{"id":10,"date":"2024-03-17T17:25:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-17T17:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/?page_id=10"},"modified":"2024-10-17T07:50:55","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T07:50:55","slug":"activatechat","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/","title":{"rendered":"activateCHAT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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activateCHAT<\/strong>

7-10 November 2024
Plymouth, UK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About CHAT<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Schedule<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Come join us in Plymouth for a new edition of CHAT!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check the information about our bursaries here<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Schedule available!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

[UHI CHAT mini projects<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Submissions (closed):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We look forward to receiving individual and group proposals (300 words max + images, video, urls) that explore ACTIVATE and\/or BUSY, through presentations, film, discussions, debates, posters, performances, and more. We are happy to discuss ideas for submissions. Please email activateCHAT@plymouth.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deadline for submissions: <\/strong>Monday 20th<\/sup> May 2024, 5pm BST<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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In 1946, Plymouth embarked on a utopian planning experiment that activated a city devasted by conflict. The development of the Abercrombie Plan was accompanied by the mass protest of 3000 Plymothians who marched through the city with beautiful banners demanding hospitals, housing, swimming pools, libraries, a university and \u2018an end to tedium\u2019. In 2023, the city witnessed the dead-of-night felling of trees – the timing activated by the end-of-financial-year expenditure deadline, with the act busily resisted by activist groups, mobilised as a council election issue, materialised as waves of Heras fencing decorated with children\u2019s ribbons, chipboard, chainsaws, melancholy birds, and confused rats mourning their displacement, new design schemes, meeting minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, CHAT comes to Plymouth and invites participants to respond to the themes \u2018ACTIVATE\u2019 (verb: to cause something to start) and \u2018BUSY\u2019 (adjective: having a great deal to do; keeping oneself occupied). How do creative archaeological practices inform understandings of ACTIVATE \u2013 activisms, actions, beginnings, enlivenings – and BUSY \u2013 late capitalist work culture, being occupied, cluttered, neoliberal wellness mantra? What are the contemporary and historical archaeological forms of ACTIVATE and BUSY \u2013 as both separate and intersecting themes – and how might this inform the way we (might) live now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contemporary and historical archaeological theory-and-practice have matured significantly since CHAT first emerged in 2003. The variety of fieldwork methods has grown, from filmmaking and sound-recording to walking as research to the careful documentation of \u2018waste\u2019, to socially engaged art in the public realm, to the critical-creative use of scanning and imaging technologies. These methods ACTIVATE new material and spatial insights . into the ongoing legacies of colonialism; into the operation of power structures; into practices that produce beauty and \u2018otherwiseness\u2019 out of idiosyncratic \u2018capitalist cracks\u2019; into how to stimulate conversations about the material workings of complicity, recuperation, subversion, divergence, and the liberation of humans and non-humans from extant racialised, gendered, class-based inequalities.  Global politics is busily transformed by a handful of dangerous demagogues and billionaires! The planet is burning! While never have so many people had access to so many tools and to each other, we squander this in \u2018busy-ness\u2019. It is time to ACTIVATE! How can Contemporary and Historical Archaeological Theory and Practice ACTIVATE social, cultural, and political change? How might this generate understandings of what change means, what changes are needed and for whom? Who do people need to work with and through which media, materials, processes? Where do people need to be working? How do people build and\/or strengthen working relationships across disciplines and across the academic, public, third and private sectors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With activation comes busy-ness, however. Across all sectors people now experience the sensation of overwhelming busy-ness in \u2018bullshit jobs\u2019 (cf. David Graeber) – precarious, casualised, in service mainly to Excel and Outlook. In our special BUSY session at activateCHAT, we therefore invite contributions that look at how the material manifestations of (over)activating humans and other-than-humans, and how this helps to critically and practically interrogate both the glorification and vilification of busy-ness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the whole conference, we ask: how do the themes of ACTIVATE and BUSY intersect and rub up against each other over time? How might archaeology \u2013 in its most expansive terms – generate understandings of what keeps us too \u2018busy\u2019 to enact the social, cultural, and political changes we want to manifest? How does it ask important questions about who this \u2018us\u2019 includes and excludes? What are the material manifestations of \u2018busy\u2019 and of the resistance to \u2018busy\u2019? As academics, artists, heritage practitioners, how do we account for our own roles in creating the BUSY structures that we BUSILY study? How have others responded non-violently, creatively, and inclusively to increased demand to \u2018keep busy\u2019 and what are the archaeological traces of that? How have people and collectives avoided making their \u2018going slow\u2019 becoming someone else\u2019s being busy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We welcome submissions in any media or form \u2013 including creative practice – that exemplify the application of Contemporary and\/or Historical Archaeological Theory and\/or practice (\u2018archaeological\u2019, in the very broadest definition) in the real world, for real change. Submissions are especially welcomed from those whose work tackles or challenges the taken-for-granted, received wisdom, populism, identity wars, capitalism, exploitation, persecution, and divisiveness. While the language, aesthetics and actions of liberation, disruption, freedom, non-conformism, anti-racism, climate justice, community, and love are appropriated by late-stage capital and disfigured by the anxieties of the pyrocene and its volatile political responses, none the less, we invite all of you who situate yourselves in those forms to bring your ideas, your methods, your demonstrations, explorations, to share at activateCHAT, University of Plymouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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activateCHAT 7-10 November 2024Plymouth, UK Come join us in Plymouth for a new edition of CHAT! Check the information about our bursaries here! [UHI CHAT mini projects] Submissions (closed): We look forward to receiving individual and group proposals (300 words max + images, video, urls) that explore ACTIVATE and\/or BUSY, through presentations, film, discussions, debates,… Continue reading activateCHAT<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-10","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/activatechat.chat-arch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}