[1] Fugitive Ecologies in Contemporary Art (Chicago).

From: Allison Young, young3lsu.edu
Date: 21 July 2023
Deadline: 31 August 2023

Session will present: In-Person
Affiliated Society or Committee Name: Society of Contemporary Art Historians
Chair: Allison Young, Louisiana State University (young3lsu.edu)

For historian Sarah L. Lincoln, the term “fugitive ecology” describes a range of subaltern relationships to the land, soil, and planet enacted in response to conditions of alienation and dispossession. As she indicates, fugitivity not only suggests “modes of being, knowing, and acting on the run, perpetually mobile, lacking a legal or official relationship to place” but also “oppositionality to a system predicated on the ‘fixing’ of bodies.” Yet even under the duress caused by the tangible spatial violence of enslavement, apartheid, colonization, reservations, prisons or plantations, such transgressive practices of tending the earth have persisted as strategies of both resilience and care.

This panel asks how “fugitive ecologies” have been proposed or theorized by contemporary artists, particularly in the wake of climate catastrophe. It considers the many resonances of the “wake” offered by Christina Sharpe – as visible disturbance, as a view towards the past, as openness of mind, or care in mourning – which are made manifest amidst present ecological breakdown.

Responding to environmental crises of industrial, nuclear, and colonial origin, artists have served as documentarians and activists, gardeners and radical botanists, and community archivists. What possibilities for decolonizing our relationship to nature are envisioned or demonstrated in contemporary art? How have artists drawn from alternative, Indigenous and subaltern onto-epistemologies when engaging with natural materials or landscape representations? How have artists responded to the collapse of world systems in the wake of the pandemic - alongside calls to action on the fronts of climate change and social justice?

-------------------------------------------

[2] Latin American Women in Art and Science (Chicago).

From: Paulina Pardo Gaviria, paulina.pardocsulb.edu
Date: 20 July 2023
Deadline: 31 August 2023

With a focus on women artists working in Latin America since the 1970s, this panel seeks to contribute to studies that examine the visual culture of scientific and medical practices from a historical perspective. Interrogating the individual reception and historical repercussions of public health measures, it aims to dialogue with and broaden existing studies whose general geographical and chronological foci are on Europe, its colonies, and the United States at the turn of the 20th century, as reflected, for instance, in the scholarship of art historian Rachael Z. DeLue and Anna Arabindan–Kesson, scholar of African-American and Black diasporic art. Specifically, this panel aims to examine the artistic deployment of scientific aesthetics and methods by joining recent art historical efforts that have brought to light the work of women artists, including the groundbreaking traveling exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 (2017–2018).

Using different media and engaging with a wide range of aspects of social and medical sciences, the interdisciplinary orientation of Latin American women working on art and science may be expressed in their simultaneous pursuit of scientific careers, collaborations with scientists, and participation in public health initiatives. More broadly, the artistic practices discussed in this panel will speak to contemporary issues including the coronavirus pandemic, reproductive rights, digital surveillance, and the general control of individual bodies by systemic power structures. Together, this panel’s presentations will reveal interdisciplinary connections rooted in the historical engagements with both art and science undertaken by women artists in the Americas.

Please submit your presentation title and abstract (250 words) and your CV through CAA submission portal:
https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12720.html

Contact information:
Paulina Pardo (paulina.pardocsulb.edu)

-------------------------------------------

[3] Ecocritical Perspectives on Art from the Americas and Caribbean (Chicago).

From: William Schwaller
Date: 20 July 2023
Deadline: 31 August 2023

This panel seeks to provide a space to bring together scholars and topics that take ecocritical perspectives towards art and artistic practices from across the Americas and Caribbean to highlight new research, reflect on methodological issues, and revise or reorient art historical narratives. Ecocriticism has been latent, arguably, within the historiography of the art from the Americas and Caribbean, much of which centers on the impact of the continents’ geography and natural resources on art and artists. Yet how might the methods of ecocriticism or the environmental humanities provide opportunities to open the canon and strengthen or alter existing narratives and art histories? The region’s shared experiences of resource extraction, destruction of ecosystems and cultures, and the introduction invasive species and colonizers through colonization and imperialism testify to the passive and active impact of the environment on historical events, so how might centering the landscape, climate, and ecosystems as influential actors in human culture reframe the art histories of this region?

Of particular interest is how Latinx, indigenous, or non-Western epistemologies and traditions might challenge, nuance, or complement the methodologies of ecocriticism that have been developed largely within the Anglo-European academy. This panel encourages submissions on topics from all periods of study and creative fields including visual art, architecture, urban and graphic design, and the performing arts. Special consideration will be given to scholars and topics that are under-represented in the field.

