South

Final call for papers: OTHER VIEWS: ART HISTORY IN (SOUTH) AFRICA AND THE
GLOBAL SOUTH
A colloquium organised by the South African Visual Arts Historians (SAVAH)
under the aegis of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA),
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 12-15 January 2011

The colloquium addresses concerns about the unequal distribution of
resources around the globe and challenges from postcolonial societies to the
older methods and concepts of Western art history. These challenges have
relevance in South Africa, Africa and the Global South, which in this
context is a cultural construct rather than a geographic term. It refers to
communities and artistic production, throughout history and across nations,
which, within the dominant narratives of Western art, have been ignored,
marginalised, displaced and appropriated.

Papers are invited that address any of the topics outlined in the panels
below. Abstracts, up to 250 words in length, must be submitted by e-mail in
English, and must include the author’s institutional affiliation and
relevant contact details. The final length of individual papers must not
exceed 3,000 words, in order to fit into the strict 20 minute time limit per
presentation. Abstracts should be sent directly to the panel organisers,
copying the Chairperson of SAVAH, Federico Freschi,
federico.freschiwits.ac.za. ABSTRACTS WILL BE ACCEPTED UNTIL 31 JULY 2010.

The Getty Foundation has generously made funding available for travel grants
for delegates from Africa, India, South East Asia and South America to
attend the colloquium. For more information regarding application procedures
and closing dates please contact Federico Freschi,
federico.freschiwits.ac.za, tel. +27 11 717 4611.

1. INTERROGATING WESTERN PARADIGMS
1.1 Modernist primitivism and indigenous modernisms: transnational
discourse and local art histories
Convenor: Ruth B. Phillips, Carleton University, ruth_phillipscarleton.ca

During the twentieth century, Indigenous artists in many parts of the world
were introduced to Western formats, media, and fine art conventions by
Western-trained artists imbued with the modernist admiration for Primitive
Art. This panel addresses the complex ways in which these Indigenous
artists have negotiated the aesthetic, ideological, and institutional
manifestations of modernism and primitivism. By bringing together scholars
who study indigenous modernisms in different parts of the world, it
establishes a comparative framework in order to reveal, on the one hand,
global paths of circulation, networks of communication and common patterns
of development, and, on the other, the unique features that characterise
iterations of Indigenous modernism in different parts of the world.

Participants are invited to present case studies that reveal the roles
played by Western mentors, teachers, and patrons motivated by their
admiration for Primitive Art, the strategies Indigenous artists adopted in
response to these discourses, and the transformative potential of Indigenous
modernisms in relation to ‘mainstream’ constructs of the modern. They might
consider, for example, the roles played by refugees from Nazi Europe and
other political exiles in transmitting a specifically European brand of
modernist artistic primitivism; the relationships of national liberation
movements to the emergence of Indigenous artistic modernisms; transnational
artistic influences, not only between European and Indigenous artists, but
also between different Indigenous tradition; the ways that the recognition
of these patterns lead us to reformulate notions of hybridity, national
modernisms, and modernism itself; or the relationships between art forms
developed as souvenir productions and modernist fine art.

1.2 Rethinking authenticity in African art
Convenor: Mathias Alubafi, University of the Witwatersrand,
fubahalubafiyahoo.co.uk

This study investigates the relationship between art produced and used in
Africa before contact with the West, that which was collected during the
colonial and postcolonial period and displayed in European and American
museums, and that which is produced and used in Africa today. It aims to
examine which of these different genres of art found both in Africa and the
West is authentic, and why? The purpose is to shift our understanding of
authenticity from the previously largely-held Western notion that most works
created after the advent of a cash economy and new forms of patronage from
missionaries, colonial administrators and more recently, tourists and the
new African elite (Kasfir 1994: 90) are inauthentic, to a more inclusive
policy of ascribing meaning and authenticity to African art. Discussion on
issues related to the creation of, and who creates meaning in, African art
is needed to produce a complete inventory of the different types of meanings
and their creators, in order to produce fuller empirical concepts, wider
knowledge and to address the question of generalisation in African art
studies, as well as the neglect of relevant issues such as the complex
nature of African societies and their art, and to give a fuller
understanding of the concept of authenticity. Key questions this session
will explore include: what is authenticity? What constitutes authentic
African art in Africa, and in the West? Who creates meaning for African art
and why? How does the meaning and authenticity of art produced and used in
traditional religious rituals in Africa differ from those that are displayed
in Western museum? How can we reconcile such differences? What is the
relationship between the different types of authenticities?

