Resistance Avant La Lettre: Performing Bodies and the State

Chairs: Samuel Adams, Northeastern University, adamssusc.edu and Meg R.
Jackson, University of Denver, Megan.R.Jacksondu.edu

When can embodied representations of violence upend the status quo? What
are the performative means by which artists have exposed the normalization
of covert government initiatives? Performance art, body art, and related
documentary practices since 1945 have engaged with symbolic representations of state violence, and have also contributed to legislation and political change. In addition to simulations of state actions within the gallery,
this panel looks at the street, administration buildings, and public sites
of power and subversion. Do the actions of Ai Weiwei, Xiao Lu, Santiago
Sierra, Tania Bruguera, and Trevor Paglen return us to the 1930s
“expressionism debates” over realism versus avant-garde expression, or can
we now find a more productive middle ground? How can historians resist
either judging or valorizing an artist who might have gone “too far” in
blurring the line between violence and the representation of violence?
Surely we learn something about the values of democracy when artists make
visible the conflict between what the state permits itself to do to our bodies and what civilians are forbidden from doing with their own bodies.
This panel investigates strategies for counter-hegemonic practices and
performance art’s persistent topicality, especially during the postwar
period. As alarm is raised about the rise of fanaticism and fundamentalism,
this conversation reconsiders historical, theoretical, and artistic
responses to such tendencies.

Chairs: Samuel Adams, Northeastern University, adamssusc.edu and Meg R.
Jackson, University of Denver, Megan.R.Jacksondu.edu

Please submit abstract of 250 words to both co-chairs with CAA proposal
form, member ID, and CV.