Dottorato in Scienze Cognitive

Messina, Italy
25th - 27th of September 2019

The problem of how we engage the world surrounding us is a classic topic in humanities, but not only. Over the last years, many disciplines, sometimes coming from quite distant research fields, have tried to explore the effects of mediation on the human experience. Aesthetics, media studies, performance studies, anthropology, biology, and cognitive sciences have been attempting to problematize the very dichotomy that separates subjects and objects; bodies and things.  More specifically, this conference aims at exploring this idea through three different keywords: performance, technology, and narrativity.  According to the word chosen, specific questions arise.

Technology. We perceive and perform actions in the world. Quite often, though,  we engage a world that is not a natural one because, as humans, we have created artefacts that have reshaped our access to it. In this respect, technologies can be conceived as tools that extend our senses or, in a more radical way, as environments we live in. This idea is rooted in the popular notion proposed by Marshall McLuhan of "media as extensions of man", but has recently been pushed forward by other media scholars. Lambros Malafouris has provided a recent, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approach to this specific issue.

Narrativity. Language is our first technology. Through it, we have been able to produce stories that gave rise to culture. However, when language has been transferred on physical support by our ancestors as a mnemotechnic, we started to build fictional, enduring worlds. Narrativity is thus an essential engine for mediation, possibly the oldest human "tool" for the reconfiguration of the surrounding world. In this sense, cave art and other forms of representational signs can be considered as well as elements of this narrative explosion. 

Performance. One of the most controversial features of the ongoing debate concerns how the performance processes lie into a dimension of 'liveness' through one can experience an event while it is taking place. Most of the prominent scholars are referring to a concept of immediacy as an impossible epistemological horizon. Richard Schechner has argued that the idea for which live and mediated performance have collapsed into each other has been embraced even by the most influential researchers of Performance Studies. The question is how we can talk about experiencing in a mediatized environment at all.

Keynote Speaker:
Lambros Malafouris (Keble College, Oxford University)

Confirmed speakers:
Mauro Carbone (Universitè de Lyon)
Emanuele Castano (Sarajevo School of Science and Technology)
Michele Cometa (Università di Palermo)
Adriano D'Aloia (Università della Campania)
Stefano De Matteis (Università di Roma Tre)
Claudio Paolucci (Università di Bologna)

Call for papers:
A call for papers is open: deadline 10th of September.

Scholars interested in participating at the conference can submit their proposal through Easychair on the following link. If you don't have an Easychair account, please send an anonymous abstract of max 500 words to Francesco Parisi (fparisi@unime.it), along with a file containing personal information. Acceptance or rejection will be notified in a few days after the submission.

Scientific Committee:
Alessandro Capone (Research and Mobility PI)
Francesco Parisi
Pietro Perconti
Dario Tomasello

Organization:
Francesco Parisi

Organising secretary:
Assunta Penna

Venue
The conference will be held in two places. The first afternoon (25 September) and the last morning (27 September) the conference will take place at COSPECS. Here is the link that opens the position on Google Maps directly. But if you prefer the old way, here is the address: Dipartimento di Scienze cognitive, Psicologiche, Pedagogiche e degli Studi Culturali, Via Concezione, 6-8, 98122, Messina. 
The remaining day (26 September), instead, we will use the headquarter of the "Istituto per la ricerca e l'innovazione biomedica del CNR (IRIB-CNR)" on the seaside. Here the link and the address: Via Torre Bianca, 98164, Mortelle (we will reach this place together by using a private shuttle from the city centre).

Places of interest and meeting points
Messina is a narrow and long city but has an entirely circumscribed city-centre. We tried to concentrate every logistic aspect (like overnight stay and social activities) in a restricted and highly served area. So consider "Fontana di Orione" in Piazza Duomo as both the meeting point for taking the shuttle and as a reference point to book your hotel or B&B. Here is the link for Maps.

Public transportation
Public transportation can be sometimes tricky in Messina, but a couple of things can be useful to know. For example, if you are not able to find a stay in the city centre and are far from both the meeting point and the venue, it might be precious to know that you can use the tram to move fast along the north-south route of the centre; alternatively, you can get the bus n° 100 to reach the Istituto di Scienze applicate from almost every point along the north-south route. So, if you stay in the yellow half-rectangle pictured below (TRAM linea 28), you can use the tram to reach the Faculty; otherwise follow the red line, bringing you to the Istituto di Scienze applicate (last stop in the north direction). For more info visit the ATM Messina Website.