2. INTERROGATING THE POSTCOLONIAL
2.1 Art as an act of decolonisation: perspectives from and on the Global
South
Convenor: Mario Pissarra, Africa South Art Initiative (ASAI) and
University of Cape Town, Mario.pissarrauct.ac.za

The struggle for decolonisation is one of the critical themes of the 20th
century. Across the globe visual arts practitioners (artists, educators,
historians, curators, publishers, administrators, etc) have contributed to
and been impacted on by struggles for self-determination. The struggle for
decolonisation does not end with national liberation in the political sense
but persists in the economic and cultural spheres. Whether visual arts
practitioners have been active, passive or even resistant subjects in these
struggles, the art, exhibitions, and publications produced in these contexts
will inevitably reference issues that can be read as part of the broader
struggle for cultural identity.

Decolonisation is both an ongoing historical process and a discourse. The
discourse typically invokes contested notions such as cultural imperialism,
authenticity, indigeneity, traditionalism, ethnocentrism, nationalism,
modernity, assimilation, synthesis, hybridity, and globalisation.

While decolonisation does manifest literally in artists’ choices of themes,
images and symbols, it also manifests in quests to generate new visual
languages. These include questions of style, form and materials. Critical
assessments of the purposes of art and its public are also important to
consider, as is the transformation of existing art institutions, or the
establishment of new ones. The relationship to the new nation-state of
practitioners who see their work, as Wilfredo Lam put it, as ‘an act of
decolonisation’ is also a critical question, particularly when the new state
assumes a neo-colonial character. The relationships that are privileged and
cultivated with the artists and art events of other nation states are also
important, since this calls into question the extent to which the struggle
for dignity that led to national liberation is accompanied by a struggle to
transform the eurocentrism of the international art world.

This panel aims to explore how decolonisation impacts on the visual arts and
how visual arts practitioners contribute as subjects to the ongoing process
of decolonisation. Case studies, singular and comparative, from across the
world are particularly welcomed. The emphasis will be on periods before and
after political independence, as well as those dealing with the incomplete
project of decolonisation in more recent times. While most case studies will
come from the South, latitude will be extended to case studies from the
North where equivalent struggles for self-determination occur. Critical
approaches to the value and limits of applying decolonisation as a
discursive frame are also welcome.

2.2 About the epistemological and political consequences of some uses of
the ‘Latin American Art’ label
Convenors: Maria Iñigo Clavo, University of Essex, miclavoessex.ac.uk and
Jaime Vindel, University of Léon, vindel.jaimegmail.com

What is the counterpoint to the homogeneous "Latin American art" label? How
can art history in a Latin American context challenge traditional Western
art history? In the Cold War context during the 1960s and 1970s some
left-wing movements started to argue about the importance of creating a
continental idea of ‘Latin America identity, independent culture and
thought’, and following it, an idea of ‘Latin American art’. These
categories have been strongly questioned during the last couple of years,
but new approaches still coexist with the former ones. As a result the study
field of Latin American art history is often trapped in old problems.
Sometimes, the lack of studies about twentieth-century Latin American art
has been compensated by a nostalgic and latino-americanist memory of these
practices. That outlook does not allow an understanding of the singularity
of each national or local case. Moreover, this epistemological problem
hampers a critical approach to the past. We think this critical approach is
needed for the political reactivation of such practices in the present. If
we are able to share our experiences and knowledge about Latin American art
with other South art histories, we could find new ways to rethink the common
problems and to overcome some blind spots of our discipline. Detecting
through dialogue similarities, differences and connections between African
and Latin American contexts, we will be able to define a new concept of
"South", without falling into the reductionism of the close identities
constructed around geographical references.

3. INTERROGATING THE GLOBAL SOUTH
3.1 Problematising the Global South
This session will be hosted by the Wits Institute of Social and Economic
Research (WiSER) at the University of the Witwatersrand. For more
information contact the convenors, Abebe Zegeye, Director of WiSER,
Abebe.zegeyewits.ac.za or Sarah Nuttall, sarah.nuttallwits.ac.za

4. THE POLITICS OF DISPLAY AND COLLECTING
4.1 Changing museums, changing art histories
Convenor: Jillian Carman, University of the Witwatersrand and University
of Johannesburg, jilliancbellatrix.co.za

