The introduction has taken place, please use https://4ir.eventbrite.co.uk to register for further sessions

OPEN TO ALL PHD STUDENTS AT GOLDSMITHS, BIRKBECK, SOAS, COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ART AND THE UNIVERSITIES OF SUSSEX, KENT, EAST ANGLIA AND ESSEX.

Introduction

In 2016, Klaus Schwab, the chairman of the World Economic Forum wrote that “we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know how it will unfold but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society”. The nature of this transformation, and the way that it will unfold has occupied the minds of a number of scholars including Choi, Lee, Gleason, Xing, Marwala and Chapman. If we take inspiration from the work of these scholars and others, we can start to formulate some questions that will help us to explore how the arts and humanities will play a role in the era of the fourth industrial revolution.

How can the arts and humanities be used to reduce inequality? How can the arts and humanities be employed to reduce the prospect of large-scale joblessness? How can the arts and humanities be used to mitigate the worst aspects of globalisation? How can the technologies and processes associated with the fourth industrial revolution be used to improve the educational experience of arts and humanities students? How does the paradigm of social distancing help us to understand how the fourth industrial revolution will shape society? How is risk perceived within a society on the brink of mass technological change, is the risk in innovating or not innovating? Does the technology of the fourth industrial revolution risk changing the relationship of humans to work and/or non-work?

Technical

Participants will need broadband and access to a device that is capable of supporting video streaming applications (such as Skype, Facetime and Zoom). Instructions of how to log on to the webinars will be emailed to participants prior to the commencement of the event.

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Session 1

19th May 2020 | 14:00-16:00

Distant Times: A Future History of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Session Leader: Dr Christopher Timms, Managing Director and Creative Director, EKCCHO

This first session acts as an introduction to the webinar series. Firstly, it will consider the statement by Schwab that “we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know how it will unfold but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society”. In doing so, it will explore the meaning of this statement within the new paradigm of social distancing and will explore what this means for researchers in the arts and humanities. It will introduce some of the themes that participants can expect to be explored in the sessions that make up the rest of the series.

Christopher is the Managing Director and Creative Director of EKCCHO. He studied BA History and Music at the University of Essex before joining the production department of Classic FM. He later became Senior Producer and Head of Production at Classic FM and has also worked as a producer and writer for the BBC, Sky, ITV and other media companies. He then took an MA in History at the University of Essex and was then awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Scholarship to take a PhD in History at the University of Essex. His PhD was a study of the history and culture of international development and humanitarianism.

Outcomes

Participants will gain a solid understanding of the concept of the “fourth industrial revolution”.
Participants will benefit from a discussion of this issue in relation to the paradigm of social distancing.
Participants will be well prepared for the seminars that follow.

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Session 2

26th May 2020 | 14:00-16:00

Creativity and Technology: Art, Education and Expression Beyond the Technological Singularity

Seminar Leader: Chris Wilson, Lecturer in Learning Innovation and Professional Practice, Aston University

This seminar focuses on current theoretical perspectives of creativity in the context of emerging technology including AI. Considering first the discourse surrounding projections of future skills needs and related implications for cognate educational disciplines and related pedagogical practices, the impact of technology on creative processes, conceptions of creativity, and creative interpretation will then be explored. Highlighting emerging work in cognitive science related to increasingly porous boundaries between conceptions of self and machine--the reality that technology extends rather than merely augments cognition, the role of the arts in interrogating and preparing for the ambiguities of a future beyond machine intelligence and creativity are framed for discussion.

Additional points of reference in the seminar include the role and operation of arts practices, organisations, institutions and venues in the context of social-distancing and the post-COVID-19 world.

