Call for Papers

One Day Sculpture: An International Symposium on Art, Place and Time

Litmus research Initiative is pleased to announce a call for papers for
the ONE DAY SCULPTURE symposium taking place from March 26-28, 2009. The
convenors welcome abstracts for 20-minute presentation papers.

Operating as a key mode of critical reflection and analysis, the ONE DAY
SCULPTURE symposium brings together leading international curators,
cultural theorists and historians, participating artists, writers and
curators to address the principal ideas and contexts that have informed
the development of the series. The symposium will consider the issues
underpinning the commissioning and production of temporary
place-responsive artworks in the public domain. In particular it will
examine:

- The ways in which conventional notions of permanency and monumentality
are being challenged;
- How artists are approaching and producing places
as unstable, contested sets of relations rather than fixed sites;
- How ephemeral, performative and viral forms of contemporary art are
demanding active engagement outside the gallery or museum; and
- What the implications are for emergent curatorial practices in terms
of presentation and distribution.

The questions listed below are starting points for the consideration,
but alternative considerations of pertinent issues within each topic are
welcomed:

- ENGAGEMENT: What are the terms of engagement for art works presented
temporarily outside a conventional museum or gallery context? How do we
understand engagement to operate for unannounced works and what is at
stake for the artist, commissioner and audience? Can we differentiate
any longer between participation, collaboration and passive engagement
and if so, what are the ethical and aesthetic ramifications of those
distinctions?

- PLACE: What do we understand by the terms place, site and context in
relation to the imagining, production, presentation and critical
interpretation of new art works? How do artworks create and contest
place identity? What new forms of critical spatial practice are
emerging? What other terminologies beyond site-specific or place-based,
might help to define the responsive and productive nature of
contemporary art in place?

- UNMONUMENTAL: Can temporary sculptural works have as great an impact
on the social imagination as permanent monuments? If so, how do we
understand memory to operate? Is the commissioning of temporary artworks
simply a symptom of a consumerist event culture and if so, are
longer-term durational models of greater significance to our culture?

- CURATING: In light of the performative, multi-faceted, participatory
and dispersed nature of persistent forms of contemporary art and the
imperatives of cultural tourism, what new forms of curatorial models are
emerging? Is there a danger that artists and their work are becoming
instrumentalised through the culturally specific and socially remedial
imperatives of a curatorial framework? What lessons can be learned from
the relationships between short-term (biennial, triennial and
scattered-site exhibitions) and longer-term cumulative projects and
programmes.

- REFLECTION: How has the role of art writing been transformed by the
finite duration and context dependency of place based art? Does art
history still function as a key methodological tool in locating the
meanings of this work? In what ways might this work expand the breadth
of written responses to include both fictive and non-fictive modes of
expression? What criteria might we ascribe to identifying successful
examples of temporary sculpture?

We invite papers across all academic disciplines to respond to these
themes and welcome papers that seek to locate these ideas within art and
broader cultural histories and theories.

THE DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS IS 30 SEPTEMBER 2008

Papers will be quality assured through peer review. Contributors must be
willing to submit their paper for peer review by 30 November 2008 and
for the paper to be published subsequent to the symposium online in
April 2009.

More information on the symposium, including a list of invited speakers,
can be found at http://www.onedaysculpture.org.nz/ODS_programme_sym.php

CONTACT:

Dr David Cross
Director, Litmus Research Initiative
School of Fine Arts
Massey University
Wellington
New Zealand
D.A.Crossmassey.ac.nz