News

• An International symposium, connected to the exhibition „Without Firm Ground – Vilém Flusser and the Arts” at GAMU, Prague, Czech Republic (https://www.gamu.cz/en/homepage_en/) will be held on April 7 and 8, 2017, at the Filozofická fakulta UK and Goethe-Institute in Prague: Playing against the apparatus. Vilém Flusser’s media and culture philosophy. The symposium focuses on Flusser’s concept of freedom as the possibility of “playing against the apparatus”. With emphasis on the “dialogic” form the participants will question the notion of culture as media culture, determined or shaped by technologies, but also all kinds of old and new techniques and practices, tools and artworks which culture consists of. The symposium is convened and moderated by Baruch Gottlieb & Kateřina Krtilová, presenting Mike Anusas, Tomáš Dvořák, Christoph Ernst, Anke Finger, Daniel Irrgang, Jan Kulka, Michal Šimůnek, Steffi Winkler and Klára Židková. Organized by the Research group Media Theory/Philosophy, Charles University Prague. Partners: Goethe-Institut Tschechien, The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, GAMU and Kompetenzzentrum Medienanthropologie, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Publications

• In fall 2017, will be published both a Portuguese and a German version of the first Vilém Flusser biography:
  • Gustavo Bernardo and Rainer Guldin, O homem sem chão: a biografia de Vilém Flusser, Annablume editora, São Paulo.
  • Rainer Guldin and Gustavo Bernardo, Vilém Flusser. Ein Leben in der Bodenlosigkeit, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld.
• Vilém Flusser, Groundless, translated from the Portuguese by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes, Metaflux Publishing, February 2017.
• Vilém Flusser, Até a terceira e a quarta geração, É Realizações editora, São Paulo (forthcoming 2017)
• Vilém Flusser, Vom Stand der Dinge. Eine kleine Philosophie des Design, Steidl Verlag, October 2016 (new edition)
• Vilém Flusser y la Cultura de la Imagen: Textos Escogidos, translated by Breno Onetto, Ediciones Universidad Austral de Chile, December 2016.

Call for Papers

A Theme Issue of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies: Heimatlosigkeit/Precarity, edited by Gabi Kathöfer (University of Denver) and Beverly Weber (University of Colorado Boulder).

The concept of Heimat has played a pivotal role in the imagination of and scholarship on German cultural and national identity, in history and in the present. Although many continue to think of Heimat as a “longing for a wholeness and unity” (Strzelczyk), the concept of Heimat has been deployed in diverse ways: from the cultural and ethnic nationalist imaginary of the Heimatfilm to the construction of transnational queer diasporic homes in the anthology Talking home: Heimat aus unserer eigenen Feder: Frauen of Color in Deutschland. The diversity of relationships to home is marked in part by precarity, consisting of social relationships of vulnerability that take political form and are differentially distributed (Puar). As both concepts center around processes of domination and power through which belonging is denied, homelessness and precarity may designate both practices of othering as well as challenges to exclusion and injustice. Heimatlosigkeit/Precarity seeks to refigure the conceptual history of home by considering the diverse possibilities created when belonging in German cultural history is reevaluated from the perspective of precariousness. In particular, we wish to consider how authors, artists, activists, and others who occupy precarious positions in relationship to German culture and society deploy notions of Heimat, alternative homes, and/or homelessness. We invite diverse theorizations of home that critique racialized and place-based notions of belonging, particularly those that deploy theories of transnationalism, diaspora, queerness, and/or precarity to challenge the limitations of scholarly approaches that rely on a strictly national lens.

Submissions might include (but are not limited to): Forms of Heimatlosigkeit articulated from precarious positions, particularly those that challenge racialized constructions of gender, sexuality, religion, etc. / Alternative figurations of home, space and belonging / The making of home/homelessness as affect and/or strategy for challenging precarity.

Send 250-word abstracts to both editors, Gabi Kathöfer (gabi.kathoefer@du.edu) and Beverly Weber (Beverly.Weber@colorado.edu), by March 31, 2017. Final acceptance will be based on the result of the peer review process.