UCLA Art History Graduate Symposium "Alterations"

Desire lines are paths caused by erosion and foot traffic that form alternate routes or shortcuts.

Common in parks and other public areas, the resulting paths defy constructed routes such as sidewalks and roads and constitute traces of popular alteration. Beyond a visible trace or alternate path, what are the consequences of such changes? In what ways do forms of alteration both generate and restrict possibilities? How do these modifications function as objects and images? What larger processes might they indicate?

The UCLA Graduate Art History Symposium seeks proposals for presentations that consider the history and aesthetics of alterations. As with user-generated paths marking the change overtime to designed environments, public alterations noticeably transform existing surfaces, structures, subjects, and systems.

Examples of alterations related to the arts and art history include: environmental interventions of earthworks and ancient precedents such as the Nazca Lines; pentimenti, or the legible traces left by alterations made during the artistic process; manuscript palimpsests formed by erasing or scraping pages in order to reuse the document; the transformation of artworks via reproduction, destruction, repatriation, or curatorial framing; spolia, or plundered materials repurposed by conquering powers; iconoclastic interventions to works of art; theoretical discourses such as post-colonialism and feminism and other ways of renegotiating thought practices and the canon; censorship, violence, and war; graffiti; body modification; cultural appropriation; and online meme circulation.

The framework of public alterations is both broad and fundamental. It cuts across various disciplinary, geographic, and historical contexts, and highlights such essential elements of art and art history as process, the object, the image, intention, and change. In this spirit, we invite proposals for scholarly and creative presentations from across the humanities that consider the history and aesthetics of alterations.

Send a CV and an abstract (250-300 words) by June 11th, 2018 either by email or via the website.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us at arthistorygradsymposiumgmail.com