With apologies for cross-posting *Deadline: 6 October 2020* Dear list members, On behalf of the Critical Mediations Conference Committee, I am pleased to share the Call for Participation for the second part of the 2020 Critical Mediations <https://www.criticalmediations.org/> Salon Series: *CALL FOR PARTICIPATIONCritical Mediations Salon Series #2: Materialities* We invite researchers and practitioners that do critical research to reflect on the role of materiality in their work. From theoretical provocations that recognize “the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle” to how these effects reorganize our day to day, materiality provides a unique perspective to look at fields of critical inquiry. (Bennett 2009: 6) The precarity of our time and space (living through a global pandemic/ an election year for some/ a reckoning of privilege and power in racist institutions/ the eleventh hour of climate change to name a few) has also changed our relationship with materiality. As Bill Brown posits “we begin confronting the thingness of objects when they stop working for us: when the drill breaks, when the car stalls, when the windows get filthy, when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily.” (Brown 2001:4) *How does materiality inform your research/practice/art? How does it crop up in examinations of archives, policy, data, public life, imagination?* *Please submit a short abstract of how materiality articulates with your work in the linked form <https://forms.gle/2TktyAfeG6cJfWyVA> by midnight (PST) on Tuesday, October 6th.* *Important Dates:* - Participation Deadline Tuesday, October 6th at midnight (PST) - Mystery Artifact Release Monday, October 19th - CM Salon Series: Materialities Monday, October 26th at 12pm (PST) - 1 hour session The Call for Participation can be found here <https://mailchi.mp/fe470733b9d6/cfp_materialities>. We would be delighted to see how different fields are working through these topics. In solidarity, Paulina Lanz On behalf of the Critical Mediations Conference Committee *-* *Paulina Lanz* Doctoral Fellow | *USC* Annenberg Organizer | *Critical Mediations <http://criticalmediations.org/>* she/her/hers