Shattering Iberia -Súper congreso

Me voy a dar un poco de bombo (y platillo) porque estoy orgullosa de presentaros:

Shattering Iberia

Cultural Responses to an Ongoing Crisis

March 4 and 5, 2014

Dwinelle 370
University of California,
Berkeley

Since the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble in 2008, Western countries have seen themselves immersed in a global financial crisis that continues today with unstoppable force. Unemployment rates have escalated to unprecedented levels throughout the Eurozone, leaving these two Iberian countries with dramatic unemployment statistics of 27% (52% for certain demographics). Unable to face the market and pay their loans and mortgages, many citizens are being forced to leave their houses turning eviction stories into an almost systematic narrative. European austerity measures designed to target the region’s unequal distribution of wealth and its external debt, have hit the Spanish and Portuguese economy with particular force, highlighting the weakness of their economic institutions and the inability of their governments to cope with an increasingly polarized society. Within this pessimistic atmosphere of escalating citizen distrust in governmental institutions, we are also witnessing the development of alternative means and forms of protest shaped within the consolidation of important collaborative networks based on new concepts of solidarity, self-management, social protest and cultural action.

Shattering Iberia: Cultural Responses to an Ongoing Crisis, relates to the changing definition of the concept of “crisis” in today’s world, focusing on the transforming roles of symbolic production, and how our current state of political and economic chaos claims for a redefinition of the purpose and nature of art and literature. What do new ways of social protest mean in terms of artistic production? Are we witnessing the birth of new types of collaborative popular expression? What is the role of the artist in this situation? And the Government? How do popular practices of collaborative work change our understanding of intellectual property? How can legislation account for these changing practices? We intend to engage in conversations that will shed some light on the current state of cultural production in this context of crisis, as well as explore the ways in which groups such as the 15M movement in Spain, or Que se lixe a troika in Portugal, as well as other similar protest movements in the Peninsula and abroad, are working towards reshaping, not only civil society and its relationship to business and politics, but to the role of art and literature in contemporary Iberia.

University of California, Berkeley

Department of Spanish and Portuguese

This fantastic event has been partially organized by the wonderful undergraduate students of the University of California, Berkeley, taking my course on the Spanish crisis and Catarina Gama’s Portuguese culture course. Please check out the schedule, and if you happen to be in the Bay Area, come listen to the fantastic work of our featured speakers!

Jordi Carrión * Amador Fernández Savater * Manuel Filipe Canaveira * Luis Conçalves * Germán Labrador Méndez * Luis Moreno Caballud * Cristina Montalvão Sarmento * and many more!

-Please visit our website for updated information on speakers and talks!

Image by Luís Santos

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

All talks will be held at Dwinelle Hall, room 370, UC Berkeley

7:00-8:00am
Breakfast and registration

8:00-9:30am
Special Session I: Documenting Protest: On Film and Crisis

Presiding: Catarina Gama, UC Berkeley and Instituto Camões

Steven Marsh, University of Illinois at Chicago, “¡No nos representan!: Performative Documentary as Militant Film, the 15M archive”

Magdalena Romero-Córdoba, CUNY Graduate Center/ FIT, “Sinfonía Tetúan o el imaginario colectivo de la ciudad”

Patricia López-Gay, Bard College, “On Shattering Iberia, Broken Windows and Futures Market: Documenting Memory through Fiction”

Carlos Vargas and Patrícia Oliveira, FCSH-UNL /CIAC / Observatório Político, “’Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.’ Political Readings of the Invisible in the Iberian Peninsula”

9.30-9.45 — Coffee break

9.45-10.30
Artist Spotlight

Introducing: Alex Saum-Pascual, UC Berkeley

Jordi Carrión, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, “Literatura en estado crítico”

10.30-10.45 — Coffee break

10.45-12.45
Featured Session: Cultural Responses to the Iberian Crisis. Part I

Presiding: Emilie Bergman, UC Berkeley

Luis Moreno-Caballud, University of Pennsylvania, “La crisis neoliberal como una crisis de autoridad cultural: expertos, intelectuales y el fantasma de la modernidad”

Germán Labrador-Méndez, Princeton University, “¿Lo llamaban democracia? La crítica estética de la política en la transición española y el imaginario de la historia en el 15M”

Amador Fernández-Savater, Activist and Researcher, “Hacer plaza: el 15-M como revolución cultural”

Respondent: Cristina Montalvão Sarmento, ISCSP-ULisboa / Observatório Político

12.45-1.45 — Lunch break
Ishi Court, Dwinelle Hall

1.45-3.45
Featured Session: Cultural Responses to the Iberian Crisis. Part II

Presiding: Candace Slater, UC Berkeley

Luis Gonçalves, Princeton University, “1994/2011: Os rótulos sociais de duas gerações portuguesas em crise”

Manuel Filipe Canaveira, FCSH-UNL / Observatório Político, “Segurar o lobo pelas orelhas. O difícil relacionamento ibérico em tempos de crise”

Cristina Montalvão Sarmento, ISCSP-ULisboa / Observatório Político, “A Crise de futuro”

Respondent:Germán Labrador-Méndez, Princeton University

3.45-4.15 — Coffee break

4.15-5.30
Special Session II: Paradigmas políticos em crise

Presiding: Michael Iarocci, UC Berkeley

Diego S. Garrocho, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, “España o la crisis como paradigma”

Alessandra Silveira and Joana Abreu, Universidade do Minho, “Da liberdade das artes no direito da União Europeia – democracia e direitos fundamentais em tempos de crise”

Luis Iñaki Prádanos, Miami University, “El decrecimiento y sus manifestaciones culturales para salir del imaginario dominante”

5.30-5.45 — Coffee break

5.45-7.00
Special Session III: Okupas, activistas y monstrous: ¿Hacia un nuevo sujeto político?

Presiding: Sonia Cajade, UC Berkeley

Javier Entrambasaguas-Monsell, University of Maryland Baltimore County, “Mercado de valores de Mercedes Álvarez. Necesidad del movimiento okupa en el 15.M”

Eduardo Matos-Martín, New York University, “Vida desnuda y crisis en la España actual en la novela Democracia de Pablo Gutiérrez”

Roberto Robles-Valencia, University of South Alabama, “Basuras, monstrous y cultura: hacia el cambio político”

7.00-8.00
Reception