May 19, 20 and 21, 2012
Address: the conference will take place on several locations in Rotterdam, the Netherlands
See the Prototyping Futures / Occupying the Present website for full schedule and bios of contributors
Schedule of Events
- Saturday, May 19th: Lectures, panel discussion and Sniff, Scrape, Crawl…book launch (Location: Auditorium Kriterion, Groothandelsgebouw – above Cafe Engels, Rotterdam)
- Sunday, May 20th: Workshops at various locations followed by a screening at Worm
- Monday, May 21st: Wrap-up and documentation for publication (The Piet Zwart Institute)
Reservations
Lectures on the 19th are free & open to the public.
Workshops are also free, but registration is required as there is limited space.
For reservations: please send an e-mail to: pzwart-info@hr.nl
Prototyping Futures / Occupying the Present is a three-day conference with workshops initiated by the Piet Zwart Institute, a centre for postgraduate studies and research in the fields of art and design. The event will gather scholars from diverse disciplines to explore strategies of resistance, intervention, and critical production in response to the crises of the present. Rather than foregrounding critique, the focus will be on experimental practices that work towards the production of alternative narratives and the imagination of different futures. The term “media” is at the center of the symposium’s conceptual frame and is interpreted in its broadest sense so as to encompass a variety of methodologies and approaches that materialize ideas through technological, spatial, ephemeral, and poetic forms.
Key to the event is the notion and ethos of prototyping. Used in fields such as architecture, software programming, and design, the word has a range of meanings from simple working models to developmental processes. The prototype––in its etymological and theoretical senses––is an original form, an archetype. But it is also––in the applied fields of software development, design and architecture––the alpha version, made to test a concept and with the expectation of flaws, bugs, kinks, and failures. Rather than hammering down prototyping to a single definition, this symposium seeks to embrace its tentative, iterative, and speculative qualities, with the aim of promoting interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration.
The event will also be a participatory occasion through which to launch an alternative to the traditionally edited essay collection. Working with Active Archives and other multimedia, our aim is to create an online volume that documents and reflects upon on the various issues and projects discussed and produced during the conference.
Contributors:
Contributors: Inke Arns / Bik Van der Pol / Karin de Jong of PrintRoom / Alessandro Ludovico / Danja Vasiliev / Julian Oliver / Paolo Davanzo & Lisa Marr of Echo Park Film Center / Michael Murtaugh / Failed Architecture / Jan Jongert of 2012Architecten / Mitchell Joachim of Terreform ONE / Nicolas Maleve / Steve Rushton / Gordan Savičić / Florian Cramer of Creating 010
Editorial Team:
Renee Turner, Rita Raley, Carolyn Guertin & Allison Carruth
