14-16 September 2017 in Adelaide | Interdisciplinary Conference | H2O: Life & Death

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Simon Zyrianov

 

The EU Centre for Global Affairs invites you to an interdisciplinary conference around the theme of WATER

H2O: Life & Death

The Conference is organised by the J. M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, The University of Adelaide and supported by the EU Centre for Global Affairs.

Waters are contested entities at the centre of most scientific discussions about sustainability. Discourse around water management underlines both the serious absence and devastating overabundance of water: rising sea levels compete against desertification; hurricanes and floods follow periods of prolonged drought. As we increasingly pollute, canalise and desalinate waters, the ambiguous nature of our relationship with these entities becomes visible. From the paradisiac and pristine scenery of holiday postcards through to the devastated landscapes of post-tsunami news reports, images of waters surround us. And while we continue to damage what most sustains us, collective precarity grows. It is therefore unsurprising that shifting our understanding, and subsequent use, of water has been described as one of the biggest – and most pressing – challenges of our time.

This conference aims to question and potentially re-imagine our cultural construction and representation of waters by asking: how can we explore and re-make what waters mean to us? We are interested in examining water as a simultaneously scientific and symbolic, material and imaginary, practical and aesthetic medium within lived communities.

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