Picturing Tomorrow: Future-directed Imagination in American Art
How do we understand the concept of the future? Is it inevitable and shaped by a long sequence of events and interconnected chance occurrences? Or do we conceive of it as something that is determined by our actions and decisions in the present day? Is it a pure potentiality, a promise of a radically different world and yet unimaginable existence? Or is it something that is forever unreachable, something that defines our experience of the present as a perpetual state of deferral and transience?
Historically, these questions have inspired a range of political, cultural, and discursive formulations that have informed different, period-specific concepts of the future. This study day explores the trajectory of future-directed imagination in American art by bringing together scholars, whose work focuses on the variety of strategies, devices, and definitions that artists used for the concept of the future.
Study Day Program:
09:15–09:45 Coffee and Registration
09:45–10:00 Welcome Remarks and Introduction
10:00–12:00 Panel 1: Humanum Future: Between the Personal and the Political
Chair: Dominic Hardy, Université du Québec à Montréal
Marie-Laure Delaporte, Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art - DFK Paris,
La figure du cyborg ou la femme du futur selon Lynn Hershman Leeson
Anna Cannon, University of York,
Claude Bragdon’s Artistic Vision of Psychic Evolution
Umut Ungan, École des hautes études en sciences sociales/Université Rennes 2, Préfigurer le futur politique : le cas des happenings d’Allan Kaprow
12:00–12:10 Break
12:10–12:30 Book Presentation: Art of the United States, 1750–2000: Primary Sources
Francesca Rose, Terra Foundation for American Art, in dialogue with Catherine Marcangeli, Université de Paris
12:30–14:00 Lunch Break
14:00–16:00 Panel 2: Future Present: Art, Design, and Urban Planning
Chair: Sophie Cras, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Marie-Madeleine Ozdoba, Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art - DFK Paris,
L’architecture moderne comme récit du futur : les perspectives de projets de l’agence d’architecture Welton Becket & Associates, Los Angeles, ca. 1950-1960
Stefaan Vervoort, Ghent University,
The City of the Future: Late-1960s Art in New York and “The Plague of Architecture”
Susanna Newbury, University of Nevada, Las Vegas,
Art Districts’ Risk Architecture: Speculative Practice in 1980s Los Angeles Art
16:00–16:20 Coffee Break
16:20–17:40 Panel 3: Imagining the Public Sphere: Communities, Environments, and the Media
Chair: Catherine Marcangeli, Université de Paris
Juliette Bessette, Sorbonne Université/ Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art - DFK Paris, PROJEX (1972), ou comment contrôler le monde ? Quand la pensée prospective moque ses propres excès
Philip Glahn, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University,
Future Urban Subjects: Art and Telecommunications in 1980s Los Angeles
17:40–18:30 Cocktail Reception, Bâtiment Simone Veil (F), Salle des Commissions (F142)
Organized by Tatsiana Zhurauliova,
Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow at the Fondation de l’Université Paris Nanterre / Associate Researcher in American Art and Transatlantic Exchanges, HAR, Université Paris Nanterre and LARCA, Université de Paris
Contact: tatsiana.zhurauliovauniv-paris-diderot.fr
This event is free and open to the public. It will be held in French and English
In partnership with Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Cultures Anglophones (LARCA), Université de Paris, Laboratoire Histoire des Arts et des Représentations (HAR), Université Paris Nanterre, la Fondation de l’Université Paris Nanterre, and the Terra Foundation for American Art
Quellennachweis:
CONF: Picturing Tomorrow (Nanterre, 19 Mar 20). In: ArtHist.net, 04.03.2020. Letzter Zugriff 21.05.2024. <https://arthist.net/archive/22773>.