CHAT Festival CFP--Deadline Jan. 5!

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Students -

As you may know, the first CHAT Festival (February 2010) was hosted by the Institute for the Arts & Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (http://www.chatfestival2010.com/).  At that time, Duke University and North Carolina State University agreed to host subsequent festivals, with the hope that the event would be a regular venue for showcasing the innovative work being done in the region. We are all familiar with the phenomenon of only learning about the interesting work our colleague across the hall – or on the neighboring campus – is doing by hearing a talk at a national conference or exhibition. Our hope is to build up sustainable conversations within the community through this event, to seed the growth of collaborative, project-based work in the arts and humanities, and foster reflection on the implications of this kind of work for teaching, research, and public arts and humanities efforts.

Duke is hosting the CHAT Festival February 6-9, 2012, with the generous sponsorship of the Vice-Provost for the Arts, the Visual Studies Initiative, Information Science + Information Studies, the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University Libraries, and other campus partners. We'll have talks, galleries, performances, poster sessions, art walks, and more.  Events will take place on the East and West campuses. Our theme this year, "Hybridity," highlights both the integration of theory and practice that is so central to technology-inflected work in the Arts and Humanities, as well as the new kinds of knowledge and artistic production that emerge when we focus less on disciplines and more on common problems, questions, and ideas of interest across our disciplinary affiliations. Therefore, for this CHAT we are asking you to share your *projects* - critical, creative, technical, and all of the above.  Project presentations could take the form of a media kiosk, a printed poster, an installation, a talk, a video, a performance, a panel or some other provocation. We are as interested in collaborative process as in final products - think of CHAT as an interdisciplinary working group assembling for a mass feedback and critique session, as well as a celebration of the amazing and innovative work being done all around us already! And students take note: we know that sometimes you are the ones leading the way in innovation, so don't be shy about submitting your critical and creative work.

For more information, and to submit your proposals, please visit our website:

http://www.chatfestival2012.org

For full consideration, proposals should be submitted by January 5, 2012.

Looking forward to seeing you all in February!

Sincerely,

Victoria Szabo
CHAT Festival 2012 Director
http://www.chatfestival2012.org
chatfestival2012@gmail.com