CALL FOR PAPERS

Performing Money. The Problematic of Performance Art and the Art Market
3rd Annual Art History Graduate Conference

Keynote Speaker: Dr Andrea Phillips, Goldsmith, University of London

Contributions are invited for the third Art History Graduate Conference to be held within the School of Philosophy and Art History (SPAH) at the University of Essex. Graduate students from MA or PhD programmes are invited to submit paper abstracts on the theme of Performing Money. The conference is also an opportunity to meet other graduate students engaged in the study of art theory and interested in performance art.

One distinct characteristic of performance art is that it originated as an aim to take artistic practices outside institutions (i.g. museums) creating events that, far from presenting an object that could be analysed, registered and contemplated, were constituted by actions the artists executed with their own (and/or someone else’s) body. The most immediate problem is that of integration; is it possible to integrate such a practice to the art market? That is, how can there be a financial transaction that involves ephemeral acts?

The temporality of performance art sheds light on the importance of documentation; from this standpoint, this documentation could function as a solution to the problematic. So, does the value of performance rely on it? This is a topic that is crucial, for instance, in the work of Francis Alÿs. There are also artists who resist documenting their pieces, such as Tino Sehgal. In this sense, if there is indeed economic value in this record, is the value of performances without documentation compromised?

Another way performance art relates to the market is that artists use money in order to elaborate his or her actions. By doing so, they integrate what is precisely one of the main complications of this type of art into its very creative process, hence creating a critique. Among those who have made such works are Yves Klein, Andrea Fraser, The KLF, and Hans Peter Feldmann. Continuing with this critique of economic trade and the art market – Tino Sehgal also features here – how is it that Post-Fordist society relates to the way in which this market is run?

We invite submissions from graduate students, both MA and PhD, from all disciplines, on topics that may include, but are not limited to:

- Artists who take money to be the apparatus of their work.

- The representational: how can one value a performance that has no documentation or does the value of performance relies on documentation?

- Post-Fordist society and its relationship to performance.

- Re-enacting historical performances as a form of labour.

- Performing extreme labour.

- The economy of the de- and re-institutionalisation of performance.

Please send 300-word abstracts of 20 minute-papers accompanied by a short CV to ahgc2014essex.ac.uk by 26th of February 2014.

Conference Organizing Committee:

Simon Kaye (MA Art History and Theories), Sarai Lambert (MA Art History and Theories),
Pierre Henri Foulon (MA Gallery Studies and Critical Curating), Hannah Stageman (MA Art History and Theories), J. Andrés Valtierra (MA Curating Contemporary Art), Marta Bermejo Sarmiento (MA Gallery Studies and Critical Curating), Marina Christodoulidou (MA Gallery Studies and Critical Curating), Paikou Eleni (MA Gallery Studies and Critical Curating)

University of Essex Colchester, United Kingdom, Room 4.722 (Senate Room)

Further information and updates will be available through the conference website: http://www.essex.ac.uk/arthistory/news_and_seminars/grad_conference/