at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR)
Friday 17 June, 2016 – 10.00 – 17.00, Rotterdam

You are cordially invited to join the launch of the Center for Public Imagination (CPI) and to participate in the Smart Imaginaries and/in Urban Politics session organized by the CPI in collaboration with the IABR 2016 on Friday June 17, 2016, Rotterdam.

PLEASE JOIN US BY REGISTERING AT info@cpi.center - ENTRANCE IS FREE

In what is called the ‘smart city’ or the ‘sentient city’, urban politics is increasingly rooted in a network of sensors that monitor processes ranging from traffic flow to public aggression, and from waste disposal to air pollution. In smart city imaginaries, streets are monitored by sensors, some of them hovering over the city in drones; buildings will be connected through the Internet of Things, and urban services will be permanently calibrated on the basis of real-time monitoring data. The smart city is at once a business model, a policy toolbox and an infrastructure for citizen participation. It is part (science) fiction, part political reality, part corporate sales talk, and part techno-utopian desire. City governments, technology corporations and design companies converge in creating the actually existing smart city. But because the smartness of the city is projected into the future, it is key to zoom in on the imagination of smartness, the changing vocabularies of politics in the smart city, and the desires that animate it. Accordingly, this event seeks to highlight the smart imaginaries operative in urban politics. This event, which will be tied to the launch of the Dutch inter-university Center for Public Imagination, explores smart imaginaries by focusing on questions such as:

• What happens to urban politics when government becomes an operating system, urban progress becomes optimization, and policy becomes a series of pilots, experiments, tests and demos?

• Which sites become political in the sense that they instantiate ways of caring for public issues, and how can those sites be interfaced with?

• What does it mean that to be political is to interface?

• What desires and which imaginaries animate urban smartness, efficiency and optimization?

In the morning, lectures by several speakers offer possible answers to such questions. They will be input for discussion and dazzling explorations in working groups in the afternoon. The afternoon sessions are open and structured loosely by the issues and concerns raised in the morning. They allow for a lively investigative atmosphere. Their results will be presented at the end of the afternoon in a final plenary discussion.

Speakers include Karen Maex, rector magnificus of the University of Amsterdam; Willem Schinkel, Professor of Social Theory, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Noortje Marres, Centre for Interdisciplinairy Methodologies, University of Warwick; Huub Dijstelbloem, Professor of Philosophy of Science and Politics, University of Amsterdam; and Maarten Hajer, curator IABR 2016 and professor of Urban Futures, Utrecht University.

For more info see http://iabr.nl/en 

As part of a broader project – Performances of Value: Competition and Competitions Inside and Outside Markets – we call for papers for a workshop on Competition(s) that will take place on June 10-11, 2016 at the Copenhagen Business School...

Big data are said to be transforming everyday life. At CIM, our researchers are currently leading and/or involved in several major data-driven projects.

David Stark - Bloomberg Interview (TV)

Russell Group Roadshow (at Warwick 9^th December)

PG Open Day (on-campus and online 26^th November)

Webpage: www.warwick.ac.uk/pgopenday

Booking form: https://your.warwick.ac.uk/form/pgopenday

We have 5 themed zones, with guided tours that link them… and the option to do DIY tours (Experience; Community; Find Your Place; Explore Your Course; Reflect)

Our day begins with an introduction to our University-wide postgraduate community, campus and facilities.

The second part of the day gives you a chance to explore our postgraduate courses in more depth at our showcase and (in many cases) within your departments of interest.

Finally, you can reflect on where your postgraduate journey might take you and (if you have time!) see more of the local area

There will be short talks on applications/ admissions, funding and careers

There will be drop ins for applications/ admissions, funding and careers

Visitors can meet current postgraduates (and in some departments academics and administrative staff)

… And of course specific information on your planned departmental events!

After the one-day conference 'Where Do Neoliberals Go After The Market', CIM's Will Davies and Nate Tkacz sat down with Professor Philip Mirowski to talk more about some of the main themes of the conference. Mirowski talks more about his recent research, including the developments that led to his new book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. The podcast also includes discussions of the reemergence of openness; the position of Popper within the Mont Pelerin Society; Wikipedia and Facebook; Neo-positivism and Big Data; and the limits of Social Studies of Finance in relation to Neoliberal political strategy.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/news/cim_podcast_with_philip_mirowski.mp3