Shortness

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SHORTNESS AT TATE MODERN

A very short conference and a very long dinner

Saturday 20 June 2009, 14.00–21.30
14.00–17.00 symposium
18.00–21.30 dinner in the East Room

In short, this event brings together practitioners and theoreticians of the humanities, arts and sciences to extol or berate, to discuss, explore and explain shortness in all its spatial and temporal manifestations. Rather than a conventional academic conference, Shortness is an art event in its own right, aiming to create a multidisciplinary and multisensory experience.
Shortness tackles topics ranging from aphorisms, txt msgs and short attention spans to nanophilology, sampling, ephemeral relationships, punch lines, short narratives and other short-lived entities and phenomena (insects and fashion).
The short conference will take place at Tate Modern’s Starr Auditorium and will last from 14.00 to 17.00. It will be followed by a long performative dinner in Tate Modern’s East Room, where guests will be served food for the palate as well as for eyes, ears and minds in the form of artists’ interventions and performances, film screenings and presentations.

Conference speakers:
Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky (composer, multimedia artist and writer) on sampling
Lia and Dan Perjovschi (artists) on ephemerality, punch lines and archiving
Sadie Plant (author and philosopher) on texts, tweets, and other short messages
Tom Shakespeare (bioethicist and sociologist) on aphorisms
Conference discussion will be chaired by Steven Connor (Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck College and Academic Director of the London Consortium)
Dinner speeches and interventions by:
Jonathan Allen (visual artist and writer)
Colleen Becker (flash fiction writer)
Matthew Steven Carlos (Zen monk and professor of philosophy),
Steven Connor (Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck College, and Academic Director of the London Consortium)
Natasha Degen (PhD candidate and a Gates Scholar at Cambridge)
Mikhail Karikis, (sound artist)
Alice McCabe (artist)
Jon Meyer (consultant, artist and Computer scientist)
Anna Marie Roos (Historian of early modern science and medicine and research associate at the Wellcome Unit, University of Oxford)
Sarah Sparkes, (artist and curator)
Clare Wigfall (short story writer)
James Wilkes (poet and PhD candidate at the London Consortium)
Julia Wilson (lecturer in performance at the University of Salford and a freelance performer/devisor) and Niki Woods (artist and lecturer in performance at the University of Salford).

The compère for the dinner will be Nicholas Parsons.

Organised by Tate Modern Public Programmes in collaboration with Irini Marinaki and Konstantinos Stefanis (London Consortium) and Ricarda Vidal (Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of Advenced Study, Univeristy of London )

Supported by The London Consortium with additional help from LCACE

Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
£15 (£10 concessions), booking required
£50 (£45 concessions) for dinner and conference
For tickets book online
or call 020 7887 8888.