Events

A workshop hosted by Warwick Centre for Critical Legal Studies addressing fundamental questions regarding recent global protests. 

Over the last decade we have seen protests and revolts that have resonated globally: from Tahrir Square and Gezi Park to the Indignants in Greece and Spain, to the Gilet Jaunes or Occupy Wall Street or the Umbrella Movement. One of the key elements of these events has been their online circulation which has flowed from the (bottom-up) modes of documentation employed. The ‘democratization of witnessing’ associated with this type of ‘citizen journalism’ has opened new political, ethical and aesthetic questions. This workshop seeks to address two of these issues through the lens of critical theory.

1. The first issue is situated after the event, once the immediate affective power of these online artefacts has faded. We want to examine archives of protest as an afterlife of the event, what Derrida described as “surviving of an excess of life which resists annihilation”. So, we invite papers:
   • on practices of memorialising protests, revolts, riots
   • on the mediatised conditions of the eventness of an event
   • on archiving affects and atmospheres
   • on the affective dynamics of memorialisation
   • on the city as a living archive of unrest

2. The second issue involves what we are calling ‘archives of instantaneity’. By this we mean organised attempts to record and archive from within the events. We are interested in exploring the potential of (extant and new) platforms to build contemporaenous archives. We invite papers:
   • on the possibilities of geo-mapping platforms like Harrassmap
   • on the dangers of practices of contemporaenous democratic archives
   • on the affective power of contemporaenous archives
   • on the questions of verification and veracity

We invite scholars, visual artists, filmmakers and activists from around the world to take part. We are open to different types of participation, short interventions and longer papers. The workshop will involve participants from Egypt, Turkey, Colombia, the UK and a number of other sites of major protest and unrest.

It will be hosted by the Warwick Centre for Critical Legal Studies, and will take place on the 13^thof May, 2019. Lunch will be provided to participants. We aim to begin to build connections that may build into a new network on Archives of Protest.

Submission of Abstracts: 17^th March, 2019.

Contact: srha1@leicester.ac.uk, m.el-shewy@warwick.ac.uk, i.r.wall@warwick.ac.uk, a.ferrini@lcc.arts.ac.uk

Organisers: Shaimaa Adelkarim (Leicester), Mohamed El-Shewy (Warwick), Alessandra Ferrini (University of the Arts London) and Illan rua Wall (Warwick)