[1]

Crossing the Line: Drawing across Borders and Discourses

Contributor: Jessica Wyman jwymanfaculty.ocadu.ca

Co-chairs: Jessica Wyman, OCAD University; Dan Adler, York University

This session is focused on contemporary art practices that stretch or subvert conventional definitions of drawing. We wish to explore how and why drawing—a medium long associated with both the activity of ideation and the manual act of creation—continues to play a central role for process-based and conceptually rigorous practices, allowing for an opening-up or expansion of established understandings of aesthetic production. We welcome papers from artists and art historians offering case studies that combine close readings of specific artworks, approaches to drawing practices, and theoretical discussion. Papers may address specific compositional devices—such as the grid, the diagram, the sequence, and the matter of linearity and/or legibility. We wish to explore strategies, from the 1960s until the present, that deal with some of drawing’s assumed attributes—its mobility and elasticity, its economy and anti-monumental character, its exploratory nature, and its capacity to serve as a mediating form, along with elements such as the notational, the diagrammatic, and the reductive. Potential topics may include politically or polemically engaged approaches to drawing and the line such as those, for example, which reflect indigenous, queer, feminist, and other marginalized cultures and communities.

Contact Information:
Prof. Jessica Wyman, OCAD University
jwymanfaculty.ocadu.ca

Prof. Dan Adler, York University
dadleryorku.ca

Submissions should be made by email to both chairs, listed above, and must include: name and email address of the applicant; applicant’s institutional affiliation and rank (submission from independent scholars and practitioners is also welcome); paper title and abstract (300 words maximum); and a brief bio (150 words maximum).

[2]

EXCESS!

Contributor: Ersy Contogouris ersy.contogourisumontreal.ca

As a transgression of a norm that is culturally contingent, excess has tended to be condemned in the West as a moral failing. Yet, it can also be a strategy for empowerment, agency, and creativity (Skelly, 2017, 2014; Potvin & Myzelev, 2009). And though it often manifests itself as overabundance, its counterpart – including vacuum, censorship, or prohibition – can also be a form of excess. This panel seeks to investigate different manifestations of excess in visual art and material culture. At what point does “a lot” becomes “too much”? Are there degrees of excess (a moderate vs. an excessive excess)? Who decides? What are the emotional, visual, environmental, conceptual, or other modalities, effects, and responses to excess? What are the gendered, sexualized, racialized, geographical, cultural, class-specific, or other valences of excess? And how can some mediums or materials in themselves be markers of excess? We welcome explorations into these and other displays of excess in art and design from historians, curators, and practitioners.

Submissions for presentations in French or English should include an abstract (of up to 300 words) and a short biobibliography (of up to 150 words) and should be sent to Ersy Contogouris (ersy.contogourisumontreal.ca) and Marie-Ève Marchand (marie-eve.marchanmail.concordia.ca) using the form available on the UAAC website (http://www.uaac-aauc.com/en/conference)

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Proposals may be submitted by current members or non-members of UAAC. Non-members must become members of UAAC and pay registration fees in order to present a paper at the conference.

The 2018 UAAC conference will be held at the University of Waterloo, Canada, October 25-27, 2018. http://www.uaac-aauc.com/en/news/uaac-conference-2018-call-papers