"Making Badlands"

Place: Bundaberg CQU Campus
Date: 1st and 2nd December, 2005

Call for papers
Call for artistic and creative works
Bundaberg
Registration
Travel and Accommodation
Conference Program
Organisers
Special Offers
Sponsors

MAKING BADLANDS - the Conference

A conference hosted by Transformations and the Bundaberg Media Research Group, Central Queensland University.

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Ross Gibson, New Media and Digital Culture, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney.

Deadline for abstracts and multimedia proposals: 1st August, 2005, to be submitted to any one of the conference organisers (see below).

Ross Gibson’s book Seven Versions of an Australian Badland (UQ Press, 2002) describes the central Queensland region as haunted by a violent colonial past and fraught with troubling incidents that make it an Australian badland. This conference will address the concept of an Australian badland. What it means to speak of a space as a badland, its relation to history, the imaginary, and to questions of regionality, representation, myth, archival authority, and the formation of narrative and discursive knowledge.

The conference will also examine how imaginary spaces are actively produced through technological, aesthetic, conceptual, visual, audio and other sensory engagements with the materiality of regional contexts, and develop ways in which these may be contested through alternative practices of making that may lead to more progressive and empowering visions of regions.

A region may be considered as a space of multiplicities, greater than, and hence excessive to, the centres found within it – a site of boundaries, margins, peripheries, and frontiers, with contingent and transversal relations to any 'core' centre. All centres are regional, and all regions have their centres. Urban, suburban, inner and outer metropolitan, town and country, outback, bush, are all regions capable of both producing and resisting badlands as cultural imaginaries.

The conference will be divided into a critical, reflective component consisting of panels and individual papers presented and discussed on the first day, and a practical component in which specific projects and material practices will be workshopped and examined on the second day. This second component will include the work of artists and cultural workers, as well as other stakeholders in the production of regional imaginaries. These may include members of indigenous communities, social and welfare activists, environmental workers, and others concerned with implementing new ways of thinking about and perceiving badland regional imaginaries.

Call for Abstracts and Papers

We invite abstracts (200 words) for presentations from academics, researchers, writers, artists and cultural workers on any topic related to the making of badlands, both past and present. A selection of papers will be published in the refereed journal Transformations.

Deadline: 31st August, 2005.

Call for Artistic and Creative Works

During the conference, we intend to display a series of artistic and creative works digitally, either on computer screen or digital projectors. We invite submissions for works that are either web-based, or can be displayed on CD or DVD. Thus, these works could be Flash or Director CD-ROM projects, web projects, slideshows of photographs, interactive works, video projects, or any combination of the above.

The themes for artistic and creative works follow those specified for papers to be presented. That is, we seek artistic and creative projects that engage with or invite reflection on the concept of ‘badlands’ or associated concepts; on the production of badlands as spaces, in the real and the imaginary; on their representation and their history; on regionality and the centre/periphery, interior/exterior distinction; on the delimitation of space into go and no-go zones; on the haunting of the land and the mind.

Please submit either written proposals, URLs or CD/DVD media. Multimedia projects will also be considered for exhibition in the ArtSpace section of the Transformations website.

Deadline: 31st August, 2005.

Bundaberg

Bundaberg is a regional coastal city some five hours drive north of Brisbane. Its subtropical climate and pleasing town and country aspects, close to beaches and hinterland scenery, make it an ideal place to sojourn and to make new friends and gain new perspectives in a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere.

See more about Bundaberg at http://www.sunzine.net/bundaberg/

Registration

Registration Fee $50 (Concession $35)

Conference Dinner

There will be an informal conference dinner at the "Old Bundy Tavern"

Travel and Accommodation

Travel

Air travel to Bundaberg is via Brisbane. Bundaberg is a short 45 minute plane trip from Brisbane, or a breezy 4-5 hour drive along the Bruce Highway. There are also train and bus services to Bundaberg.

Accommodation

There are many motels and other accommodation in and around Bundaberg. Some motels are listed here, and others can be sourced via the accommodation link at http://www.sunzine.net/bundaberg/

Motels close to the conference venue (CQU BUndaberg Campus)

Sugar Country Motor Inn
220 Bourbong St,
Bundaberg
07 41531166

Villa Mirasol Motel
225 Bourbong St.,
Bundaberg
07 41544311

Conference Program

The conference program is available here - both as a daily schedule, and as a list of presenters and abstracts.

Daily Schedule (PROVISIONAL)
Abstracts and Presenters

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Offers

Graduate Student Subsidies

We have limited funds to assist graduate students who present a paper or artistic work at the conference.

Please indicate in the appropriate box in the online registration form.

FREE Stubby holders!!!

Well, you can't beat that!

Conference Sponsors

The "Making Badlands" conference has been funded by:

Faculty of Informatics and Communication,

Faculty of Arts, Heath and Sciences, and the

School of Humanities.

at Central Queensland University.