Call for participation (Extended to December 15):

Queer Circuits in Archival Times: Experimentation and Critique of Networked Data

We live in a world in which quantified understandings of embodiment and sociality have taken on an increasingly central place in the strategies of capital circulation and state control. The messy entanglements of queer lives and bodies are archived for speculative monetization by a variety of proprietary digital networks whose central motivation is to serve advertisements rather than to promote vibrant and just social forms. While gender-neutral marriage law is nationalized and gay and soon trans people are slowly integrated into the military, whistleblower Chelsea Manning sits in jail. For this conference we mobilize the insights of queer theory and queer sociality to critically reimagine the possibilities of these growing archives of the everyday. We are interested in digital experimentation and inventive critique to theorize LGBTQ lives in a strikingly fluid legal, political, and media landscape. Just as important however, we see queer thought playing an essential role in analyzing social life beyond the LGBT. How might we queer these digital networks that are increasingly constitutive of how we understand and witness the social? How can we reflexively and critically engage with queer social formations that seem to resonate with data capitalism? What archival practices and performances can help reinvigorate the queer histories forgotten in the linear narratives of gay progress?

Participants are encouraged to reflect on these questions and others that use queer theoretical frames to engage with digital media and archiving. We will give priority to those whose work focuses on digital experimentation in the practices of everyday: queerly social media, haptic reorganizations of boundaries between body/world and body/mind, hacked software and dubious hardware, monstrous digital assemblages across space/time/identity/species.

Thanks to generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Center for the Humanities, CUNY this conference will take place in New York City on May 20-21, 2016.

Call for papers: The first day of the conference will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center and will consist of a variety of academic panels, conversations, discussions and workshops. Please submit abstracts (rather than full papers) related to the themes of the conference by December 15, 2015 to QueerCircuits@gmail.com

Call for proposals: Day two of the conference will focus on praxis: art, film, nightlife, performance in a variety of spaces in the city. Are you a queer artist or thinker whose work engages with the conference themes? Be in touch by December 15, 2015.

For questions: QueerCircuits@gmail.com  More information: http://queercircuits.com/