
laboratory / simulating / making / performing / testing / trial
democracy / reflexivity / creativity / event / revolution

The purpose of the Experimental Knowledge Lab – as a special component
of the conference - is to bring together a small group (15-20) of
“organic intellectuals”, reflexive activists, and people who are
actively and centrally involved in social movements and have an interest
in theoretical questions concerning struggles against capital and class
domination. The Lab will be posed a number of questions, such as: what
is the role of struggle and resistance in an experimental society? What
role can social movements play in keeping alive alternative imaginaries
and values?  How can effective sites of struggle be identified in a
‘society of control’ where power is dispersed, experimental, and
constantly on the move? What are the most important and promising sites
of struggle?

Gathering in Lancaster on July 7 during the first day of the conference
we will get to know each other and establish a good set of working
relations for the Lab, which will take place on Thursday July 8 and
culminate in an intervention at the plenary of the main conference that
day, which will be on the topic of revolution, communism and radical
political alternatives. The purpose is to deliver a message from the
perspective of social movements during the plenary with a view to
stirring up debate, awaking minds, and, ideally, setting the world on fire.

There are some travel bursaries available and we will feed you and
arrange private accommodation with like-minded people (much nicer than a
hotel, anyway!).  If you are interested, please get back in touch as
soon as possible: m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk.

All the best wishes,
Bronislaw Szerszynski, conference organiser
Larry Reynolds, Lab co-organiser
J. Martin Pedersen, Lab co-organiser