SupraSpace: On the Concept of Space and Place in Art and Visual Culture
International Conference

Space has been subject to aesthetic, art-historical, philosophical, anthropological, geographical and political investigations, each with its idiosyncratic definitions. Space maintains a close relation with illusionism, narrativity, and the performative qualities of art. Space is especially interconnected with time, making it impossible to separate one from the other. In the current dynamic reality in which we live, it is hard to remain confined to just one modality of spatial thinking that will capture all of its complexity; yet this problem is not limited to our contemporary globalized moment, but is also relevant to different historical periods. Consequently, in order to engage effectively with the problem of space, recent studies have demonstrated multiple methods of conceptualization, while emphasizing the dialectical relations and tensions between them.

Within the realms of art and culture, the discourse on space has often engaged with problems of representation (artistic genres such landscape, narrative space, chronotopos, interior/exterior, etc), or with political issues relating to territorial conflicts and borders. This conference seeks to investigate the dynamic formation, throughout history and art history, of sites, places, and environments, in which interactive relations, identities and signs are ceaselessly rewritten and redefined. These kinds of processes produce spaces that hover between the specific and the generic, the local and the global, the historical and the contemporary, the real and the virtual, along with the symbolized and the abstract. At the same time, these modalities emphasize the fact that any designation of places and sites is inseparable from the different ways in which they are experienced, perceived, imagined, and represented.
We invite papers that consider diverse conceptualization of space and forms of representations, as well as the varied ways in which lived environments trigger different forms of interventions and reconfigurations: legal, political, social, aesthetic and technological.

Abstracts are invited by 10 January 2012 and should be sent to: supra.tau.conferencegmail.com.
All abstracts must be in English and should be limited to 300 words. Head your abstract with your name, professional affiliation, and the paper’s title. Submit with the abstract a one-page curriculum vitae, home and work addresses, and e-mail address.
Each paper should be limited to a 20 minute presentation, followed by dialogue and questions. All applicants will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of their proposal by 15 February 2012.

Suggested topics for papers (but not limited to):
Space before and after Giotto
Liturgical space
Sacred spaces
Medieval non-space
Perspective/Camera Obscura
Space and (non) rationalism in post-Albertian art theory
Emotional space
Pictorial space and voyeurism
Islamic space and its absence
Place and non-place
Art and culture in public space
Urban Planning and Architectural Space
The absence of place
Spatio-temporal dimensionalities
Memory and monuments
Narrative, meta-narrative and space
De-territorialization and Re-territorialization
Finite – infinite space
Information technology and space
Body and territory
Cosmopolitanism and globalization
Spaces of display
Heterotopia and utopia