[1] Radical Imprints: Visual Tactics of Anti-colonial Struggle

Zeina Maasri, University of Bristol, zeina.maasribristol.ac.uk
Polly Savage, School of Arts, SOAS, ps52soas.ac.uk

For many groups engaged in the anti-colonial and anti-imperial campaigns of the twentieth century, printing was the medium of choice for visualising and enacting political struggles. Across the Global South, printing presses and workshops were often sites of grassroots activism, and spaces where printmaking techniques could be taught, shared and practiced in the community. Printing enabled resistance movements to reconceive art along revolutionary lines, offering a tactical alternative to the market system, bringing art into everyday life and politics through posters, pamphlets, periodicals and radical publishing projects.

This session investigates the political role of printmaking and graphic design in processes of decolonisation in the Global South. We welcome paper proposals that consider how artists and collectives working in specific sites in Africa, Asia or Latin America and their diasporas used printmaking, and print media more broadly, to articulate anti-colonial imaginaries, mobilise transnational solidarities and shape postcolonial aesthetic sensibilities. How did these practices challenge hierarchical distinctions between the "applied" and "fine" arts? How were political subjectivities made legible on the surface of the reproducible print? How was printmaking technology figured in the cultural ambitions of newly independent nations? And how did the medium allow the limits of modernism to be radically and creatively reconfigured?

The session invites comparative discussion foregrounding understanding of these various art and graphic design practices not as discrete historical, national or geographical manifestations, but as globally interlinked within the broader struggles for decolonisation that were fought throughout the twentieth century, and which in some cases remain unfinished today.

To offer a paper:
Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor(s).
Deadline for submissions: 10 November 2023

You will need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper, your name and institutional affiliation (if any). Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the digital programme. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.

For any other enquiries, please contact: Conference2024forarthistory.org.uk

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[2] Tales of Emergence. Establishing Institutions for Contemporary Art since 1945

Wouter Davidts, Ghent University, wouter.davidtsugent.be

The Ghent Municipal Museum for Contemporary Art (now S.M.A.K.), established in 1975, was Belgium’s first museum for contemporary art. The museum came about following a long and intensive campaign driven by a local group of engaged art lovers. In many other countries as well, the effective inauguration of institutions for contemporary art is often preceded by many plans and initiatives driven by local groups of intellectuals, artists, and prominent civilians. As official interest and support for contemporary art is lacking, the pre-histories of several museums are rife with fascinating stories, intense battles, and both successful and aborted projects.

This session aims to map the beginnings of institutions of contemporary art in countries and cities beyond the acknowledged centers of Western art (Paris, London, Berlin, New York).

More than just gathering stories/histories of emerging institutions, we call for papers that gauge these stories/histories as complex junctures articulating either promised or failed art-historical and cultural ideas, curatorial visions, and institutional models, as well as architectural ambitions and city or cultural politics. In joining case studies from different epochs and geographies, this session aims to tackle contested notions as modern and contemporary, as well as local and international.

This session is convened by Prof. Wouter Davidts and the members of KB45, the research group on Art in Belgium since 1945 at Ghent University, Belgium.

Please email paper proposals to wouter.davidtsugent.be. You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any). You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.
Deadline for submissions: 10 November 2023

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[3] Architecture Theory and History in Contemporary Art

Stefaan Vervoort, Ghent University, stefaan.vervoortugent.be
Maarten Delbeke, ETH Zurich, maarten.delbekegta.arch.ethz.ch

In postwar and contemporary art, artists’ engagements with architecture are often interpreted in terms of institutional critique or societal commitment. Artists comment on architecture’s imposition of power or on its biopolitics, or they gauge the capacity of architectural design to bring together people and shape new publics. Yet the involvement of contemporary art with architectural theory and history reaches well beyond these themes. From Asger Jörn’s and the Situationists’ quarrels with Le Corbusier’s design principles to Claes Oldenburg’s and Dan Graham’s dialogue with Robert Venturi, to references to modern and postmodern, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, in art since the 1980s (e.g., Monica Bonvicini, Luciano Fabro, Peter Friedl, Jill Magid, Giulio Paolini, Thomas Schütte), artists have entertained a sustained critical engagement with works and ideas of architects, architecture critics, and architecture historians.

This session calls for contributions that historicize the assorted roles played by architecture theory and history in contemporary art. We welcome case studies and more general papers. Contributions can mine the nexus of art and architecture theory/history in a synchronic and diachronic manner. We wish to address the following questions: how do artists' engagements with architectural theory and history open up reflections on socio-historical themes and developments in art? How, and why, are architects, buildings and theories referenced? If art allows working with architecture beyond disciplinary expectations and established protocols, what ’type’ of theory and history emerges? How, if at all, does contemporary art allow thinking differently about the categories of theory and history in architecture?

Please email paper proposals to stefaan.vervoortugent.be and maarten.delbekegta.arch.ethz.ch. You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any). You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.
Deadline for submissions: 10 November 2023

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[4] Exploring gender-based violence in feminist art

Maria Photiou, University of Derby, M.Photiouderby.ac.uk

The 1970s were marked by the work of feminist activists who were actively exploring the issue of gender-based violence in their artistic practices. Gender-based violence is a phenomenon deeply rooted in society’s gender stereotypes and has recently been descripted as a "global pandemic" by the World Bank Group’s report "Gender-Based Violence" (Brief 25 Sept, 2019). The representation of gender-based violence has been a prevailing theme in feminist art and artists such as Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, Ana Mendieta, Faith Ringgold, and Kara Walkers, among many others, have been instrumental in exposing the experiences of violence and challenging socio-political norms.

This session will examine how gender-based violence is represented in contemporary art. The session aims to provide a platform to foster dialogue and develop new ways of thinking, which will enhance our understanding on how citizenship, social justice, and gender equality is experienced and negotiated through contemporary art practices, and also how it is documented in the making of art histories. This session is inspired by Vivien Green Fryd’s research (in Against Our Will, 2019: 1) on exposing approaches in American art representing ‘issues of gender inequality, racial, and economic differences, and the impact of sexism and pornography in mass media’. Papers are invited to explore the ways these issues are addressed over the past fifty years in contemporary art and art history.

This session is part of the AAH Annual Conference that will take place at the University of Bristol, 3-5 April 2024.

Please send a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper, with your name and institutional affiliation (if any) to the session convenor: Dr Maria Photiou M.Photiouderby.ac.uk
Deadline for submissions: 10 November 2023