Art museums in South Africa are fairly new in global terms. The earliest
public art collections of the late nineteenth century were negligible in
size, quality and housing, and the first significant art museum only opened
in 1910. It comprised items made by white artists from British and European,
particularly French, schools that illustrated the history of modern Western
art. It did not feature a South African school. For most of the twentieth
century South African art museums collected and displayed the works of white
artists, local and foreign, with a principal aim of validating local art in
terms of Western art movements. Art made by black people practising in a
Western style was generally excluded from public collections until the
second half of the century. Indigenous or ‘native’ art was not included in
art museums for most of the century; it was considered ethnographic and
featured in ethnographic, natural history and general museums. But during
the last twenty-odd years of the twentieth century a change occurred in the
museum and the academy. Indigenous artefacts were moved from ethnographic to
art collections, and the study of them entered local art history discourses.
The certainties of a Western history of art were disturbed. Indigenous
art-making required a central role, something which had previously been
denied it, in both the art museum and the history of art. These challenges
are not unique to South Africa.

Papers are invited that address issues of change in art museums and the
history of art in former colonies, the Global South and countries where
first nation or immigrant groups trouble past certainties. Subjects may
include - but are not limited to - the early practice of favouring foreign
above local fine art and how this was adapted in collections and histories;
the challenges posed to traditional Western art history with regard to
notions of authenticity, individuality, artistic processes, methods and
theories; the discourses of indigenous people’s art practices, and how these
impact on a changing history of art; the ideologies behind collecting and
patronage; issues of repatriation of ethnographic items which art museums
may now need to address; how is "heritage" understood, collected and
displayed.

4.2 Africa, Africanness, and their representation in the contemporary
mega-exhibition
Convenor: Royce W. Smith, Wichita State University, royce.smithwichita.edu

Global mega-exhibitions have not only served as competitive and increasingly
touristic epicentres of contemporary creative discourse, but have
fundamentally altered what Okwui Enwezor calls the"politics of
Spectacle" "re-defining the very nature of history as an increasingly
negotiable and relational" rather than an exclusively localised, construct.
Yet, many critics argue that such exhibitions largely remain zones of
expository privilege—fashioning a false sense of global interconnectedness
and visibility that often camouflages or altogether ignores ongoing issues
of marginalisation and colonialist ‘readings’ of African history. Within
the contemporary mega-exhibition’s infrastructure, regional and national
approaches to artistic representation are often denied African
practitioners—whose works are instead subsumed under a totalising and
undifferentiated rubric of "Africanness". Are the true underpinnings of the
contemporary mega-exhibition uncomfortable, colonialist reifications of
Western, modernist exhibition practices (as exemplified in the Great
Exhibition of 1851), or are they strategic confrontations of such
exclusionary and hierarchical traditions? How successfully have curators,
artists, and the viewing public engaged with the concerns and agendas of
African practitioners within specific articulations of biennales and
mega-exhibitions? If Rasheed Araeen has openly questioned why African
artists so desperately seek a ‘piece of Venice pie’ (referring to their
inclusion in the Venice Biennale’s proceedings), what other representational
mechanisms exist or might exist in the future to adequately showcase African
artistic interests—both within and outside the African continent?

This panel invites papers that engage with these issues and others, not only
from the standpoint of Africa and Africanness as raised within non-African
biennales and mega-exhibitions, but also from the perspective of new,
emerging, potential, and defunct mega-exhibitions within the African
continent. Views from critics, curators, historians, administrators, and
artists are invited as this panel utilises Africa's local, regional,
national, and continental concerns as reflected in the contemporary art
world as the re-oriented foundation for discussions about mega-exhibitions
and their futures.

5. CULTURAL PRODUCTION
5.1 Where to put baskets in an art gallery? The place of traditional
cultures in art history
Convenor: Kevin Murray, Melbourne University, kevincraftunbound.net

