SFB 1187 ›Medien der Kooperation‹ an der Universität Siegen
“Geomedia 2021 – Off the Grid”: The 4th International Geomedia Conference
Wednesday, 05 May 2021 - Saturday, 08 May 2021 Organized Locating Media | Media of Cooperation

Geomedia provides a genuinely interdisciplinary platform for research carried out at the nexus of Geography, Media, and Film Studies. The aim of the conference series is to map out the current terrain of media geographical research, pinpointing its main areas of debate and assessing the prospects of media geography as a more formalized academic field. 

The phrase “off the grid” is commonly understood to refer to the voluntary decoupling from established infrastructure networks such as electricity, water or gas supply. The implication is one of material independence and a self-sufficient lifestyle. Going “off the grid” means making yourself invisible by rebuking the social and technological structures that normally organize our lives. It is entering, or returning to, uncharted territory. The grid also speaks to the geographic coordinate system, an all-encompassing global structure which makes it possible to accurately locate any point on earth. This unified grid represents a dominant ordering principle for everything “locatable”. Going off the grid has also been seen as a form of renunciation of the conveniences of the late capitalist (media) world in order to lead a supposedly slower, less stressful and eventually less superficial life – as inspired by the transcendentalism of the likes of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. But with so many people relying on the grid for purposes of work and entertainment in recent times, what does this mean for our relation to geomedia? What does going off the grid look like now?

 

Keynote Speakers: 

Caren Kaplan – University of California at Davis, USA

Nanna Verhoeff – Utrecht University, Netherlands

Bernhard Siegert – IKKM Weimar, Germany 

 

The conference will be held via video conferencing.

For more information about registration, conference program, and practical arrangements please visit: www.geomediastudies.com.

Contact:  info@geomediastudies.com 

Geomedia 2021 is hosted by the Graduate School Locating Media (http://www.locatingmedia.uni-siegen.de) and the CRC Media of Cooperation (https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/) at the Department of Media Research, University of Siegen. It is organized in collaboration with the Geomedia Group at Karlstad University (https://www.kau.se/geomedia).

Venue

Universität Siegen