[1] Dada Data: Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of Post-Truth Politics

From: Sarah Hegenbart, sarah.hegenbarttum.de
Date: Sep 28, 2017
Deadline: 6 Nov 2017

Organizers:
Sarah Hegenbart, Technische Universität München, sarah.hegenbarttum.de
Mara-Johanna Kölmel, Leuphana University Lüneburg, mara.koelmelgooglemail.com

The era of post-truth politics poses a new challenge for contemporary art practice. If populist politicians persuade the masses by simplified conceptions of reality, how can art highlight the neglected nuances and complexities of our contemporary moment? How can art foster critical discourse that is often abandoned when subscribing to simplified notions of reality?
As part of the 100th anniversary of the Dada movement, the online anti-museum Dada-Data was established in 2016 to revive the ideas behind the revolutionary art movement. Mixing collages and hypertext, twitter and manifestoes, instagram and readymades, the online platform provides a space to explore Dada and connects its heritage with our everyday online life. Our session expands on the idea of Dada-Data.net. It asks how an engagement with the aesthetic tactics of Dada, can help develop critical vocabularies for confronting our era of post-truth politics mediated by information floods and ‘big data’.
Since it has been pivotal to the Dada movement to approach art and reality as inextricably linked, this session explores whether and how Dada strategies such as alienation, anti- aesthetics, collage, fragmentation and irony, may contribute to face the complexities of our time. While we are particularly interested in how strategies that emerged during the Dada movement could be applied today, we would also invite contributions exploring similar constellations in other periods. We are very keen on looking out to other disciplines: How does the speculative cross-reading of Dada and data benefit other fields of research?

Proposals of 250 words, accompanied by a short academic CV, should be sent to the two session organisers no later than 6 November 2017.


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[2] Asia Through Exhibition Histories

From: Lucy Steeds, l.steedscsm.arts.ac.uk
Date: 26 Sep 2017
Deadline: 6 Nov 2017

Organizers:
Afterall Art Research centre at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, is uniting with Asia Art Archive, the Paul Mellon Centre, and Tate Research Centre: Asia to host a session at the forthcoming annual conference for the UK’s Association for Art History (AAH).

What does it mean to practise exhibition histories rather than art history? How are distinct disciplines drawn on, alongside or in contrast to art history when the focus lies on art gaining its public moment through the lens of ‘Asia’ (or ‘East Asia,’ ’Southeast Asia,’ ‘South Asia,’ ‘Central Asia,’ etc.)? This session invites reflection on the methodological issues and theoretical implications of both exhibiting ‘Asia’ and of analysing such past shows now.
While regional showcase exhibitions – presented both in Asia and elsewhere across the globe – are an obvious topic for appraisal in this context, we also welcome papers considering initiatives that have not explicitly taken on that role but have instead emerged over time as regionally influential. To take two examples from the 1990s, ‘Cities on the Move’ would be one obvious case-study, while 'Chiang Mai Social Installation’ might be significant in a different manner.
We will prioritise analysis of art made and shown in the last 75 years – however, our understanding of what constitutes an exhibition is broad and diverse, to include any event of becoming-public for art. We encourage unconventional anchors for critical attention as well as the rethinking of more familiar examples – and indeed a case-studies model need not be adopted, with more purely theoretical, geopolitical, sociological, curatorial and artistic contributions anticipated.

Broad themes for presentation may include, but are not limited to:
– art history and the exhibition-form in or concerning Asia;
– the critical role to be played by performance, literary or other cultural studies;
– ‘landmark’ shows in the history of Asian art and challenges to exhibition-based canon formation and to art history in the singular;
– self-organised and institutional public initiatives;
– nationalism, regionalism and transnationalism in Asian exhibitionary practice;
– and interdisciplinary and trandisciplinarity in exhibition histories with a focus on Asia.

In this session, we seek to question the stationary perspective and centre/periphery binary implied by ‘looking out,’ encouraging debate of past art exhibitions as a way to think about more mobile and contingent histories that also prompt us to look both inwards and sideways. In other words, we call for discussion of exhibition histories that encourage looking in multiple directions.

