Events

Call for papers | 10th European Workshops In International Studies | EWIS Amsterdam 12-14 July 2023

Changing Fabrics: working with artists in analyzing world events

Workshop conveners:

Tasniem Anwar, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, t.anwar2@vu.nl Sofia Stolk, Asser Institute, s.stolk@asser.nl
Renske Vos, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, r.n.vos@vu.nl

For scholars of international law and politics, there is much to learn from working with artists and designers. Art attunes us to the powerful role of the imagination and fiction to understand the international. A methodological exchange between artistic and academic research encourages us to reconsider the role of design, architecture, and materiality in the formation of world events and in building an international community. Art illuminates the material, affective and aesthetic aspects of political and legal objects and activities. At the same time, art can function as form of resistance in itself, or bring out political narratives of larger collectivities. In short, art invites to change the fabrics of scholarly analysis.

There is now a longer standing trajectory of legal and political research working with and through art. Scholars have experimented with collaging (M’charek 2014; Parfitt 2020) and bricolage

(Aradau et al 2014), they have engaged with design (Austin & Leander 2021; Keshavarz & Parsa 2019) and architecture (Stolk & Vos 2020) as material manifestation of the international and as analytical lens, or have worked with art as epistemological resistance (McKittrick 2020). Inspired by these literatures, we inquire how such artistic explorations and collaborations affect our methodological tools, decisions, and possibilities.

In this workshop we want to inquire how such collaborations lead to novel insights about (non)linear paths towards data collection, data analysis, and the production of (scientific) knowledge. We aim to bring together scholars and artists who have worked with artistic methods in their research on international law and politics. We invite contributions on working with, for example, (algorithmic) design, architecture, performance art, visual art, and music. We are open to contributions across a wide range of topics and methodologies studying the intersection of art, design, international law and politics.

We welcome submissions that relate to the following questions:

1. 1)  How do researcher-artist collaborations challenge and enrich current methodological debates?
2. 2)  How do such collaborations produce novel forms of knowledge on international law & politics?
3. 3)  How do we disseminate the outcomes of research-artist collaborations?

See website for more information.