Barcelona 5-8th September 2018 , EAA2018 Reflecting Futures
Bern 5-8th September, EAA2019 Beyond paradigms
It has been a long time since I was able to attend a conference. This was entirely down to lack of funds, as such is the life of the precarious academic. But my H2020 Research Fellowship stipulated a very active strategy of communicating the project aims, progress and results and I had also forgotten how much I enjoyed participating in conferences back when I could. Going to large (massive even – the EAA2018 numbered well over 3k participants, almost matched by EAA2019 at Bern) conferences has not been the preferred way of current academic engagement and for good reasons too: the cost of such events (registration fees alone amount to the low three figures usually, adding hotel and food expenses to this results in exorbitant amounts) is prohibitive not just for early career scholars, but also for grant-poor colleagues in permanent positions. In addition, the environmental impact of academics flying around the globe to participate in such events has also attracted some critical attention (see the FlyLess initiative ; recent opinion pieces in the Guardian ) and in the current environmental climate (literally and metaphorically), this is a concern to which many of us give serious consideration.
Online conferences held on twitter have been an innovative way to engage practitioners from a wide range of backgrounds and locations (see for example, the Public Archaeology Twitter Conference, already in its fourth year), and major learned societies, like the Society for Current Anthropology actually held their annual meetings entirely online for the first time on 2018 (https://displacements.jhu.edu ). But there is still something in the physical attendance at a conference that holds a fond level of attraction for me. Undoubtedly, physical participation presents a great opportunity to meet with colleagues, develop these half-baked ideas and force yourself to express them better in front of a knowing audience, networking, creating new alliances, associations, collaborations. But it is mostly the participation in an event outside the mundane that gives opportunity to consider and re-evaluate one’s practices from a range of perspectives; not a ‘ritual’ experience as such, but approximating it in some respects. There is social and affective value in existing outside the quotidian, and I am not just thinking of having a fancy meal and tasting the couleur locale. There is something beyond tourism that makes this experience valuable.
This got me thinking about conferences as Deleuzian assemblages (and let’s face it, who isn’t thinking of Deleuzian assemblages in relation to everything?). They do constitute quite vibrant arrangements (agencements) of not only researchers, but also of our ideas and practices. They can (and any good conference ought to) bring about the interstices, the fluidity, the in-betweens in those arrangements. Assemblages focus on processes and inter-relationships and if a conference is to be successful it should behave like an assemblage; finding the non-structural links, giving room to new becomings. These new becomings go beyond the typical/traditional networking and collaborations; they represent the moulding of new perceptions, approaches, and engagements emerging at the interstices of what I already work on and what I know little of. And while this can also (to an extent) be achieved in online interactions, the materiality of participating in a new topology, to my mind, can only be realised by being there