CONCEPTUALISM AND MATERIALITY: MATTERS OF ART AND POLITICS
Conference and Book Launch

This conference celebrates the publication of Conceptualism and Materiality: Matters of Art and Politics (ed. by Christian Berger, Brill, 2019). The aim is to underscore the significance of materials and materiality within Anglo-American Conceptual art, as well as conceptualism more broadly. It challenges the notion of conceptualism as an idea-centred, anti-materialist enterprise, and highlights the political implications thereof.

The contributors focus on the importance of material considerations for artists working during the 1960s and 1970s in different parts of the world. In reconsidering conceptualism’s neglected material aspects, this group of international scholars will gather in London to reveal the rich range of artistic inquiries into theoretical and political notions of matter and material. They revise and diversify the account of a decisive moment in the history of twentieth-century art – a reassessment that carries wider implications for the study of art and materiality in general.

The conference is organised by Dr Christian Berger, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow, The Courtauld Institute of Art. Supported by The Centre for American Art and the Research Forum. More information on the book can be found on the publisher’s website (https://brill.com/view/title/38672).

There are 15 free tickets available for PhD students and early career researchers (not limited to the Courtauld or the UK). Please send up to 200 words on how and why attending the conference will benefit your research, plus a short bio (max 150 words) to christian.bergercourtauld.ac.uk by the 25 September 2019. Please title the subject of your email ‘Bursaries Conceptualism and Materiality’.

Conference Venue:
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Lecture Theatre 1 (first floor), Vernon Square, Penton Rise, King’s Cross, London, WC1X 9EW

Programme:
Thursday, 10 October 2019

16:00 Registration
16:30 Welcome and Introduction:
Prof DAVID PETERS CORBETT (The Centre for American Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Prof SARAH WILSON (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
CHRISTIAN BERGER (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/The Courtauld Institute of Art)

17:00 Panel I: Materialisation and Dematerialisation
Chair: JO APPLIN (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

KAVIOR MOON (SCI-Arc, Los Angeles)
Itinerant Matter: Michael Asher’s Air Works

JACOB STEWART-HALEVY (Tufts University, Medford)
From Declarations to Natural Talk: How Conceptual Artists Learned to Speak

Response: LUKE SKREBOWSKI (University of Manchester)
Roundtable & Discussion
18:25 Break

18:45 Keynote and Book Launch
ALIXE BOVEY (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Introduction
CHRISTIAN BERGER: Book Presentation

Keynote:
SABETH BUCHMANN (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)
Conceptual Realism

Wine Reception

Friday, 11 October 2019

9:00 Registration
9:30 Introduction

9:45 Panel II: Other Materialities
Chair: CHRISTIAN BERGER

LARISA DRYANSKY (Sorbonne Université, Paris)
Immaterial or Incorporeal? Antimatter and the Dematerialization of Art

MAGDALENA MOSKALEWICZ (Art Institute of Chicago)
Notation, Aspiration, Science, and Labour in Early Conceptual Art in Poland

Response: DOMINIC RAHTZ (University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury)
Roundtable & Discussion
11:15 Tea & Coffee

11:45 Panel III: Materiality and Communication
Chair: MARA POLGOVSKY EZCURRA (Birkbeck College)

NIKO VICARIO (Amherst College)
Synchronizing Lag: The Materiality of Art’s Speed

ZANNA GILBERT (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)
A Tactile Media: Edgardo Antonio Vigo’s Manual Multiples

Response: MICHAEL ASBURY (Chelsea College of Arts)
Roundtable & Discussion
13:15 Lunch Break

14:30 Panel IV: Materials and Affects
Chair: KLARA KEMP-WELCH (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

LUIZA NADER (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw)
Affecting Conceptual Art

Response: KETI CHUKHROV (University of Wolverhampton)
Discussion
15:30 Tea & Coffee

16:00 YOSHIKO SHIMADA (Artist and Independent Researcher, Tokyo)
A Pink Banner to Show to the Nature: Matsuzawa Yutaka’s Conceptualism and the Spiritual

Response: JELENA STOJKOVIC (Arts University Bournemouth)
Discussion

17:00 CHRISTIAN BERGER: Closing Remarks