CALL FOR PAPERS

Rethinking the Past: Experimental Histories in the Arts

The international conference Rethinking the Past: Experimental Histories
in the Arts will take place at the University of Technology Sydney between
July 28-29, 2006.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Laura U. Marks
Dena Wosk University Professor in Art and Culture Studies, Simon Fraser
University, Canada

Andrew Benjamin
Professor of Critical Theory in Architecture and Design, University of
Technology Sydney

Ross Gibson
Professor of New Media and Digital Culture, University of Technology, Sydney

Klaus Neumann
Senior Research Fellow, Swinburne University of Technology

Conference Theme:

Drawing together scholars from a broad range of fields, the aim of the
conference is to rethink the task of historiography via an exploration of
experimental representations of – and or engagements with – the past in
fields as diverse as film, literature, art, architecture, photography,
theatre, music, fictocritical writing, dance, video and new media.
Questions addressed by the conference will include:

How have writers, filmmakers, artists etc. sought to explore and redeem
aspects of the past which have fallen outside of what has been
monumentalised as historically significant?
What role have the arts played in destabilising historicist accounts of
history as a form of evolutionary progress?
What possibilities have been attributed to artists, writers, new media
practitioners etc. in theoretical accounts of the task of an experimental
historiography?
How have people working in the arts sought to cleave open a space within
official accounts of the relationship between the past and the present
within which the possibilities of the past (and the future) can be
re-imagined and re-explored?

Proposals are invited for papers on, or related to, the conference theme.
Please send a 200-300 word abstract and your contact details, via email,
to the conference convenor Tara Forrest before February 20, 2006. Should
you have any questions about the conference prior to this date, please
feel free to email the convenor.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out in March. Should you,
however, require confirmation at an earlier date, please inform the
convenor of this in your proposal.

Email: Tara.Forrestuts.edu.au

Dr. Tara Forrest
Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Technology, Sydney
Email: tara.forrestuts.edu.au
Visit the website at http://www.hss.uts.edu.au/rethinking/