Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

[reblogged from URB-GEOG-FORUM listserv]

Art and geography: aesthetics and practices of spatial knowledge…

International interdisciplinary conference (Lyon, Feb 2013)
Call for papers, presentations and proposals

With affiliation and support from Médiagéo, a program of the French National Research Agency, we are pleased to invite proposals to participate in a conference which will explore the contours of geographic and artistic practice, examine their porous boundaries, and delve into all manner of art-geography linkages, interrelationships and hybridizations.

Context: The contemporary art world has gravitated toward notions of space and place with

Yes, I am serious and I do not understand where the problem is? It is such a golden opportunity for increasing the revenue of various states, not to forget that it will also streamline the influx of foreign Indians (The Indians who do not belong to a particular state) in every state. I am not in favor of splitting India like USSR because lets face it, if that happens, some of the newly created countries will end up worse than Congo, Zimbabwe and Burundi. Let us look at a few incidences and headlines to understand why a Visa is such a good idea:

– Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray are fighting like two cats trying to snatch the limelight for who will declare Maharashtra as a Maratha only zone. They have this specific problem with Biharis and they have done everything from beating them up and now asking for a permit…

The Mobile Lives Forum, an institute for research and discussion created by the SNCF, is pleased to invite you to its 2^nd International Meetings. This year’s theme:

Sustainable mobilities in peri-urban areas?

What lifestyle in the alter-urbain/suburban-rural/citta diffusa/Zwischenstadt ?

January 24-25, 2013

La Maison Rouge (Paris 12^th arrondissement)

Today, the media and certain professional fields regard the peri-urban as a repellent space lacking in qualities, where wasted space and energy, social segregation and landscape uniformity can be observed with unparalleled intensity.

Some, however, defend the idea that this space is much more complex and diverse than these stereotypes would have us believe. From this perspective, it could even constitute a place of adaptability to the economic, energy and climate crises of the 21^st century.

At this event, we will call this hypothesis into question from a mobility standpoint, by comparing the views of European researchers, artists…

A book launch for The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan will be held next week in DC.

The book is an expansion of Kaplan’s article in the Atlantic, and has already attracted the attention of geographers in a 2009 piece in the journal Human Geography (paywall) by John Morrissey, Simon Dalby, Gerry Kearns, and Gerard Toal.

This looks like being a big splashy affair, with David Ignatius of the Washington Post hosting an event at the Willard InterContinental Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Interesting to see that Kaplan is now “Chief Geopolitical Analyst” with Stratfor, the security firm which had its emails hacked earlier this year.