Analog Afterlives 2020 : Obsolescence / Mediation / Re-Collection

In recent years, technologies once viewed as obsolescent have surged back into the mainstream. Contemporary consumers collect not only secondhand vinyl records, but also cassettes, VHS tapes, reel-to-reels, film cameras, slides, and prints; they purchase and use refurbished or newly produced record players, cassette decks, Polaroid cameras, and Super 8s. Meanwhile, contemporary artists and musicians engage once-obsolete formats and techniques in their practice, releasing albums on cassette, for instance, or using 16mm film. 

Why are these media formats and technologies experiencing such a resurgence? How do consumers and artists creatively engage them? And what do these contemporary engagements mean? This interdisciplinary symposium invites theoretically informed proposals for work drawing on ethnographic, historical, and practice-led approaches to these questions. Participants may address (but are not limited to) the following themes: 

• Contemporary cultures of collecting and practices of production 
• The diverse influences of race, gender, age, and/or social class 
• The aesthetics, politics, and social significance of these technologies 
• The analog-digital binary in cultural thought and practice 
• Capitalism and the political ecology of formerly obsolescent technologies