Call for papers, panels, presentations, actions and workshops

NEoN Digital Arts Festival – REACT 2019 in Dundee, Scotland, will be exploring how artists use digital systems to effect change within our social and political realities. NEoN was founded in 2009, and with every annual edition of the festival has hosted an artist-led symposium. This year, we are very pleased to be organising an expanded 3-day symposium and interconnected activities entitled, Re@ct: Social Change Art Technology (from the 6th to the 8th November 2019), chaired by Professor Joseph DeLappe (Abertay University, Dundee), Professor Sarah Cook (University of Glasgow) and Dr Laura Leuzzi (DJCAD, University of Dundee).

Deadline for submissions June 30th, 2019, 5pm GMT

Themes
Many artists involved in digital arts have historically been prompted to react and respond to local, national, global, social and political crises (i.e. around issues of environmentalism, gender equality, exploitation, colonialism, militarism, emancipation). Re@ct will be a platform to critically examine the relevance and impact of past and present practices, theories and strategies – to engage an uncertain future through an exploration of the creative potential of digital art.

- Re@ct aims to provide a forum to explore how activist artists develop critical approaches to utilise, champion and pioneer the creative use of new technologies. To investigate experimental research methodologies – both theoretical and practice-based. To retrace early experiments by digital artists involved at different levels in forms of activism. To reconstruct histories at present ‘lost’ to international scholarship. To question how to preserve these artworks, with their context and narratives and how to represent and re-mediate them to future generations.
- Re@ct aims to present contemporary strategies and forms of protest, resistance, resilience and reaction enacted by artists. To debate the status and role of the artists, curators, art historians, collectives, producers and institutions involved in digital art and activism. To reconsider the role and the dynamics of activists’ artists’ communities and collectives today. To investigate the impact of digital art and activism upon society on a larger scale, on the government and on economies – does it work?
- Re@ct aims to imagine and speculate as to how best to move forward into the 21st century utilising emerging digital technologies (virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain, etc). To stimulate the production and dissemination of written and practice-based methodologies for the ongoing engagement of social and political digital art production and scholarship.

Structure
Rather than a typical academic symposium this is instead an opportunity to engage with a broadened context of action – each day will involve multiple venues, talks, panels, walks, actions and performances spanning the city of Dundee, and in context of NEoN’s Festival format.

More information and submission details - https://northeastofnorth.com/react-symposium-call-out/