CALL FOR PAPERS
From Material to Immaterial: Art Historical Practices in the Contemporary World
Tahiti 8: National Conference of Art History in Finland

Art history as a discipline is in a state of turmoil as the field of study is traversed by new currents of thought, wave after wave. After poststructuralism, posthumanism, new materialism, and the ecological turn, what kind of objects and processes does art history study? What are the sources art historians look for and find explanations in?

Once grounded in the study of material objects and worldviews embodied in them, art history now covers the study of dematerialized and ephemeral processes and complex interactions between incalculable numbers of actants as well. How have these changes affected the practices of art history? How are our research questions changing, as we continue to reframe and recontextualize the boundaries of art historical practice?


The confirmed keynote speakers are:

Dr. Lynn Turner: Figleaf – Outgrowing the Theo-botanical Inscription of Shame

Lynn Turner is Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the editor of The Animal Question in Deconstruction (EUP, 2013) co-author of Visual Cultures as Recollection (Sternberg, 2013), and co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies (EUP, 2018). She is currently completing her monograph Exposing Deconstructions: Animal and Sexual Differences (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Prof. Dan Karlholm: From Material to Immaterial and Back Again? Reflections on Anthropocene Art History

Dan Karlholm is Professor of Art History at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden. His research is devoted to the theory and historiography of art, temporality and museum studies. His latest books are Kontemporalism. Om samtidskonstens historia och framtid (Axl Books, 2014) and Karlholm & Keith Moxey (eds.), Time in the History of Art: Temporality, Chronology, and Anachrony (Routledge, 2018). He was editor-in-chief of Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History (2009–19).


We invite art historians and researchers from related fields to reflect on the changing nature of their practice, objects, and source materials, from archives to the internet.

The proposals for a presentation (no more than 300 words) should be sent to tahiti8(at)utu.fi by August 15th, 2019. The 20 minute presentations can be either in English or Finnish. Please attach also your name, affiliation and contact information. Notices of acceptance will be sent by September 15th, 2019.

The conference is organised by: The Society for Art History in Finland and Department of Art History, University of Turku.