Post-Internet Cities international conference

Under the scope of the Utopia/Dystopia exhibition, organised by MAAT, this conference seeks to promote a critical reflection on the way in which digital technologies affect the conceptualisation and life of cities. How can art and architecture respond to this uncertain and unstable condition?

Talking about the present and the future of our cities means, first of all, discussing what the urban space means to us today. Besides having brought about evident changes to our everyday practices, the communication technologies have radically transformed the way in which cities are recognised, appropriated and (re)designed. The globalisation of the Internet and, more recently, the phenomenon of the social media, have reshaped the urban space, dividing it into multiple territories that coexist and intertwine, in a growing ambiguity between the public and private domains, between the real and the virtual.

In a scenario of constant hybridisation and connectivity, physical distances have shortened, giving rise to ubiquitous and parallel cities, mapped by interactive and collaborative systems. This process explains how the main political protest movements of the last decade appeared online first and then only afterwards occupied the symbolic places of our cities. But are these new socio-cultural dynamics calling into question the role of the built public environment? To what extent should the city be understood as an overlapping between the material reality and a collective imagination that has been reinvented on the social media?

This one-day conference will include plenary lectures by keynote speakers, as well as paper presentations by registered delegates, previously selected through the Call for Papers. At the end of each session there will be a debate open to audience participation. 

The conference will be in English, and there will be no simultaneous translation into other languages. 

Pre-registration is required before May 18, 2017.

A selection of essays on the conference topic will be published in e-flux Architecture, sponsored by Fundação Millennium bcp.

Conference program

9–9:30am
Registration 

9:30–11:30am
Keynote: Marisa Olson [USA]: On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Doghouse 

Tim Durfee, Ben Hooker, Jenny Rodenhouse [USA]: Everything On Time 
Linda Aloysius [UK] Intimacy and Post-Internet Cities: Art and Women's Dirty Work in the Digital Age 

Debate Chairs: Pedro Gadanho [Portugal] & Helena Barranha [Portugal] 

11:30am–12pm
Coffee break 

12–1:40pm
Keynote: Morten Søndergaard [Denmark]: Art and the Citizen of the Post-Internet Public Sphere: From Under Cover strategies to Indeterminate Infrastructures 

Alice Bucknell [UK/USA]: Who Rules the Digital City? Capitalism, Democracy, and Post-Internet Activism 
Andrea Baldini [Italy/China]: There and Back Again: Redistributing Visibility between the Virtual and Real Alleys of Graffiti 
André Pina [Portugal]: The role of academia in the design of smarter cities 

Debate Chair: Margarida Brito Alves [Portugal] 

1:40–3pm 
Lunch break / Visit to Utopia/Dystopia exhibition (MAAT) 

3–4:30pm
Keynote: Salvatore Iaconesi & Oriana Persico [Italy]: Constrained Cities 

Nashin Mahtani & Etienne Turpin [Indonesia]: Impressions of Disaster: Neuroscience, Design, and Attention in Post-Internet Indonesia 
IOCOSE Collective: Paolo Ruffino [UK], Matteo Cremonesi [Italy], Davide Prati [Germany], Filippo Cuttica [UK]: Post Fail: art during the Internet 

Debate Chair: Sandra Vieira Jürgens [Portugal] 

4:30–5pm 
Coffee break 

5–5:45pm
Giselle Beiguelman [Brazil]: Art, Public Space, and Informational Territories: Towards the Archinterface 
Nicci Yin, Stephanie Cedeño, Xiaoxuan (Sally) Liu, Godiva Reisenbichler [USA]: An Internet of Enlightened Things: Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence at the Neighborhood Scale 

Debate Chair: Vítor Carvalho Araujo [Portugal] 

5:45–6:30pm
Keynote: Hani Rashid [USA]: Architecture: the Art of Technological 

7–8:30pm 
Finissage of the exhibition The Pressure of Light—Álvaro Siza by Nuno Cera at Millennium Gallery, Lisbon