Summer school | University of Konstanz | 24-26 July 2019
organized by the DFG-research Group “Media and Participation. Between Demand and Entitlement” (Universities of Konstanz, Hamburg, Luneburg, Zurich)
The research group “Media and Participation” invites participants, especially early career researchers (Ph.D., Post Doc, MA), to join us for the summer school “Connection timed out“. Digital Temporalities and the Question of Participation in Konstanz, Germany. Please find a description of the event, the guidelines for contributions and accommodation funding below.
By drawing on the concept of “Teilhabe” (participation), the research group problematizes the binary logic of inclusion and exclusion in order to grasp the complex logic and multi-faceted character of participation, especially its specific temporalities, networked structures, and community-building efforts. Building on participation in digital cultures the members of the research group analyze these processes in their concrete historical, political, infrastructural, or transcultural dimensions and situate them in relation to knowledge-power assemblages. Instead of following the concept of so-called real-time or the idea of a simple participation in the data flow, we are interested in analyzing heterogeneous temporalities, temporal ruptures, and synchronization that produce ‘real-time’ effects. We also investigate a-synchronic practices of community building, process emergence/visibility in and on interfaces such as smartphones, volatile contents and messages, and follow the idea of a temporarily and spatially ‘deferred community’.
We want to encourage a discussion about the benefits, affordances, and heterogenic temporalities of streaming services, smartphone communities, gameplay, or other settings of digital communications. Waiting, buffering, delay, and other instances of passing time in different historical and technological settings as well as keywords like real-time, liveness, and synchronicity are central to this debate.
The members of the research group aim for an engaged debate with all participants and guest speakers. On the basis of selected theoretical texts, we will follow the traces of theories of temporalities, participation, and technology into our present context and consider their applicability and relevance in contemporary media environments.
During the summer school, we will have two guest speakers giving impulses through their keynotes. Afterward, short rounds of project presentation will be followed by in-depth text discussions in a workshop setting.
Participants are encouraged to hand in a one page paper on how questions of temporality and participation are central to your own work and research. Please send your paper and a short biographical note to mediale.teilhabe.kn [at] gmail [dot] com by May 17, 2019. Also, please feel free to direct your questions to us.
The Research Group will be able to fund accommodation for some participants. Selection will be based on the submitted “Impulse Paper”. There will be no travel reimbursement for participants. Participants who do not need this funding are kindly asked to indicate that accordingly.