When: Friday, November 11th, 16:30 a.m.
Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague and online (please contact cefres[@]cefres.cz
Language: English

The fourth session of CEFRES seminar will be hosted by two researchers:

Jan Kremer (PhD candidate, Charles University / CEFRES) :
Ludohistorical Representations of Religion and Spirituality: Historical Culture and Digital Remediation

Abstract

The paper analyzes digital medievalism constructed in Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Warhorse 2018). It focuses on ludic mechanics, characters and game lore related to religious elements and tries to contextualize them within both the past and contemporary artifacts of Czech popular history.

Julien Wacquez (post-doctorant, CEFRES) :
Approaching Matters: Socio-Historical Perspectives on What Is to Come

Abstract

It is impossible to know what will happen, to determine what the future will be like. What will the world after the multiple ongoing crises look like, for example? A scientific investigation cannot rigorously account for it, for this future world does not yet exist—so it is not. We can neither experience it, concretely live it, nor observe it, collect data about it. And perhaps that this future world will never happen.

The project Approaching Matters considers this absence of being, this lack of phenomenality and observability, as a driving force for a range of practices specialized in bringing the future into presence. If all our everyday actions tend—consciously or unconsciously—towards a certain future, there are fields of activities that explicitly intend to take charge of the future in the present tense, be they scientific or technologic, administrative or managerial, spiritual or esoteric, artistic or literary. Science Fiction, Futurology, Prediction: all these practices offer us a repertoire of scenarios, speculations, models, simulations and other methods to achieve the impossible task of producing “knowledge” about what cannot be known—the future.