RAIL

Demos: Life in Common

Banff Research in Culture 2015 – Summer Research Residency

June 1, 2015 – June 19, 2015

Application deadline: December 10, 2014

The word demos names ‘the people’, and thus democracy is, at its most basic constitutive level, the shared power of people thinking and acting. Democracy is grounded upon the capacity of the people to narrate and decide the shape of collective life. But the ‘democracy’ we experience and live with today has devolved into practices of state sovereignty and governmentality, a society characterized by social and economic inequality, and an under-represented and disenfranchised electorate. And it seems, too, that hopes in technology as a mechanism that might yet create a new common ground have failed to achieve their promised ends.

Demos: Life in Common invites participants to consider the ways in which we constitute and experience collective life in this century. We seek to bring together artists, writers, researchers, and cultural producers who in their work explore the ways in which we might reinvigorate democratic life today—not just ‘democratic’ in its narrow, political sense, but as life in common in which being and belonging engenders the full flourishing of individuals and communities. What new forms might politics take today—a time that bears little resemblance to those bygone centuries that gave birth to many of our political structures and imaginings? How is collective self-determination mobilized and what do recent events demonstrate about the will of the people and the will of the state? What is the role of new technologies in enhancing or impeding social equality? Might it yet help to create new forms of community and belonging? And how might contemporary cultural, artistic and intellectual activities enliven the belief of the dêmos in its own capacities and possibilities?

“Demos” also names cultural and social practices that suggest other ways in which we might pursue our inquiries during this program. A demo is also an essai—an attempt, a test, an experiment in sound that allows musicians to record their own creative efforts and to share their ideas with others. And, demos are what groups engage in when they want to draw attention to problems and limits that existing structures of government, law or economy can’t address or even apprehend. Demonstrations are a site at which the demos tries to upend the ossified language of culture and politics by upsetting the patterns of the quotidian, taking to the streets and affirming their collective displeasure en masse. Over three weeks, participants will engage in experiments of thinking, action, and making—demos that challenge the self-certainties and pieties of existing structures and practices, and so help to envision and enable renewed forms,of democratic life.

Further info, including application information, can be found at:

http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1534

(Contact: Brandy Dahrouge: brandy_dahrouge@banffcentre.ca)