Monsoon [+Other] Waters is the second in a series of symposia convened by the Monsoon Assemblages project. It will comprise inter-disciplinary panels, key-note addresses and an exhibition. It will bring together established and young scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines, knowledge systems and practices to engage in conversations about the ontologies, epistemologies, histories, politics, practices and spatialities of monsoon waters.
Confirmed key note speakers at the symposium are:
Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha: landscape architects based in Philadelphia, USA and Bangalore, India, whose work is focused on how water is conceptualised and visualised in ways that lead to conditions of its excess and scarcity, and the opportunities that its ubiquity offers for new visualizations of terrain and resilience through design.
Kirsten Blinkenberg Hastrup: environmental anthropologist based in Copenhagen, Denmark, whose work deals with social responses to climate change across the globe, currently centered in the Thule Area, NW Greenland.
When: 12th and 13th April 2018
Where: Room 416, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS
Event Programme
Thursday 12 April
14:00 | Registration
14:15 | Welcome: Harry Charrington
14:30 – 15:45 | Panel 1: Sub-merged Imaginaries
- Ifor Duncan, University of London: Fluvial Visions
- Pamila Gupta, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa: Ways of Seeing Water
- Jesse Ransley, University of Southampton: Living by, in and on water: Watery Assemblages in the Keralan Backwaters
15:45 | Tea
16:15 – 17:30 | Panel 2: Liquid Matters
- Megnaa Mehtta, London School of Economics: Ethical imaginations of the monsoons: The sweet and the salty of the Sundarbans delta of West Bengal
- Laura Denning, Bath Spa University: Rhyne and Huish
- Pushpa Arabindoo, University College London: Chennai’s Hydropolitics [and the urgent need for a seasonal (re)imaginary]
18.30 | Keynote 1: Anuradha Mathur, University of Pennsylvania + Dilip da Cunha, Columbia University
Friday 13 April
09.45 | Registration
10.00 | Welcome + Introduction: Lindsay Bremner
10.15 – 12:00 | Panel 3: Overflow + Risk
- Theresa Zimmermann, Free University of Berlin, Germany: Exceeding the imaginable
- Avantika Bhaksar + Jayshree Vencatesan, Care Earth Trust, India: Catching it where it Falls: Water Management Challenges in a Drought Prone District of Southern India
- David Wallace Mathewson, University of Westminster: Historic institutionalism and urban morphology in Jakarta: Moving towards building flood resiliency into formal planning and development
- Laura Verdelli, University of Tours, France: Integrating Flood risk in Urban and Architectural Projects
12.00 | Keynote 2: Kirsten Hastrup, University of Copenhagen, Denmark: Water Literacy: Challenges of Living with Troubled Waters
13.30 | Lunch
14:30 – 15:45 | Panel 4: Instrumentalising Material Waters
- Matthaus Rest, Max Planck Institute, Germany: Nepalko pani janatako lagani: Nepal’s Water for Nepal’s People?
- Anthony Acciavatti, Columbia University, USA: Ganges Water Machine: Changes of State Across the Ganga Basin
- Ranee Vedamuthu1 + R.H. Rukkumany, Anna University, India: Storing Monsoon waters: The Tank systems of Tamilnadu
15:45| Tea
16.15 – 17:30 | Panel 5: Registers + interlocutors
- Mary Geary, University of Brighton: Chronos and Kairos: Time, water, memory and the wayfaring riverbank
- David Whyte, University College London: Surfing out of the Atmosphere: Lamenting the loss of saltwater in Man-made wave pools
- Beth Cullen, University of Westminster: Eris as monsoon infrastructure: a re-reading of Chennai’s rainwater tanks
17:30 | Closing remarks: Exhibition + Drinks