INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE DESERT:

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON HUMANS, NATURE, AND TECHNOLOGY

Friday, November 1, 2024

Online Conference

 Download Call for Papers 

 Download CONFERENCE PROGRAM

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION

Etymologically, the word “desert” derives from the Latin dēsertum (an abandoned place) and dēserere (to abandon). For much of recorded history, the sparse population of the desert has been understood as being intertwined with its aridity and harsh climate, although later in the evolution of English language, a desert was understood primarily as a location characterized by its human desolation, no matter its ecological profile.

However, much more than a geographical environment – as a place of thought  – the desert is a philosophically powerful destination. Throughout the past two hundred years, from Nietzsche to Heidegger, Huxley, Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard and Žižek, the idea and image of the desert has alternately intrigued and terrified as a vantage point from which critiques of modernity, subjectivity, humanism, nihilism, capitalism, and technology have been formed.  

Taking  a conceptual approach, it rapidly  becomes evident  that “the desert” and “the human” are thoroughly modern (western) ideas that are inextricably linked, with the condition of possibility of the former being  contingent upon the latter. Without “the human” –  as a way of experiencing ourselves as more than “nature” (animals, plants) and other than “technology” (machines) – “the desert” would not have  emerged as a Romantic aesthetic category  seeking to remedy our experience of alienation from nature (and standing in opposition to industrial technology).

The focus of this conference proceeds from  the following question: As we swiftly advance into a post- and transhuman future, how can the conceptual power of the desert evolve and emerge from within the fissures of this philosophical landscape?

Biotechnologies, digital innovations, and machine intelligences are so novel as to no longer fit within 19th  and 20th century categorizations, disrupting taken-for-granted ontologies about life and non-life. They are a flash point for progression into  new modes of desert thinking, for which deserts, as conceptual spaces, may be pivot points around which many of the dualities that have typified the humanist and modern paradigm may merge, twist, or flow.

PROPOSED TOPICS

Possible conference entries include (but are not limited to):

● Explorations of unconventional deserts / deserts located in unconventional places and spaces (e.g. digital deserts, urban deserts, etc.)

● Technologists, futurists, and desert meanings

● Conceptual presuppositions about the human, nature, and technology that underlie the creative processes of desert artists

● Desert-themed music genres, musical traditions, soundscapes, and cultural studies

● Pop culture representations of deserts (past and present)

● Deserts in contemporary literature

● Non-western philosophies and indigenous ethnographic perspectives on deserts 

● Desert landscapes and the aesthetics of post- and transhuman art 

● Non- / post-dualistic philosophies; considerations of dualistic relationships inherent to “the desert”

● Architectural design and integrations into desert landscapes

● The relationship between LA and the Mojave desert in its various iterations

● Original commentaries on 19th and 20th century desert thinkers

ORGANIZERS

The organizers for the conference are Natasha Beranek, PhD,
and the Editorial Board of the book series “Studies in Anthropology and Transhumanist Philosophy,”

together with Trivent Publishing (Budapest, Hungary) and

the Trivent Transhumanism imprint (Head of Imprint: Prof. Dr. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner).

DATES AND DEADLINES

Please submit an abstract and your short bio (approx, 300 words each) 

to Dr. Natasha Beranek by Monday, September 2, 2024 at desertmusictech@gmail.com. Please CC conferences@trivent.eu

Acceptance notifications will be sent by mid September, 2024.

PUBLICATION

The proceedings of this conference will be published in

Studies in Anthropology and Transhumanist Philosophy book series (ed. Natasha Beranek)

within the imprint Trivent Transhumanism, headed by Prof. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, John Cabot University Rome.