[1] Flawed Illumination: Broken Glass in Modern and Contemporary Art
[2] Beyond Therapy: Situating art and design in healthcare contexts
[3] Catastrophism and the Ecology of Art

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Session at the AAH2017 Annual Conference
Loughborough University, 6-8 April 2017

Taisuke Edamura (kulitayugagmail.com)

The early 20th century saw the emergence of broken glass as a source of new forms and concepts in artistic creation. Take, for instance, Josef Albers' broken glass assemblages in the 1920s or the accidental shattering of Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass (1915-23), which triggered a 'chance' transformation of the work's complex iconography. Its potential as both an artistic material and a subject matter has since been largely explored by many artists, such as Robert Smithson, Chris Burden, Barry Le Va, Cildo Meireles and Walead Beshty, to name a few. Their differing deployments of broken glass show its diversity in form, function and dissemination. Its sharp materiality stimulates more than just sight and induces a wide range of feelings from fear to liberation. There is also such diversity in 'breaking glass' that the action can indicate different approaches to violence and its implications. These characteristics have assisted in developing new artistic languages and critical attitudes, reconsidering the process and spaces of artistic production.

This session seeks papers from across 20th-century art history and contemporary art that illuminate the capacity of this 'flawed' material through diverse methodological approaches that productively complicate our conventional grasp of glass. The session also considers proposals addressing distinctive explorations of broken glass in pre-modern times (eg stained glass) from contemporary perspectives. Suggested themes include, but are not limited to: glass as refuse; violence and iconoclasm; the sound of shattered glass; ecological issues concerning the appropriation and deployment of broken glass as a medium; the poetics of protection/restoration; broken glass and memory.

Please submit your paper proposals directly to the session convenor, Dr Taisuke Edamura (kulitayugagmail.com), by 7 November 2016. Provide a title and abstract for a 25 minute paper (max 250 words). Include your name, affiliation and email. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.

See more details at: http://aah.org.uk/annual-conference/2017-conference.

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[2] Beyond Therapy: Situating art and design in healthcare contexts

Tamar Tembeck (tamar.tembeckmcgill.ca)
CFP: "Beyond Therapy: Situating art and design in healthcare contexts"
Panel at Association of Art Historians (AAH) annual conference, 6 to 8 April 2017, Loughborough University
Deadline for Paper Proposals: 7 November 2016

Convenors:
Tamar Tembeck, McGill University, tamar[DOT]tembeck[AT]mcgill[DOT]ca
Mary Hunter, McGill University, mary[DOT]hunter2[AT]mcgill[DOT]ca

In Europe and North America, greater attention is being paid to the built environment in medical spaces. 'Healthy design' initiatives are increasingly being integrated into hospital planning, in a vision that is coherent with the WHO's definition of health, according to which 'mental and social well-being' are considered in addition to 'the absence of disease or infirmity'. Government percentage-for-art schemes and public art funding policies count amongst the initiatives that have allowed for the integration of art in hospital architecture, the commissioning of in situ works, and the establishment of artists' residences in medical environments.

Existing studies on art and design in healthcare contexts overwhelmingly focus on accumulating evidence of their beneficial impacts on patients' recovery and general well-being. Since the birth of hospitals in the Middle Ages, however, the integration of art has played a variety of other roles in medical spaces, ranging from providing contemplative touchstones for patients, staff, and visitors, to improving the institution’s overall image in the public eye.

This panel invites historians of art, architecture and design, as well as cultural practitioners, programmers and policymakers, to reflect upon, critique and question the forms and functions of contemporary and historical art and design practices in healthcare environments (hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, etc.). We are particularly interested in investigating art and design practices that are deployed outside of an explicitly therapeutic context (eg, in art therapy). Submissions pertaining to live art practices in healthcare spaces are also welcome.

Please email your paper proposals to the session convenors. Provide a title and abstract for a 25-minute paper (max 250 words). Include your name, affiliation and email. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.

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[3] Catastrophism and the Ecology of Art

Joanne Anderson (joanne.andersonsas.ac.uk)

Conveners:
Joanne Anderson, The Warburg Institute: joanne.andersonsas.ac.uk
Jill Harrison, The Open University: jill.harrisonopen.ac.uk

Floods, fires, earthquakes, famines and plagues were catastrophic events in pre- and early modern Europe. They impacted heavily on environment and society by devastating resources, levelling infrastructure and displacing or destroying communities. The residual presence of such in the cultural memory could be long term and institutionalized. As Erling Skaug has recently argued (2013) in relation to change in Giotto's late oeuvre, 'disasters of a certain magnitude tend to cause breaks and abrupt changes in a historical course - for better or worse.'

Catastrophism is an emerging and productive way of thinking about art's relationship to climate and environment and the circumstances of its production and interpretation. But it also has a venerable tradition within the discipline of art history itself. From Winckelmann’s climate theory in relation to the stylistic development of Greek sculpture (1755) to Millard Meiss’s theories about the Black Death and its instigation of an archaicising pictorial system (1951), the ecology of visual representation is a persistent framework for critical enquiry. It has the potential to align local events with universal histories, for example a synecdoche for the Apocalypse or the Great Flood.

This panel welcomes papers that explore catastrophes of art in the classical sense. By focusing on pre- and early modern Europe, it aims to push art historians to rethink the role of such events in our understanding of art and its production. It will seek to discuss and offer fresh perspectives on the concept of catastrophism and its relevance for the ecology of art.

Please email your paper proposals straight to the session conveners. Provide a title and abstract for a 25 minute paper (max 250 words). Include your name, affiliation and email. Your paper title should be concise and accurately reflect what the paper is about (it should ‘say what it does on the tin’) because the title is what appears most first and foremost online, in social media and in the printed programme. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks. Do not send proposals to the Conference Administrator or the Conference Convener.

Deadline for paper proposals: 7 November 2016