An Era of Walls: Art at the Boundaries of the New Enclosures.
Session at the AAH Annual Conference 2024.

Leah Modigliani, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, USA, lmodiglianitemple.edu,
Noah Randolph, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, USA, nartemple.edu

After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War, pundits enthusiastically proclaimed the advent of a new borderless future. Since then, six times more border walls covering the Earth’s surface have now been erected. They are the brutal visible markers of the New Enclosures that contain us all but are not always so clearly visible. In fact, images of walls, barricades or blockades are ironic indicators of Capitalism’s reorganization of space over the last four decades. This spatialization, described by many scholars as deterritorialization, is fundamental to the constantly shifting accumulation of capital in more “productive” geographies and political contexts. The rigidity and strength of such walls buttress the fear of the loss of state sovereignty, performing what border theorists call a theatrical presence that calms the anxiety of an internal population. This panel will consider artist practices that question, challenge or unsettle these social relations and the political, geo-economic and environmental barriers that engender them.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to) case studies of artists or artworks that contest political and geographic space(s); the temporalities of walls; art’s relation to the public sphere; intersections between art and related disciplines researching the built of environment; art’s ideological marking of territory as monument or gentrification; connections between art, activism and time-based media or performance. Of particular interest is the question of how such artworks might imagine and prefigure new futures.

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