Please submit your Presentation title, Abstract (250 word limit), and a shortened CV (close to 2 pages) on the CAA paper submission portal by Aug. 31:
https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html

-------------------------------------------

[4] Activating Fluxus, Expanding Conservation (online).

From: Josephine Ellis
Date: 21 July 2023
Deadline: 31 August 2023

The Activating Fluxus research team is excited to extend an invitation for the submission of paper proposals to our panel at the 112th College Art Association Annual Conference. While the conference's in-person event will be hosted in Chicago from February 14–17, 2024, our panel will be conducted virtually. Authors interested in contributing are encouraged to submit their abstracts by August 31, 2023.

Session title: ACTIVATING FLUXUS, EXPANDING CONSERVATION
Session will present: Virtually
Chairs: Hanna Barbara Holling and Aga Wielocha, Bern Academy of the Arts
Organiser: College Art Association

Fluxus of the 1960s and 70s defied conventional notions of art and creativity by emphasizing artistic practice's transient, playful, and participatory aspects. However, the multidimensionality of Fluxus has been flattened out in the rush to exhibit, historicize, and theorize its objects. This session explores the potential of Fluxus events, objects, and ephemera as active material embodiments that challenge established hierarchies in museums and collecting institutions.
Scholars, artists, and practitioners are invited to present papers that address Fluxus forms of activation, including reconstruction, adaptation, and reinterpretation of works leading to new concepts. The central question is: How can we activate Fluxus today without reducing it to static artifacts? How do we redefine a work's identity and embrace its inherent capacity for change? Can a Fluxus work serve as a thinking device to critically recalibrate the meaning of conservation and care?

By exploring these questions, we hope to generate discussions on the creative and critical potential of Fluxus beyond its historical context. We aim to rethink conservation's role in relation to ephemeral and participatory art, and push the limits of its technical focus. Emphasizing Fluxus's multidimensionality, we seek to invigorate its legacy and open new avenues for artistic and intellectual exploration.

Key dates
August 31: Deadline to submit proposals.
September 18: Session chair deadline to finalize sessions, inform participants via email invitation. Accepted submitters will receive an email to access their own SC after September 25.
October: Conference registration opens, and full conference schedule is posted.

How to submit
Instructions for submission are provided here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html
You can submit your abstract through the link available on the CFP official page here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12826.html
Prior to submission, ensure the following steps are completed
Create a CAA account. Membership is not mandatory at this stage. If you are not a member, you can create an account at the provided link above. Skip the payment and joining process for now.
Prepare your presentation title and abstract, adhering to the 250-word limit.
Prepare a condensed CV, approximately 2 pages in length.
(Optional) Gather relevant images or documentation. Please limit this section to five images that support your proposal.

-------------------------------------------

[5] Feminist Contemporary Arts Activisms and Gender-based Violence (Chicago).

From: Basia Sliwinska (bsliwinskafcsh.unl.pt)
Date: 21 July 2023
Deadline: 31 August 2023

Organiser: Basia Sliwinska, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

The adoption of Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (1993) was a significant moment recognising women’s right to a life free from violence as an international issue. And yet, recently we have been observing an intensification of gender-based violence, igniting arts activist interventions to raise consciousness, protest and advocate. Los Zapatos Rojos, a collaborative project (realised since 2009) by a Mexican artist Elina Chauvet is a potent example. It involves laying out hundreds of pairs of red shoes in urban spaces across the world to mark the absence of women who lost their lives to gender-based violence.

In ‘Understanding Patriarchy’ (2004) bell hooks writes, ‘Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation’, reinforcing mechanisms of control and dominance through diverse forms of violence. hooks argues, ‘Feminist thinking offers a solution’. Violence is a multiple oppression paradigm, as demonstrated by ‘El Violentómetro’ (Violence Meter), a tool developed by a Mexican scholar Martha Alicia Tronco Rosas. It is a simple graphic measuring and manifesting the spectrum of gender-based violent acts of power enacted by subtle means through to femicide, the majority of which remain hidden and silenced.

This session invites contributions engaging with specific case studies of feminist contemporary arts activism to bring awareness of human rights violations that are gender-based. It seeks to address emotional, physical and sexual abuses, practices of coercive and financial control, sexism and victim blaming; and explore the envisaged by hooks potential solutions founded in feminist thinking.

Send a proposal via the CAA online portal here:
https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12578.html

Information on how to submit can be found here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html