LOVE OBJECTS: engaging material culture - Conference 2008

(for higher resolution poster please click on image to right)

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For the updated List of Papers please click here.

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In order to assist in paying registration fees we now have a PayPal account in operation.

For the Delegate Fee:

For the Student Fee:

For the Speaker Fee:

For the Dinner Fee:

Please notify us by email if you encounter any issues with the above links.

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For registration and payment details and form please download the attached word document.

love-objects-reg-form-1-1.doc

Conference fee:
Delegate (€75)
Student (€35)

Conference buffet dinner, Wednesday 13th February (€30)

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The Design Research Group is delighted to announce our key note speakers at the Love Objects: engaging material culture Conference.

They will be Victor Margolin, Professor Emeritus of Design History Department of Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago and Louise Purbrick, Senior Lecturer in the History of Art and Design, University of Brighton.

Due to considerable interest we have decided to hold an additional half day session on Wednesday the 13th of February.

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The Design Research Group are organising a one day conference on the relationships between people and their objects, to be hosted by the Faculty of Visual Culture, National College of Art and Design, Dublin on 14th February 2008.

The relationship between people and their objects is a complex and multifaceted one, which is continually negotiated between the material and the immaterial. Objects are used as tokens of affection, symbolic gestures and statements of devotion and can be represented, employed and appropriated in a multitude of ways. They carry out important roles in our relationships with each other, either as bearers of significance, or through embodiment, engagement or control. The seductive quality of objects can also mediate our relationships with them, as they engage our emotions in both subliminal and visceral ways. In doing so they facilitate the projection and subversion of identities, and the creation of the contexts in which they operate.

Papers (which are intended to be collected in an anthology) will contribute to thematic areas, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Mind – memory, nostalgia and symbolic value; collecting, hoarding and losing objects; objects and rites of passage; the representation of love of / in objects; objects and devotion

• Body – sex, desire and romance; wrapping, covering and wearing; kitsch and ironic objects; the queer and the camp; objects as tools in sustaining / subverting gender roles; objectification and commodification

• Environment – the role of objects in the construction and performance of identities and relationships in public / private spaces; green objects and sustainable design

• Networks – mediating, signifying and negotiating relationships, including the interpersonal, the group and the political

Convened by the Design Research Group
Anna Moran
Sorcha O’Brien
Dr Ciáran Swan