shortness - a very short conference and a very long dinner

Deadline Friday 20 March 2009

This event will bring together practitioners and theoreticians of the
humanities, arts and sciences to extol or berate, to discuss, explore and
explain shortness in all its spatial and temporal manifestations.

Topics that Shortness aims to cover include: aphorisms, txt msgs, short
attention spans, nanophilology, music samples, ephemeral relationships, short
narratives, punch lines, orgasms and other short-lived entities and phenomena
(insects and fashion).

The conference itself will only last a few hours and will be followed by a
very long dinner. Guests will be entertained by short dinner speeches and the
whole event will be supplemented by short films and various interventions.

This call invites submissions for presentations or performances of up to 7
minutes to take place during the long dinner. Please note that we cannot
cover any expenses incurred nor can we accommodate installations.

Speakers include DJ Spooky, Sadie Plant, Tom Shakespeare, Clare Wigfall and
Steven Connor amongst others. The Compère for the dinner will be Nicholas
Parsons.

Please send an abstract of no more than 200 words to the organisers and
include a short bio of no more than 100 words.

Contact:
short.at.tategooglemail.com

Shortness is organised by Irini Marinaki, Konstantinos Stefanis, Ricarda
Vidal and Tate Modern Public Programmes in collaboration with The London
Consortium and the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of
Advanced Study (University of London).