Chris is an academic, teacher and creativity researcher based in The Education Team at Aston University in the UK and is professionally recognised as a Principal Fellow by AdvanceHE. A classically trained musician and composer, Chris has worked in UK higher education for over 23 years in a wide variety of leadership roles, taught across a wide range of subjects, and currently supports development of learning and teaching policy, practice, and learning technology systems, and is the Academic Lead for institutional professional recognition schemes at Aston. He has presented and published on the subject of creativity in education, both in the UK and internationally, for over a decade and has received international recognition for scholarship in the field. Chris graduated from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with BMus and MMus degrees in Musical Composition.

Outcomes

The seminar will provide participants with the opportunity to:

Explore key theoretical perspectives of creativity and conceptions of creative value in the context of emerging technologies and AI.
Appreciate the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in the discourse of future skills needs and increasing focus on the value of creativity.
Consider the implications of cognitive science research regarding the role of technology in cognition.
Discuss the role of technology in developing public engagement with the arts, and the role of the arts in interrogating and critiquing the implications of the fourth industrial revolution.

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Session 3

2nd June 2020 | 14:00-16:00

The Internationalization of the Performing Arts: The Need to Reframe the Concept and Rewire its Networks

Seminar Leader: Pilar Santelices, Creative Producer and Co-Founder, Arkcollectiv’

This seminar will start with a consideration of the historical functioning of the European ecosystem of international performing arts. It will focus on the role of the structures and networks that have played a role in the development of that international work and how the current scenario of social distancing is challenging its foundations. Following on, this seminar will examine the undertakings of international networking and will discuss the current and increasing pressure which they are under. It will consider the COVID-19 situation and will explore how this has accelerated the need for the performing arts sector to engage with technology, this seminar looks at the alternative solutions and approaches that practitioners are currently considering for connecting and collaborating.

Further benchmarks in the seminar include reflexions on the concepts of self, creativity and technology in relation to international performing arts, and why humanization should be at the centre.

Pilar holds a BA in Acting from the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile, an MA in Social Education and Community Development from Goldsmiths, University of London and an MBA in Cultural Management from the Institut d’Études Supérieures des Arts / Paris School of Business. She has over 15 years of experience leading and creating programs in the fields of education, social and cultural development in London, Santiago, Copenhagen and Paris. In addition to directing and producing several cultural projects, she has delivered workshops and seminars in Chile and throughout Europe. Pilar is currently living in Bristol, where she's a permanent resident at the Pervasive Media Studio Lab. She is also the Vice-Chair of TYA England, an International Society for the Performing Arts International Fellow and a member of the International Network for the Contemporary Performing Arts (IETM).

Outcomes

The seminar will provide participants with the opportunity to:

1. Understand how the international performing arts sector functions, what are the benefits, opportunities and challenges.

2. Explore international networks, how they have been functioning, it’s potentials and current questionings.

3. Appreciate the opportunities and threats that performing arts creatives face when engaging with technology in an international context and learning about some experiments that are currently taking place.

4. Discuss the current role of performing arts, the need (or not) for international and cross-cultural connections and collaborations in today’s world and its sustainability.

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Session 4

16th June 2020 | 14:00-16:00

Post-Truth and Social Distancing in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Session Leader: Dr Maria-Irina Popescu, Writer

“Post-truth is pre-fascism,” declared Timothy Snyder in 2017. It is also, as John Keane observes, an exercise in gaslighting, a spectacle, a larger-than-life public performance which seeks to leave its audience disoriented and full of self-doubt, following in the footsteps of Bulgakov’s demonic Woland in Soviet Moscow. Post-truth communications assault the public incessantly, leaving them demoralised, with a depleted sense of identity and privacy, and profoundly vulnerable to ideological attacks. Under the illusion of populist rhetoric, public opinion appears shaped by the lived experience, emotions, and instinct of non-elite members of society – but, as Judith Butler reminds us, censorship in the public space acts as an exclusionary force which ensures political behaviour remains under control and dissent is neutralised. In this webinar, we will reflect on the ‘terroristic’ nature of post-truth politics and empower ourselves to imagine a future in which plurality and collaboration can be used to effectively neutralise anti-democratic challenges.

