The University of Sydney and Q Station
26-28 March 2015
Centennials offer a convenient opportunity to reflect on memorable events like WW1. But the effort to memorialize can ossify the past, forestall change in the present, and curtail new visions for the future. One hundred years is a sufficient interlude to consider why political, cultural and scientific revolutions triggered by WW1 changed everything but – to paraphrase Albert Einstein – our ways of theorizing and practicing peace and security.
Q2 takes a step back to the future to mark the dual centennial of WW1 and the coeval emergence of quantum theory, from which we will seek lessons to advance current understandings of peace and security. WW1 will be examined as a thought experiment, to interpret how classical conceptions of space (Empire, Mitteleuropa, Lebensraum) and time (mobilization schedules, slow negotiation, quick war) converged into something wholly new, a relativized space-time of actors unexpectedly entangled in a war of unpredicted expansion and indeterminate duration. Q2 will not only explore counter-factual scenarios but also disturb histories of the present that project justifications for future wars from past ones.
For an overview of all participant presentations and their abstracts, click here (downloadable PDF).
Schedule
Thursday, 26 March 2015
The Q Lecture
Speaker: McKenzie Wark, The New School
Friday, 27 March 2015
Panel 1 – The Space-Time of War and Diplomacy
Moderator: James Der Derian, CISS
Participants:
Christopher Fuchs, UMASS/Boston
Stephen Kern, Ohio State University
Arthur Miller, University College London
Commentator: Glenda Sluga, History/USYD
Panel 2 – Space: Geopolitical, Galactic and Virtual
Moderator: Colin Wight, CISS/USYD
Participants:
Andrea Loehr, Harvard University
Mark Salter, University of Ottawa
McKenzie Wark, The New School
Commentator: Charlotte Epstein, CISS/USYD
Film Screening of Particle Fever (Director, Mark Levinson)
Saturday, 28 March
Panel 3 – Time: Historical, Representational and Relative
Moderator: Iain McCalman, CISS/USYD
Participants:
Mark Levinson, Filmmaker
Dean Rickles, Physics/USYD
Badredine Arfi, University of Florida
Commentator: Simon Reay Atkinson, CISS/USYD
Panel 4 – War: Memorial, Transformational and Gendered
Moderator: Graeme Gill, Government and IR/USYD
Participants:
Antoine Bousquet, Birkbeck/University of London
Jairus Grove, University of Hawaii
Laura Shepherd, University of New South Wales
Commentator: Megan MacKenzie, CISS/USYD
Panel 5 – Diplomacy: Spatio-temporal, Multilateral and Adaptive
Moderator: Jonathan Bogais, CISS/USYD
Participants:
Anthony Burke, University of New South Wales
Rebecca Adler-Nissen, University of Copenhagen
Vincent Pouliot, McGill University
Commentator: Frank Smith, CISS/USYD
Panel 6 – The Final Q2 Roundtable
Moderator: James Der Derian, CISS/USYD
Participants:
Jonathan Bogais, CISS/USYD
Graeme Gill, Government and IR/USYD
Iain McCalman, CISS/USYD
Aim Sinpeng, Government and IR/USYD
Sebastian Kaempf, University of Queensland
Colin Wight, CISS/USYD