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Seattle Metamodernism Summit 2022
Conversations on the Arts in an Age of Ironesty!

September 10: Live & Online

September 11: Online Only

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Live location: Ballard Homestead 

6541 Jones Ave NW, Seattle, Washington 98117

USA

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A multi-modal, interdisciplinary Summit including:

  • A symposium with public-friendly, scholarly talks looking at cultural products in fiction, television, film, architecture, painting, video games, theater, advertising, philosophy and popular vernacular, through the lens of metamodernism

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  • A roundtable panel with metamodernism scholars Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker and Alison Gibbons celebrating the 5 year anniversary of their seminal volume, Metamodernism: historicity, affect, depth after postmodernism

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  • Performances and discussion in a roundtable of songwriters and poets on metamodern themes in the arts

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  • Registered, in-person participants are invited to gather for lunch and conversation!

More about Metamodernism:

In these often irony-soaked, context-dependent, everything-is-uncertain times, how does the current moment inspire artists of all sorts to create in a different, what some call “metamodern,” register? How has this moment invited cultural forms, even identities, that seem to respond more earnestly, with a sense of sincere irony or “ironesty”? Where does an individual self stand when the self is understood to be multiply configured through a mediatized prism?


Metamodernism has been conceived of as a sensibility emerging in the recent decades in which millennials and Gen Z have become the predominant drivers of culture. This has occurred in part because metamodern artworks address the above questions creatively, playfully, and reflexively. Metamodern cultural products (we’re talking here about film, television, literary fiction, musical and poetic performance, video games, architecture, visual art, marketing, even slang and humor styles) are considered to be those that engage the conflicts between (modernist) conviction and (postmodern) relativism by embodying an aesthetic that, we might say, braids the sensibilities of modernism and postmodernism, often by emphasizing “felt experience.” Another way of defining metamodernism is that it is a movement in literature and the arts that revives modernist sensibilities after  – and with an awareness of – postmodernism.


What the heck does that all mean? What does metamodern art actually look like, sound like, feel like? And why are individuals and artists of various kinds (and, increasingly, marketing and branding agents, as well), drawn to it?


The Seattle Metamodernism Summit aims to speak to these kinds of questions!


SMMS22 brings together leading international scholars who will guide attendees as we dive into the deep end of current metamodernism research. They will present, in a symposium format, a series of short talks designed to be both friendly to the curious public and also meaningful to fellow scholars in the advancement of their research. Topics will span the gamut of cultural products from architecture to fiction to video games, etc, and also include conceptual topics like Totality, Creativity and Liminality.


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About
Registration
Schedule

Schedule

 

The Seattle Metamodernism Summit is a hybrid event that will take place over two days. Saturday, September 10 will be live at the Ballard Homestead, an arts center in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, and will also be streamed over Zoom. Sunday, September 11 will be Zoom only. You can attend both days through Zoom, or you can attend Day 1 in person and Day 2 through Zoom.
 A third option is in-person attendance of the songwriter/poet panel only.

 

(On Sunday, presenters will be invited to gather together [location TBA], so we can participate in the Zoom day as a group.)

 

In order to accommodate our international online attendees, recordings of the Summit will be available to paid attendees.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 10 (9:15am - 6:30pm PDT)

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Presentations in person; Attend in person or through Zoom.

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Schedule subject to change – check for updates. All listed times Pacific Time.

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Doors Open and Registration/Check-in (9:15am - 9:45am)

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Opening Remarks (9:45am -10am)

Antony Rowland, Linda C. Ceriello and Greg Dember
 

Panel 1: Metamodernism and Liminality (10am -11:15am)

Moderator: Scott Thurston (University of Salford)

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  • Jake Pruett (University of Washington) "Agency and Ecology in Tom McCarthy’s C"

  • Zebadiah Kraft (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) "Monsters, Trauma, and the Metamodern: Explorations of the Zombie as the Shambling Image of the Precariat
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  • Rene Marzuk (University of North Carolina at Greensboro) "Darkness Revisited: The Magic of Liminal Spaces in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness"

