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Places, people, stories 2011

Places, people, stories an interdisciplinary & international conference. Linnaeus University, Kalmar 28-30 September 2011

This conference investigates the relations between people and places, focusing on the role of stories in constructing meaning and affecting human emotions. Both rural and urban landscapes contain numerous locations that become meaningful places through their association with stories. These stories may be told orally by narrators or by material design; they may be permanent or temporary. The stories may be linked, for example, to the vegetation, the geology, the wild life, the cultural heritage, the mundane built environment, or metaphysical creatures. Whether such stories are historically accurate, purposefully invented or created entirely in residents’ or visitors’ minds is however less important than their potential to touch human beings.

1. to explore the relations between people, places, and stories in the context of notable trends in the Experience Society such as the role of affect, emotion, and sensual stimulation.
2. to investigate how the visual and performative arts can complement academic research by generating both new questions and new kinds of responses to topics at the interface between places, people and stories.

• What are the roles of stories in understanding place in our society? To what extent are these stories place-specific or audience-specific rather than generic? Are there places without stories?
• What are the aims and purposes of different kinds of stories about place? Which places and stories exert power over people? Which empower people? How are intersecting values and stakeholder interests contested in stories about place?
• What are the relationships between material and immaterial contexts of stories about places? How do both dimensions affect embodied human beings emotionally and intellectually?
• What is the significance of the tensions between enduring and ephemeral phenomena in stories about places? How do changes over time affect places, stories, and the human audiences appreciating them?
• Which stories are being told by the way a place is delimited from its surroundings? How significant is an opportunity to enter a place, whether in VR or RW?