Centre for Postdigital Cultures Launched

On Wednesday the 7 February, the Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC), a new Faculty Research Centre at Coventry University, held it’s ‘soft’ launch in the form a day-long event on the top floor of the Lanchester Library, where the CPC is now based. As part of this event we held workshops in the morning with the researchers, students and research associates that together make up the CPC, in order to collectively outline some of the values, politics and potentialities we would like to promote as a research centre.

To further celebrate our launch we invited 3 internationally esteemed artists and academics to deliver public keynote lectures in the afternoon, reflecting on some of the themes and research areas the centre will be exploring (i.e. Post-capitalist Economies; Creative Archiving and International Heritage; Digital Arts and Humanities; Posthumanities; Affirmative Disruption and Open Media and The 21st Century University and Art School).

Monika Bakke, Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, spoke about '(Non)life force in Postdigital Cultures 200 years after Frankenstein'. Cornelia Sollfrank an artist, researcher and university lecturer at Zürich University of the Arts delivered a talk on 'Learning from … {= Shadow Library}', while Mark Amerika, artist, author and Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado Boulder, explored 'Composing the 21st Century Art School' in his lecture, followed by a screening of an excerpt from one of his new video artworks.

The keynotes were introduced by a lecture by professor Gary Hall, executive director of the CPC, outlining the history and vision of Coventry University’s newest research centre, and Jacqueline Cawston, Deputy Director of the CPC, closed the event.

The talks and keynotes were followed by a drinks reception and a unique performance by the Sound Book Project, a group of collaborating artists and musicians who use books as instruments.

Visitors to our public launch called it an impressive and enjoyable event, with interesting talks which sparked ideas for future research. Video recordings of the public talks and lectures will be available soon.