Conventional Western approaches to art history focus on individual
creativity. The individual artist is seen as the ultimate site for
development of new art forms. While inspiration might be drawn from
collective traditions, such as Picasso's experience of African masks, the
ultimate end of analysis is the product realised by an individual. This can
be seen as part of a cultural economy that deals in a currency of genius,
intellectual property and originality. The colonial process entails the
extension of this economy into alternative systems where culture is more a
matter of collective meaning and ancestral authority. Such methodologies
have a home in the trans-Atlantic North, where traditional cultures are
rarely found outside of the modernist lens. In the Global South, however,
there is sometimes a bifocal arrangement where modernity co-exists with
collective systems. In the case of visual culture, craft practice contrasts
with visual art as a form of production based on mastery of traditional
skills rather than sparks of individual genius. In the North, much
contemporary craft has been assimilated into modernity through the practice
of the studio craftsperson. In the South, craft is still practised in
communities where it is grounded in collective identities, such as village,
tribe, caste or guild. If art history in the Global South is to reflect the
nature of its democracies, then it is critical that methodologies be adopted
that account for art that has been forged through collective agencies, where
it would be inappropriate to single out an individual as the sole
representative. This could be seen to apply to forms such as telephone
wire-weaving in South Africa, 'tjanpi' sculptures in the Western Desert of
Australia, tapa cloths from the Pacific, Pattamadai mat weavers in India,
Relmu Witral weavers in Chile. How can these collective art forms be
incorporated into a history of art in the Global South? Some of the issues
this raises include:
- How can innovation be accounted for within a collective practice?
- To what extent can Western institutions such as art galleries
accommodate collective art forms such as village crafts?
- Are there productive ways in which individual artists can collaborate
with traditional communities?
- How can what might be considered a traditional art form be given a
diachronic reading through art history?
- How might individuals that emerge from collective settings to be
granted status as 'living treasures', 'masters of their craft', or 'artists
in their own right'?

This discussion is relevant to those working across the broader South,
including African tribal arts, Asian programs for upliftment of
traditional crafts, Oceanic models for dealing with traditional knowledge
and Latin American forms of engagement with the so called 'pre-Colombian'
cultures. Issues at play here connect closely with existing forums such as
Journal of Modern Craft
(www.journalofmoderncraft.com<http://www.journalofmoderncraft.com>) and
Southern Perspectives
(www.southernperspectives.net<http://www.southernperspectives.net>).

5.2 Tradition and innovation in Southern African textiles
Convenor: Marsha MacDowell, Michigan State University Museum,
macdowelmsu.edu

Proposals for papers are sought for a panel that will explore traditions and
innovation in Southern African textiles, using new technology for research
on Southern African textiles, the African diaspora and transnational
influences on textiles, what is African in textile production, and
philosophies of collecting and interpreting South African textiles.

6. ART AND ‘PRE-HISTORY’
6.1 Archaeologies of art
Convenors: Sven Ouzman, University of Pretoria, Sven.Ouzmanup.ac.za and
Pippa Skotnes, University of Cape Town, pippa.skotnesuct.ac.za

Often, with a certain degree of species-specific arrogance, we maintain
"art" as a hallmark unique to humans. But is it? In order to answer this
question, we need to consider 'art' in a wide temporal perspective, perhaps
as far back as 500 000 years. Within this time we then need multiple scales
of analysis, from broad questions such as 'what is art?' to specific case
studies by specialists, extending even to considerations of non-human art
and art that is a product of human and non-human networking. While
necessarily multi-disciplinary, understanding what are likely to be the
multiple origins and developments of art can also help with disciplinary
self-reflexivity. Archaeologists, for example, are not very good at
"excavating" art. Currently, Africa is considered one of the homes of human
art, but this oft-repeated assertion also amply demonstrates the
considerable politics at play in the wider fields of origins research.
‘Archaeologies of art’ thus aims both to include substantive case studies,
foundational questions, and a consideration of socio-political factors that
reify human art. Papers are invited that address these concerns.

7. POWER AND POLITICS
7.1 Architecture and landscape
Convenor: Randall Bird, University of the Witwatersrand,
randall.birdwits.ac.za

In recent decades, the relationship between architecture and the natural
environment has been explored by scholars in a variety of symposia and
museum exhibitions. The exhibition, "In Situ: Architecture and Landscape’
at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) highlights the ways in which
changing definitions of landscape have expanded our understanding of the
relationship between the "natural and the manmade". The exhibition
examines a full spectrum of approaches to landscape by architects,
including the modern movement's hostility to nature and the extent to
which the "architectural avant-garde celebrated autonomy from nature", a
disposition that led to a divorce between architecture and nature.
Another theme is the more recently revised discourse around architecture
and landscape and a contextualist approach to architecture fueled by
environmental crises and exponential urban expansion. Current
award-winning architectural designs, such as, Peter Rich’s ‘Mapungubwe
Interpretation Centre’ in South Africa, exemplify the potential of these
crises for creativity in the Global South. In its more current
incarnation, the term ‘landscape’ encompasses the material, experiential,
perceptual and imaginative dimensions that are at the heart of the
creation of space in human societies. Moving beyond phenomenological
traditions by questioning how political authority operates through
landscape and its relation to architecture enriches our understanding of
how space becomes charged with meaning. This comprehensive approach brings
about an awareness of architecture and landscape that is less reflective
and static, and more active and dynamic and provokes questions about how
architecture, landscape and politics intersect.

