Call for Papers: The Open Hand 2: Orientalism in the Pacific. Auckland, 9 September 2017.
With the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States and Brexit, it appears like we have been returned to aggressively hegemonic geopolitics and spatial exclusions, globally and in the Pacific. We think that, under these conditions, it is important to revisit and extend Edwards Said’s provocations.
During The Open Hand 2: Orientalism in the Pacific, we want to resume the civic debate started during the first Open Hand symposium in 2014, about collaborative action in architecture, space, art and society, this time specifically in connection with community, geography, identity, displacement, migration, and history in the Pacific. Central to the symposium are the following questions: What are the opportunities, boundaries, and tensions experienced in diasporas here in the Pacific? Do we still view these phenomena through the lenses of the ‘Other,’ or as exotic spaces of in-betweenness, or are we engaging with them differently now?
We invite you to critically explore these questions in 20-minute presentations. As in 2014, the 2017 symposium extends an open hand, as a call for people to come. We invite papers from architects, designers, artists, curators, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, writers, filmmakers, researchers, urban planners, policy makers, and others.
The full call for papers can be accessed here.
By 15 May 2017, please send a 300-word abstract and short Curriculum Vitae to Jafferaakhan@gmail.com. Abstracts will be double blind refereed.
The symposium will be held on 09 September 2017.
Full papers for a peer reviewed, online open access publication will be due 17 September 2017.
Convenor: Rafik Patel, Spatial Design, School of Art and Design, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand, Rafik.patel@aut.ac.nz