Uncertainty inflects knowledge and its conditions of production. Risk governs our decision making. Indeterminacy conditions our arguments. Though we like to think that the past structures the future, so too does indeterminacy, change and the unexpected. Might, therefore, uncertainty, instead of being an invisible after-effect in epistemological equations, become a mode of critical engagement?
With the future marked by uncertainty–political, environmental, technological, and even institutional– it is imperative to explore how scholars confront uncertainty topically, methodologically, and professionally. As part of the 50thanniversary of the program in History, Theory, and Criticism (HTC) at the MIT School of Architecture + Planning, we, HTC graduate students, encourage a collective look toward this issue.
To critically consider uncertainty is not to resolve it but rather to wrestle with its role in shaping our work. How does uncertainty manifest in encounters with archives, objects, affects and other subjects of inquiry? How do we grapple with the partiality of information or the absence of particular perspectives and stories? In writing and other forms of scholarship, where do we reveal or obscure uncertainties? How do we navigate the reality that uncertainty is experienced differently and unequally across geographies, temporalities, and bodies?
Along with self-reflective questions of methods and contemporary positionality, this conference seeks to engage historical case studies of uncertainty. How did architects and planners deal with uncertain political situations, supply chains, and construction standards? How did they manage risk in the schematic, construction, or implementation phases–financial, environmental, professional or otherwise? When does uncertainty in design lead to serendipitous results? How has the production, trade, collection, reception, or study of artworks been marked by uncertainty, including disputed cases of attribution, the opaque nature of artistic intent, and even the skeptical public reception of the avant-garde?
The 2025 HTC Graduate Colloquium will collaboratively probe the contours of historical knowability and attend to yet unmade futures in and across the disciplines of architecture, art, design, urbanism, and allied fields.Uncertainty offers space for reimagination, for creatively rethinking the future of our disciplines — an urgent endeavor considering compounding pressures of unfolding environmental and humanitarian crises in addition to increased scrutiny of the “value” of the humanities in our universities.
To this end, we encourage submissions in one of two formats: 15-20 minute papers that engage with uncertainty as a historical thematic; or position papers (approx. 1,200 words) that critically engage uncertainty as a contemporary problematic and potential of our fields. Through paper presentations and workshops, the colloquium will provide a vital forum for collaboratively envisioning the future of the field.
Submissions might consider:
●Historical technologies, practices, or techniques for measuring or managing uncertainty
●Aesthetics and materiality of uncertainty, including chemically changing or otherwise unstable or indeterminate objects
●Working with partial, lost, or inaccessible archives
●Projects of imagining alternative futures, e.g. Afrofuturisms, parafiction, cli-fi, etc.
●Spaces and structures which are contested, temporary, illegal, or otherwise uncertain
●Academic uncertainties (tenure, field futures, adjuncting, navigating power relations)
●Novel technologies, eg. AI,Natural language processing (NLP)
●Collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and creative modes of scholarship
To be considered, please submit a 300-word abstract and a CV in a single PDF document to htc.uncertainty@gmail.com by Oct. 25, 2024.
