Second International Symposium
'New Babel. Challenges of the Plural World'

Historically, the myth of Babel has assumed responsibility for the geographical, cultural, and linguistic division. Moreover, it is proposed as an explanatory account of the origins of the concept of social. It represents the longing for the conquest of the utopian heaven and the consequent seizure of power to exercise a new order and subjugation; an attitude sanctioned by division, confusion, and diaspora. This historical problem, which in myth has its origin in the Judeo-Christian hermeneutic, explains, in the same way, many other historical phenomena such as that of translation understood as a tool of homogenization, restitution of unity and the penultimate of the exegeses of myth.

Starting with the ideas of conquest, punishment, difference and dispersion as its primary meanings, the meaning of Babel has expanded through the different historical phases until reaching our contemporary times.

This multiplication of meanings begins to become visible in parallel to the disintegration of the medieval theological world that had sustained its representation and meaning until the 16th century, to become a pictorial and literary object, transforming the tower of Genesis into a civil image, a permeable and undefined symbol of multiple identities.
From this moment on, Babel has served as a semantic framework for subsequent historical processes: from the exploration of the New World in the 16th century as the origin of global cartography, through the technological revolution of the 19th century, the commercial conquest of the sky in the 20th century, to the invasion of the virtual in life processes in the 21st.

In this prolonged diachrony, Babel remains a nuclear explanation for the why and how of the present day. Our current historical paradigm, which we call Globalization, has appeared as an attempt to twin the multiculturality that was mythologically born in Babylon. On the other hand, and as far as the visual formulation of the myth is concerned, the ubiquity and horizontal expansion of the virtual network has replaced the physical materiality of the tower and its aspiration and representation of the vertical axis.

However, Globalization as a process especially present in the western geography of the planet, which has built so many vertical, national, racial, identity and historical towers of Babel, has proved futile, with great weaknesses, gaps and limits.

re-conceptualize the ideas of social models, national identity, limits, transgressions...
to think about current social dynamics and their translation into artistic practices
relativize national approaches in favor of global cartographies
decompose the hierarchical, chronological, or formal reading of history
to expose examples of studies/practices based on the rhizomatic/cartographic model
explore the potential of disorder and simultaneity as new methodologies
reconsider cultural multiplication and difference as a valid social schema
rethink the utopia/dystopia semantic arc today
to hypothesize on Globalization as a real or transitional scenario
to point out the value of the COVID-19 pandemic in the construction of a new social model
to expose the evolutionary mismatch between technological development and policy management in our current scenario

Deadlines and conditions:
Individual or collective proposals are accepted.
Proposals must contain a title, abstract (500 words) and BIO/CV (250 words).
Send to the following address: maria.benditoub.edu
Languages: Spanish and English
Duration of the presentation: 20 minutes
Deadline: until September 6, 2021

Keynotes November 4, 2021:
Isabel Valverde, Departament d'Humanitats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Anthony Cascardi, Dean of Art and Humanities, University of California, Berkeley.

Keynotes November 5, 2021:
Joan Sureda, Departament d'Història de l'Art, Universitat de Barcelona.
Francisco Jarauta, Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad de Murcia.

Director:
María Bendito, Departament d'Història de l'Art, Universitat de Barcelona.

Organised by:
AGI I Art, Globalization, Interculturality
https://artglobalizationinterculturality.com/es/

Director:
Anna Maria Guasch

In collaboration with:
Departament d'Història de l'Art, Facultat de Geografia i Història, Universitat de Barcelona.