Irina holds a BA in Literature and Art History, an MA in Literature and a PhD in Literature from the University of Essex for which she was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Scholarship from CHASE. Her research interests include the American Myth, contemporary American literature, comparative and interdisciplinary literature, terrorism studies and Southern studies. Her writing includes “‘’London is a City Built on the Wreckage of Itself’: State Terrorism and Resistance in Chris Cleve’s Incendiary and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West” in The London Journal, 45 (2020) and “Reimagining Traitors: Pearl Abraham’s American Taliban and the case of John Walker Lindh” in the Journal of American Studies, 53 (2019).

Outcomes

Participants will be Introduced to the theoretical concepts of “post-truth” as a politically motivated mode of communication and “terrorism” as an ideologically driven mode of action in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. They will reflect on how technological advances galvanised post-truth communication in the 2010s and how culture might shape and represent post-truth in the post-pandemic future.

Participants will be given the opportunity to discuss the ethical and moral implications arising from the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution. They will explore the question how can the arts and humanities function as a cultural and moral compass to ensure technology serves everyone?

Participants will be given the opportunity to consider how an arts and humanities education is beneficial in the increasingly automated world of work brought about by the fourth industrial revolution. They will discuss how such skills could enable us to resist the disruptions sought by post-truth politics and triggered by the fourth industrial revolution itself?

They will explore the fallacies of the global mobility myth by identifying elements of continuity pre- and post-social distancing. Encourage participants to propose ways in which the current moment of crisis could be co-opted to bring about an era of privacy, collaboration, empowerment, equality, and action to tackle the climate breakdown.

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Session 5

Tuesday 23 June | 1400-1600

(De)constructing Risk

Session Leader: Dr Helene Kazan, Lecturer in Fine Art and Critical Theory, Oxford Brookes University; Visiting Lecturer in Media Studies, Royal College of Art; Vera List Center Fellow in Art and Politics, The New School, New York

The history of 'risk' is bound up with the history of colonisation; colonial merchants conceptualised risk, and with this the principle of insurance, as a mechanism for trading commodities across turbulent seas. This transformation of risk into a separate, commodified object engendered an unequal distribution of its effects through a colonial understanding of value in relation to human life and resource commodities. In this session, the concept of risk and its relationship to the fourth industrial revolution and social distancing will be explored through a discussion of the revolutionary potential of poetic testimony for reshaping power relationships.

Helene is an inter-disciplinary artist, writer and researcher. Her work investigates ‘risk’ as an integrated limit condition of conflict and capitalism, analysed at the intersection of international law, architecture, and the human experience of violence, observed and argued through the frame of 'poetic testimony'. Helene holds a BA from the Wimbledon College of Art and an MA and a PhD in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London for which she was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Scholarship by CHASE. She is currently Lecturer in Fine Art and Critical Theory, Oxford Brookes University; Visiting Lecturer in Media Studies, Royal College of Art and Vera List Center Fellow in Art and Politics, The New School, New York.

Outcomes

The seminar will provide participants with the opportunity to:

Explore key theoretical perspectives associated with risk and its relationship to the fourth industrial revolution.

Explore the fourth industrial revolution and social distancing within the context of poetic testimony.

Discuss the role of technology and social distancing in reshaping power relationships.

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[1] Klaus Schwab, ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’, World Economic Forum, http://www.weforum.org/about/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-by-klaus-schwab [accessed 29 July 2019].

[2] Ju Hyun Choi and Jun Ha Lee, ‘Humanities Digital Contents of the Fourth Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Digital Contents Society, 19 (2018), 1097-1103; Nancy Gleason, ed., Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (London, 2018); Bo Xing and Tshilidzi Marwala, ‘Implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Higher Education’, The Thinker, 73 (2018), http://ssrn.com/abstract=3225331 [accessed 16 February 2020]; Michael Chapman, ‘’To Decolonise’: Where to, the Humanities?’, Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 31 (2019), 53-61.

4IR: The Arts and Humanities in the Era of Social Distancing