Call for Presentations
We all know loss. It ranges from trivial – a lost key, a lost book, a lost appointment – to deep tragedy – the loss of a loved one, the loss of your country, the loss of the work that defined you. While loss can cause us to feel anxiety, anger, grief, and disappointment loss-driven thinking may spark valuable reflection – especially in a world where loss tends to accompany us on the daily basis, channeled through ecological concerns, political turmoil, economic crises, or existential anxieties. Countries lose wars, politicians lose influence, societies lose trust, common people lose their jobs, homes, basic rights; communities lose languages, traditional lifestyles, habitats, and identities; the world as a whole loses landscapes, species, and climate balance. On a smaller scale, we can lose games, social media influence, opportunities, but also our patience, sense of direction, our will, faith, or our sanity.
At the same time, however, depending on what is being lost, to whom, and why, the experience can also be a harbinger of something good. Loss is often an inevitable part of change, transformation, initiation, and liberation. It marks the flow of time, creates space for new things, turns the old things into memories, and memories into knowledge. It also brings solutions, relief, and can even be cathartic. Consciously or actively embraced, it can become a statement, an act of power, or a sign of growth. In cultural imagination, it may bring out alternative visions of lost worlds that, staying out of reach, serve as cautionary tales or models to pursue.
While culture itself seems to react to the sense of loss as a peculiar esprit du temps with various modes of nostalgia, retrospection and archiving which often form specific paradigms of mourning, the goal of this call for presentations is to explore loss as a versatile and connective concept, capable of inspiring diverse kinds of reflection. That is why we invite presentations devoted, but not limited to:
- Transformative loss
- Materiality of loss, e.g. ruins
- Lost technologies, practices and knowledge
- The art of letting go or getting rid of
- Regrets and lost causes
- Utopia and dystopia
- Migration
- Being lost
- Madness
- Nostalgia
- Discursive and affective dimensions of losing and failing
Format
We invite abstracts of up to 500 words (not including literature lists), for the following formats: Paper, work in progress, reflection.
- Reflections: This is a flight of fancy, a description of potential ideas and connections that the concept loss fosters
- Paper abstract: This is a summary of a relevant research project you have done, and which you would like to present to the others
- Work in progress: This is work you would like feedback on
- We also invite more formats: experiences, performance, experimentation and roleplay
- Feedback: You will get a commenter, and be asked to provide feedback on the work of another person
Deadline
- Early deadline 16th March. We start accepting from this date.
- First date of decisions: 20th March.
- Late deadline 16th April.
Submit by email to northern.star.symposium@gmail.com.
Selection process:
Submissions are not anonymously reviewed. Program decisions will be made by the program committee:
- Mia Consalvo
- Tomasz Majkowski
- Aska Mayer
- Agata Zarzycka
- Torill Elvira Mortensen
- Egil Trasti Rogstad
Supported by the local organizing committee:
- Kristian Bjørkelo
- Ida Løvdal Alvsen
- Cristóbal Mora Bieni Bianchi
- Martta Ojala
- Frederik Grønbæk Aarup
