Terminals

Terminals: The Cultural production of Death explores how the positing of death as fundamentally exterior to human power effaces the extent of our participation in the production of death. Terminals investigates how death is shaped in part through attempts to "know" death, and it considers the role played by particular disciplines and institutions of knowledge in the production of death.
The purpose of the conference is to contribute to ethical discussions about death by exploring the discursivities and technologies through which death is produced as well as the mechanisms of knowledge and mystification by which our lethal creativity is estranged from us.
Ways of "knowing" death, and ways of finding it unknowable are so important to our conception of the limits death places upon us that it is crucial to approach this subject through interdisciplinary work. Recent work in western philosophy has criticized the way death operates as a limit-concept; we are asked to see how the absoluteness of the boundary between life and death has functioned as a warranty for a host of distinctions (human/animal, masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual) whose social history has been painful and often lethal.

FRIDAY, APRIL 12

01:30-01:45 WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS

MOURNING AND TRAGEDY

01:45-02:00 Julie Carlson, Department of English, UCSB: Staging Death

02:00-02:45 Carol Jacobs, Department of Comparative Literature, SUNY, Buffalo: Dusting Antigone

02:45-03:30 Richard Corum, Department of English, UCSB: Selftermination

03:30-03:45 COFFEE BREAK

03:45-04:30 Eduardo Cadava, Department of English, Princeton University: The Whisper of Gazes: Walter Benjamin in the Image of Franz Kafka

04:30-05:15 Rebecca Comay, University of Toronto: Enjoy your Symecope: Mourning Technology in Proust

05:30-07:00 RECEPTION AT ART MUSEUM

SATURDAY, APRIL 13

THE ENDS OF DEATH

10:00-10:15 Elisabeth Weber, Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies, UCSB: A World Without Metaphor

10:15-11:00 Robert Jan van Pelt, Department of Architecture, University of Waterloo: From the Secret Reich of Two Million to the Reich Secret

11:00-11:45 Laurence A. Rickels, Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies, UCSB: Leave a Message. But Don't Forget to Breathe

11:45-12:30 William Haver, Department of History, SUNY Binghamton: Fucking with AIDS: Sovereign Destitution and the Practical Constitution of Being

12:30-02:00 Lunch

MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY

02:15-02:30 Victoria Vesna, Art Studio, UCSB: Terminal Identity: The Artist

02:30-03:15 Samuel Weber, Department of English, UCLA: Reading--To the End of the World

03:15-04:00 Fred Moten, Visiting Professor, New York University (Department of English, UCSB): "Death in Cut Time"

04:00-04:15 Coffee Break

04:15-05:00 François Ewald, Fédération francaise des sociétés d'assurances: Life Insurance

05:00-05:45 Wolf Kittler, Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies, UCSB: The Tragedy of Maxwell's Demon

UCSB ART STUDIO DEPARTMENT
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MUSEUM SHOWS

UC Santa Barbara

Francesca Guerra Pearson: Installation
Elizabeth Brown: Curator
Victoria Vesna: Curator

Exhibition Closing Sunday April 21, 1996
Floral Installation and * Funerary Banquet * Reception * Wake 5:00-7:00 pm, University Art Museum
Terminals: Considering the End is supported by a generous grant from the Intercampus Arts Program of the University of California. It will be shown simultaneously in art spaces at UC Irvine, Riverside, and Santa Cruz. The exhibition is presented in conjunction with Terminal, an interdisciplinary conference investigating "the cultural production of death," sponsored by the UC Humanities Research Institute and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, taking place at UC Santa Barbara April 12th-13th.

UC Riverside

Edward W. Earle: Curator
Carlos Sinde: Organizer
Sherrie Soto: Organizer

UC CAMPUS PARTICIPATION

Terminals: Considering the End is an artists' project by Victoria Vesna (Art Studio, UCSB) and Constance Samaras (Art Studio, UC Irvine) created for the World Wide Web

UC Irvine

Connie Samaras: Curator
Vince Galveo: Imaging, HTML, and Organizer

UC Riverside

Edward W. Earle: Curator
Carlos Sinde: Organizer
Sherrie Soto: Organizer

UC Santa Barbara

Jason Brown: Imaging and HTML
Robert Nideffer: Imaging, HTML, and Organizer
Victoria Vesna: On and offline Organizer, Curator.

UC Santa Cruz

Margaret Morse: Curator
E.G. Chricton: Curator

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conference information

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main galleries

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Terminals is funded by InterCampus Arts
the Humanities Research Institute of the UC system (UCHRI)
and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) of UCSB.