UNSETTLED - Urban Routines, Temporalities and Contestations

The conference aims to explore conditions and conceptions of the unsettled. Urban life is characterized by diverse manifestations of instability which continuously stretch or redefine the social order and community infrastructures of cities: everyday struggles related to the capitalist system of production, revolutions in political life and political system overthrows, quests for dominance and their oppositions in political, social, economic, ecological or cultural domains. These unsettling practices simultaneously challenge and nourish a variety of idea(l)s of the city and public space as an inclusive place of liberation, cooperation, equal opportunities and shared (better) futures. The goal of the conference is thus to (1) understand the uncertainties, disturbances, inconsistencies, residuals and blind fields which constitute the urban both as lived space and the political idea(l), and (2) foster an inquiry into the socio-political potentialities of unsettling and re-settling urban routines, temporalities and contestations. Embedded in the City of Vienna Visiting Professorship (CoVVP) Programme at TU Wien , the conference theme works across urban practice and urban theory. In this context, the conference will emphasize urban culture and public space as areas for intersecting research and action which explores notions of the unsettled in contemporary cities. We invite an interdisciplinary public from universities, research institutes, offices, public authorities, activists, consultancies, and others to present critical, subversive, reflexive, interventionist, activist and visionary research, ideas and practices concerning notions of the unsettled.