Catastrophe, Cataclysm and the Singular Accident Symposium

Catastrophe, Cataclysm and the Singular Accident was a one-day symposium open to the public during which artists, scholars, researchers and members of the community engaged in a discussion of the theoretical, aesthetic and political ramifications of tsunamis and technological disasters, epidemics and tectonic shifts, evictions and colonialisms, cataclysmic trajectories and avoidable/unavoidable outcomes. The papers explored both theoretical and practical implications of quantum thinking and chaos theory’s relation to art and consciousness; the mobile boundaries between human subjectivity and objects; the confluence of technological advancement and severity of accident; amputation and transplantation as motors of the succession of forms; digital technology and simulation; distributed consciousness moving from egocentricism to more ecological modes of thinking and being; the fusion of nature and technology in the catastrophic event; and concrete encounters with action against capitalist accumulation through dispossession.

Keynotes: Dr. Paul Thomas (Sydney, AU), David Rokeby (Toronto, CA),Catherine Richards (Ottawa, CA)

Speakers: Jonah Corne, Tom Kohut, Andrew John Milne, Praba Pilar, Melentie Pandilovski, Michelle Teran