Call for Papers: Intimacy Exposed: Toilet, Bathroom, Restroom. Geneve, 10-11 December 2018
The Department of Interior Architecture of Haute école d’art et de design – Genève calls for papers to contribute to the seminar “Intimacy Exposed: Toilet, Bathroom, Restroom” that will be held on 10-11 December 2018. The invitation is open to all those who are interested in discussing attitudes towards sanitation and personal hygiene in domestic and public areas. The aim is to analyse the idea of toilets as both meeting places and places of personal hygiene as transgressive and informal spaces, or inevitably, sites of cohabitation. The seminar aims to collect contributions that reconstruct the recent past of domestic technology and the ambiguous future of personal and collective practices inside buildings.
The aim of the seminar is to study the contemporary use of toilets and their change in the use as a way of understanding different environments, furnishings, details and, objects; to observe and present models, examples, buildings, rooms, events, stories, artistic expressions and case studies that are able to show the always removed centrality of everyday needs that are fundamental yet hidden.
The seminar will be divided into separate sections, over which experts in the discipline will be invited to preside. Sessions will be held in English. Selection of the proposed contributions will follow a criterion of equality, guaranteeing gender equality.
The full synopsis of the seminar is available here.
Proposals for contributions should be submitted to roberto.zancan@hesge.ch and javier.fernandez-contreras@hesge.ch and must include a proposed title, an abstract (maximum 300 words), as well as the contributor’s name, professional affiliation (if applicable), email address and a short biography (maximum 150 words). Languages accepted: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish.
Please write ‘INTIMACY EXPOSED’ as the email subject.
Deadline for Abstracts: Monday, 15 October 2018. Notification of final decisions will be sent by Monday 29 October 2018.
There will be no registration fee for this event. All travel expenses and hotel costs will be covered by the participants (or their home institutions). The organisers will provide some meals during the conference.