This panel calls for papers that examine diverse attitudes toward the
relationship between landscape and architecture over the past two-hundred
years around the Global South.

8. CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES
8.1 Unsettling hierarchies: women artists in South Africa
Convenor: Brenda Schmahmann, Rhodes University, b.schmahmannru.ac.za

Contemporary South African women artists frequently invoke concepts or ideas
which relate to those influential on feminist practitioners in the "North"
or "West". Kristeva's idea of abjection is often explored, as are issues
surrounding maternity, the constructedness of gendered identities, memory as
a strategy for writing new histories, the body as a site for asserting
subjectivity, and numerous other theoretical or thematic concerns popular in
America, Britain and Western Europe. But while works by females in South
Africa may seem to have much in common with those made by their counterparts
in the "West", it is important to recognise their crucial differences and
how these are informed by the divergent experiences of their makers as well
as the distinctive political contexts in which they were produced.

This session welcomes papers which explore how the particularities of South
African histories and concerns inflect and affect women artists’ engagement
with concepts or issues that also enjoy currency in the ‘West’. Complicating
the relation between feminist art and theory in South Africa and in America,
Britain and Western Europe, papers in the session will question implicitly
narrow understandings that works by South African women are simply
‘influenced’ by those produced by their Western peers. If feminism reveals
the ways in which power imbalances are embroiled in issues of gender, this
session will reveal how feminist art history should also refuse a
geographical/cultural hierarchical distinction – namely, the notion that
women practitioners in the "West" or "North" occupy the "centre", the site
of creativity and innovation, while those in other countries (such as South
Africa) are followers and imitators on the "periphery".

8.2 Clothing, cultures, classifications: inventing self and other through
dress
Convenor: Victoria Rovine, University of Florida, vrovineufl.edu

This panel will address the roles of clothing, a highly visible yet
understudied creative medium, as a tool for classifying people and cultures.
Papers will explore how dress practices have been employed both to classify
and control others, and to challenge or subvert such classifications.
Analyses of clothing at the intersection of cultures "locations and moments
at which the identities of the Global South and the Global North are thrown
into relief" are of particular interest. The panel welcomes explorations of
both historical and contemporary dress practices, using a range of
analytical approaches.

8.3 Who is entitled to tell the black artist’s story in South Africa?
Convenor: David Koloane, Independent Researcher, davidkoloaneyahoo.com

The dearth of black writers and critics is a source of great concern. The
recent spate of publications on the visual arts in South Africa has,
irrespective of the individual writer's intentions and objectives, once more
brought into focus the glaring inequalities which characterise South African
society and its visual arts practitioners where more often than not white
artists assume the dual role of referee and player. The problem is not so
much that of colour but more of the authenticity of information and the
validation of the expression and effort of the subject. It is often
unimaginable that a writer who virtually lives in a radically different
divide can honestly and objectively bridge the divide even within a
so-called broad survey of South African art. Surely within the socialised
postcolonial discourse a new vocabulary has to emerge in order to locate
South Africa in the twenty first century.

This panel, which will take the form of a discussion forum, invites
contributions that will address the problem of representivity. Issues to be
discussed may include the concept of partnerships and collaborations between
artists and writers, and Intensive writing workshops as part of higher
education curricula.

9. PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
9.1 Between Seeing and Believing: Documentary and Archival Practices in
the Global South
Convenors: Rory Bester, University of the Witwatersrand,
rory.besterwits.ac.za, Sean O’Toole, Editor, Art South Africa,
seanwotoolegmail.com, Dilip Menon, University of the Witwatersrand,
dilip.menonwits.ac.za

The two decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall represent an important
period in the theorisation of the politics of ‘documentary’ photography as a
visual practice, and raised vital questions with regard to aesthetics,
gender, race, truth and modernity. But in the post-Cold War / post-apartheid
period there have been few sustained theoretical statements on documentary
practices.

The conditions for the contemporary production and circulation of
documentary photographs in exhibitions, magazines and books has been
influenced by two critical moments in the mid-1990s: the inclusion of
documentary modes in contemporary art making, and an archival turn that has
seen photographers increasingly engage questions of memory and remembrance.

This panel is interested in the intersection of the different "factual"
possibilities of both documentary and archival practices. The panel seeks to
explore the extent to which contemporary documentary practices in the global
south might be preoccupied with social-realist modes in which archival
practices plays a central mediating role. We are seeking papers that examine
the different ‘documentary’ or ‘factual’ modes in photography from the
global south, as well as how archival and other practices have ameliorated
stasis and change within the genre.