Playing Games: Power & Pleasure in Art After the Internet

5th March 2016
Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, University College London

Coinciding with the major exhibition Electronic Superhighway at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, this one-day symposium brings together artists, art historians and curators to critically engage with the relationships between art and the Internet from the last five years. Often grouped around the much-contested term 'post-Internet art', this young generation of artists has received unprecedented critical attention in recent years as the subject of multiple museum exhibitions, panel discussions and articles in the art press. As scholarly work in this field begins to emerge, this event brings together new and established voices to address some of the most pressing questions concerning the relationships between art, technology and society. Taking the ambiguous politics of 'play' as its starting point, this symposium seeks to open up existing debates around medium, performance and labour to explore mimicry and wordplay, seriousness and subversion, and gendered and queer spaces. To register for the event please visit: https://uclplayinggames.wordpress.com

Programme

11:00 Introduction, Briony Fer & Cadence Kinsey (UCL)

Panel One (Chair: Briony Fer & Cadence Kinsey)

11:15 'Mimicking Luxury: On Art Beyond its Reproduction', Kerstin Stakemeier (Professor of Art Theory, ADBK Nürnberg)

11:35 'Gamifying Precarity: The De- and Re-materialization of Post-Internet Art in Brad Troemel's Art and Aesthetics', Saelan Twerdy (PhD Candidate, McGill)

11:55 'It's Not Funny: Making Sense of Humour in Contemporary Chinese Art and Visual Culture', Wenny Teo (Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Asian Art, Courtauld Institute of Art)

12:15 Panel Discussion

12:45 Lunch

Panel Two (Chair: Larne Abse Gogarty, UCL)

14:00 'Excellences and Perfections: Mise en Scène in the Work of Amalia Ulman', Giulia Smith (PhD candidate, UCL)

14:20 'The Work of Collaboration', Rózsa Zita Farkas (Director Arcadia_Missa, Research Fellow UAL)

14:40 Title TBC Jesse Darling (artist)

15:00 Panel Discussion

15:30 Tea & Coffee

16:00 Keynote: 'A Comedy of Matter', David Joselit (Chair: Briony Fer)

17:30 Reception