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<p><strong>Radical Open Access Conference<br>
</strong></p>
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<p> </p>
<p><em>15th - 16th of June 2015</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Two days of critical
discussion and debate in support of an ‘alternative’ vision
for open access and scholarly communication. The aim of the
conference is to explore some of the intellectually and
politically exciting ways of understanding open access that
are currently available internationally. A particular
emphasis is placed on those that have emerged in recent
years in the arts, humanities and social sciences.</p>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This conference is organized
by <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://disruptivemedia.org.uk/">
The Centre for Disruptive Media</a> at The School of Art
and Design at Coventry University.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Attendance and
participation is free of charge. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Register and find out more at: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://radicalopenaccess.disruptivemedia.org.uk/">
http://radicalopenaccess.disruptivemedia.org.uk/</a></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Confirmed Speakers</strong>: An Uncertain Commons,
Janneke Adema, Dominique Babini, Armin Beverungen, Mercedes
Bunz, Marcus Burkhardt, Joe Deville, Kathleen Fitzpatrick,
Christian Fuchs, Rupert Gatti, Gary Hall, David Harvie, John
Holmwood, Sigi Jöttkandt, Eileen Joy, Chris Kelty, Sarah
Kember, Andreas Kirchner, Christopher Land, Stuart Lawson,
Tara McPherson, David Ottina, Nate Tkacz, Marisol Sandoval,
Joanna Zylinska</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Projects and Presses</strong>:
Culture Machine, CLACSO, Discover Society, Ephemera,
Goldsmiths Press, Journal of Peer Production, Journal of
Radical Librarianship, Limn, Mattering Press, MayFly Books,
MediaCommons Press, MLA Commons, Meson Press, Open
Humanities Press, Photomediations Machine, Punctum Books,
Scalar, Spheres, tripleC, Vectors</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p><strong style="font-size: 16pt;">Concept</strong></p>
<p><br>
<strong></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>There is no document of
civilization which is not at the same time a document of
barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of
barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it
was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical
materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far
as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history
against the grain.</em>
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> (Walter
Benjamin, <em>Theses on the Philosophy of History</em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While open access has at long
last entered the mainstream in the global West and North, it
is a particular version of it that is being taken up so
widely. Open access is currently being positioned and
promoted by policy makers, funders and commercial publishers
alike primarily as a means of serving the knowledge economy
and helping to stimulate market competition. This version
has become so dominant that even those on the left of the
political spectrum who are critical of open access are
presenting it in much the same terms: as merely assisting
with the ongoing process of privatising knowledge, research
and the university.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Rather than ‘working with the
grain’ of neoliberalism’s co-option of open access, the
Radical Open Access conference will reclaim it by asking:
what is the potential for supporting and taking further some
of the different, more intellectually and politically
exciting, ways of understanding open access that are
currently available internationally? A particular emphasis
will be placed on those that have emerged in recent years,
in the arts, humanities and social sciences especially.
Radical Open Access will thus provide the impetus for
bringing together many of those currently involved in
experimenting with ‘alternative’ forms of open access: both
to discuss the long, multifaceted critical tradition of open
access, its history and genealogies; and to examine a broad
range of radical open access models. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As part of its refusal to
concede open access, the conference will endeavour to
strengthen alliances between the open access movement and
other struggles concerned with the right to access, copy,
distribute, sell and (re)use artistic, literary, cultural
and academic research works and other materials (FLOSS, p2p,
internet piracy etc.); and to stimulate the creation of a
network of publishers, theorists, scholars, librarians,
technology specialists, activists and others, from different
fields and backgrounds, both inside and outside of the
university. In particular, the conference will explore a
vision of open access that is characterised by a spirit of
on-going creative experimentation, and a willingness to
subject some of our most established scholarly communication
and publishing practices, together with the institutions
that sustain them (the library, publishing house etc.), to
rigorous critique. Included in the latter will be the asking
of important questions about our notions of authorship,
authority, originality, quality, credibility,
sustainability, intellectual property, fixity and the book -
questions that lie at the heart of what scholarship is and
what the university can be in the 21<sup>st</sup> century.
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<br>
-------------<br>
Gary Hall<br>
Research Professor, School of Art and Design, Coventry
University<br>
Co-founder of Culture Machine <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.culturemachine.net">http://www.culturemachine.net</a><br>
Director of Open Humanities Press<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org">http://www.openhumanitiespress.org</a><br>
Website <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.garyhall.info">http://www.garyhall.info</a><br>
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