The call for papers follows and responses should be addressed to Lucy Steeds, l.steedsafterall.org, arriving by midnight (GMT) on Monday 6 November 2017.
You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper, also your name and institutional affiliation (if any). We would also appreciate a biographical paragraph. Please make sure your title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because this will appear online, in social media and in the printed programme.

Please note that AAH membership is required for participation and/or attendance (more on the conference and on membership here): http://www.forarthistory.org.uk/events/annual-conference-2018/


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[3] Beyond Boundaries: Artistic Inquiries into Borders and their Meaning(s)

From: Lesley Shipley, lshipleyrandolphcollege.edu
Date: 26 Sep 2017
Deadline: 6 Nov 2017

Oragnizers:
Mey-Yen Moriuchi, La Salle University, moriuchilasalle.edu
Lesley Shipley, Randolph College, lshipleyrandolphcollege.edu

Borders have played a critical role in the development and distribution of culture, often acting as frameworks that help or hinder our ability to ‘look outwards.’ In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha calls attention to the value of interstitial spaces, where borders, frames, and other locations ‘in-between’ become ‘innovative sites of collaboration and contestation in the act of defining the idea of society itself.’ Other philosophical considerations of borders, such as Martin Heidegger’s concept of gestell, or enframing, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Enlightenment aesthetics vis-à-vis the parergon, and Victor Stoichita’s analysis of framing devices in early modern ‘meta-painting’, have demonstrated the transformative power of edges, frames, borders, and boundaries in art.
This session will focus on works of art, artistic practices, and art historical perspectives that think critically and creatively about borders and their meaning(s). The goal is to expand our understanding of borders, whether physical or conceptual, historical or theoretical. In the spirit of pushing beyond boundaries of convention and ‘looking outwards,’ we welcome papers that focus on any medium, art historical period, or curatorial practice. Papers may address, though are not limited to: art that explores the significance of borders to migrants, immigrants, diasporic communities or other groups residing (both literally and figuratively) ‘in-between’; activist art that interrogates borders and their meaning(s); the role of public art, public space, and social media in thinking beyond boundaries; the metaphorical and/or literal framing of a work of art and its effects; the symbolic purpose or meaning of frames in various cultural contexts (for instance, the role of framing in religious spaces or objects, such as tabernacles, wall niches, icon paintings, and marginalia).

Please email your paper proposals directly to the session chairs.
Proposals should include an abstract (250 words maximum) and CV.


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[4] Lesbian Constellations: Feminism’s Queer Art Histories

From: Catherine Grant, c.grantgold.ac.uk
Date: 26 Sep 2017
Deadline: 6 Nov 2017

Organizers:
Catherine Grant, Goldsmiths, University of London, c.grantgold.ac.uk
Laura Guy, University of Edinburgh, laura.guyed.ac.uk

“What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion.”
– The Woman-Identified Woman Manifesto, 1970

What are the unrealised possibilities in a meeting between lesbian-identified visual culture and emergent perspectives in queer feminist art history? This panel will follow Catherine Lord’s contention that ‘“feminism” is a category I choose not to split from homosexual, from lesbian, or from the oppositional politics implied by the word “queer”’ (2007). From this position, Lord traces a feminist art history that grapples with the instability and invisibility of the term lesbian, imagining it as a set of ideas, rather than a stable identity.
This panel asks how lesbian-identified visual culture might be a resource for feminist art history, allowing us to explore feminism’s always already queer dynamics. Working back from contemporary artists such as Zanele Muholi and Allyson Mitchell, and indebted to the groundbreaking work of artists and writers such as Laura Cottingham and Harmony Hammond, we propose that lesbian feminism ‘touches wires’ (Heather Love) between the terms ‘queer’ and ‘feminist’ in ways that require exploding existing categories within the field.
We welcome papers on a range of topics relating to lesbian-identified visual culture including but not limited to: art and social reproduction; visual culture and activism; queer time and lesbian feminist creativity; collectivity and cultural production. Working with the widest possible definition of what constitutes a lesbian-identified visual culture, we are particularly interested in contributions that foreground trans and POC intersections within lesbian feminist culture.

To offer a paper:
Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor(s). You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any). Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the printed programme. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.


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Click here for the full call for AAH submissions: http://www.forarthistory.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CONF2018_CALL_FOR_PAPERS.pdf