Hybrid Theory Conferences
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Hybrid Theory Conferences were a series of academic conferences held at Yale University from 1997 through 2001.
The Hybrid Theory Conferences were started in New Haven at Yale University during the late 1990's, and held during the last week in April of 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. It was founded by students from within the Comparative Literature, Physics, and Philosophy Departments, who took to calling themselves Hybridists.
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[edit] History
The Hybrid Theory Conference founders started the series as a localized attempt to break down the walls said to exist between between town and gown: the University community and the Town inhabitants and workers. Speakers at the different conference events included members of the Yale community (including professors, graduate students and plant operation workers), local landlords, townspeople and politicians from New Haven, union representatives from Bridgeport Brewing, and many others. Part of the mission of the conference was to reinvigorate the format of public speaking into what the conference founders regarded as the "dying body" of the academic conference format.
[edit] Format
The format of the conferences were derived in part from the Situationist International and French Surrealism and differed each year. Presentations at the second conference in 1998 were restricted to 3, 5, 10, or 20 minute durations. By radically shortening presentations down to nothing more than a couple of gestures entwined around a sentence or two in some cases, the Hybridists attempted to remove the long wait for meaning typical of the academic setting and reconnect conferences to more succinct and effectual public spectacles. In part they saw the trope of Parataxis infecting the contemporary media landscape, and thought it was under represented in the Academy.
[edit] Themes
The Conferences were loosely ordered around themes. The advertised themes were: 1997: "Christ and the Shore: The Littoral Dollar" 1998: "Circularity and Odor: Olfactory Gaming" 2000: "God, Eyeglasses, and Ayn Rand" 1999: "Diabetics, Syphallitics, Terroristics: the Hostage Twinky" 2001: "Marketing Alan Ginsberg"
[edit] Presentations
Presentations by Kjell Otterness, Lance Duerfahrd, Marc Feldman, Frank Greco, Jonathan Bernstein, Anders Otterness, Wayne Tvedt, Henry Pickford, Michelle Tupko
