Eye of the Storm : An interdisciplinary conference on scientific controversy

19 / 20 June 2009
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1, UK


CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Arts Catalyst and Tate Britain announce an international call for artists, scientists, social scientists, theorists, policy-makers and other disciplines, to present in Eye of the Storm, a conference exploring scientific controversy from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Eye of the Storm aims to explore a range of controversies, from esoteric arguments between physicists over the structure of the universe, to disputes about the causes of species decline and climate change, and highly charged public controversies around the use of stem cells and the distribution of genetically modified organisms. When heated debates around the challenge of climate change have shown how abstruse uncertainties within a scientific community can be amplified and distorted to challenge the whole notion of human-caused greenhouse warming, Eye of the Storm sets out to examine the relationship between scientific uncertainty and public controversies around science.

We invite abstracts for papers and proposals for artists’ presentations and talks for Eye of the Storm that consider questions such as the following: When the whole culture and ethic of science is based on disagreement and alternative explanations, how does this essential scientific uncertainty work in the quest for knowledge? How do scientific disputes affect political decision-making and society’s relationship with science? As scientific and technological developments produce their own controversies, such as those around GM crops, what are the current critical controversies in and around science and technology? What alternative societal and cultural perspectives and contributions do artists and social scientists bring to this area? When the influential science sociologist Bruno Latour has worried that social science – in questioning the ‘reality’ that science examines – may have contributed to political abuses of science: what is the relationship between scholarship, science and politics?

Confirmed keynote speakers are Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University, and Roger Malina, astrophysicist, Director of Research at CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), former Director at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille.

Submissions

Please send 200-word abstracts for papers and presentations (20 minutes maximum) to conference@artscatalyst.org. You may attach a short biog or cv. Artists may attach images (2MB maximum)

Deadline: 31 March 2009

Submission categories include: talks/papers, artists’ presentations, demonstrations

Selection Committee

Michael Bravo, Senior Lecturer, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Bernadette Buckley, Programme Convenor, MA Art & Politics, Goldsmiths, University of London
Sian Ede, Director of Arts, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Madeleine Keep, Education Department, Tate Britain
Rob La Frenais, Curator, The Arts Catalyst
Roger Malina, Chairman Emeritus, Leonardo, Director of Research, CNRS
Chair: Nicola Triscott, Director, The Arts Catalyst