  • Monika Kaup (University of Washington) "Neuromodernism in Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker"

 

Keynote Roundtable (11:30am -12:30pm)

Moderator: Linda C. Ceriello (Kennesaw State University)

with Tim Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker and Alison Gibbons in celebration of the fifth anniversary of the publication of Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect and Depth After Postmodernism

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Lunch and Conversation (12:30pm -1:30pm)

Zoom attendees: open discussion

In-Person attendees: lunch and discussion

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Panel 2: Place and Transformation in Metamodernism (1:45pm - 2:45 pm)

Moderator: Robin van den Akker (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)

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  • Mika Hallila (University of Eastern Finland) "Towards Meaning: Metamodernism and Totality"

  • Dan Dubowitz and Antony Rowland (Manchester School of Architecture and Manchester Metropolitan University) "Urban Opera: Investigating Metamodernism Through Architectural Practice
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  • Kasimir Sandbacka (University of Oulu) "Redreaming Europe: Intersubjective Dreaming as Metamodern In-betweenness in Jani Saxell’s Europe Series"

 

Panel 3: Metamodernism in Popular Culture (3pm - 4:15pm)

Moderator: Linda C. Ceriello (Kennesaw State University)

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  • Simon Radchenko (University of Turin) "More than a story: Metamodern strategies in the plot and gameplay of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding" (video game)

  • Graham Young (La Trobe University) "Through the Looking Glass: An Examination of Modern, Postmodern, and Metamodern Advertising from The Commonwealth Bank of Australia."

  • Gia Milinovich (Central Saint Martins) "Identifying Metamodern Alienation in Apple TV+'s Severance
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  • Daniel Vogel (Portland, OR)"It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The 'Meta' in Metamodernism"

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Day 1 Symposium Roundup Remarks (4:15pm - 4:40pm) 

Linda Ceriello

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Songwriters and Poets Panel (5pm - 6:30pm)

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Songwriters John Van Deusen, Costello and Greg Dember and poets Sierra Nelson, Antony Rowland and Scott Thurston and will perform songs and poems in the round while engaging in a curated discussion about how metamodern tropes factor into their creative work and their lives – how they 'respond' musically/poetically to e.g. dualities such as: irony/earnestness, skepticism/belief, fragmentation/unity.

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SUNDAY, SEPT. 11 (10am - 2:30pm PDT)

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Presentations and attendance through Zoom

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Schedule subject to change – check for updates. All listed times Pacific Time.

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Opening (10am -10:05am)

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Panel 4: Meta Issues in Metamodern Fiction, Art and Architecture (10:05am -11:05am)

Moderator: Usha Wilbers (Radboud University)

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  • Sara Upstone (Kingston University) "Metamodern Spaces in Contemporary Fiction"

  • Paula Romero Polo (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) "Spanish Metamodern Fiction: Cristina Morales’ Easy Reading as a Case Study"

  • Cesar Cornejo (University of Leeds) "Puno MoCA and the Question of Metamodernism in Latin America"

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Panel 5: Metamodern Visual Art and Architecture (11:20am - 12:20pm)

Moderator: Dennis Kersten (Radboud University)

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  • Rositsa Bratkova (UACEG, Sofia) "Metamodernist Features in the Architecture of Sir David Chipperfield"

  • James Benedict Brown (Umeå University) "Hedonistic sustainability and the Timber Tower"

  • Jenny Eden (Manchester Metropolitan University) "Metamodernism, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Painting"

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Panel 6: Applied and Performed Metamodernisms (12:35pm -1:35pm)

Moderator: Tom Drayton (University of East London)

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  • Benjamin Broadribb (University of Birmingham) "The ‘New Depthiness’ of Hamlet(s) in Lockdown"

  • Katie Elson Anderson (Rutgers University) "Metamodern 'Jawn'"

  • Jason Josephson Storm (Williams College) "The Advancement of Metamodern Knowledge"

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Open Discussion, Summary and Closing Remarks (1:45pm - 2:30pm)

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