[acc-cca-l] Against Catastrophe: Ukraine Dispatch

[Sudipto Basu]

[△EXTERNAL]



Project Launch for AGAINST CATASTROPHE: UKRAINE DISPATCH

Hi everyone,


Hope you all had a pleasant summer break.


We are happy to launch the website for our multimodal research project, ‘Against Catastrophe’<https://againstcatastrophe.net/>, with the Ukraine Dispatch. Our project challenges the normalization of catastrophic thinking and necropolitical designs in the contemporary world. It does so through the histories of science and technology, infrastructure studies, environmental criticism, research-based art and speculative design. The project outputs<https://againstcatastrophe.net/about> will include an edited volume, offline and online art/design exhibitions, and a series of online publications.


As we were conceptualizing the project, Russia invaded Ukraine. Faced with the resulting humanitarian and geopolitical crisis, we felt a need to respond to the unfolding tragedy. With ‘Dispatches’ – a short-form, multimedia, online publishing format – we hope to move past the news cycle-based temporality of contemporary catastrophism, but faster than traditional academic publishing, to shed light on the longer-term structural causes and implications of catastrophes.


In the first dispatch, on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, our intention is not to offer a single response to the immediate human tragedy, but to explore the war in and beyond the multiple catastrophes it has wrought. The six collected dispatches here – by Asia Bazdyrieva<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/of-brushwood-reeds-and-foil>, Anna Engelhardt<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/adversarial-infrastructures>, Krolikowski Art<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/start-over>, Katarzyna Nowak<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/mourning-a-forest-road>, Oleksiy Radynski<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/nord-stream-studies>, and Jonathon Turnbull et al.<https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/the-dogs-that-survived> – are products of war, but focus on its antecedents and impacts through infrastructure and non-human nature. You can read the full editorial statement here: https://againstcatastrophe.net/editorial


‘Against Catastrophe’ is led by Dr. Orit Halpern, Lighthouse Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden. The core project team<https://againstcatastrophe.net/ac-team> is based out of Concordia University (Montreal), MIT, and TU-Dresden.


‘Against Catastrophe’ is funded by Fonds de recherche du Québec and the Swiss National Science Foundation, and is part of the larger Governing Through Design research cluster.


[Our apologies for crossposting]


Regards,

Sudipto Basu and Jan Dutkiewicz, on behalf of the 'Against Catastrophe' team


Sudipto Basu
PhD student, Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia
(Montreal / Kolkata)
https://concordia.academia.edu/SudiptoBasu
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