[1]
From: Luba Kozak
Subject: CFP: Visualising Human-Animal Relations

"Visualising Human-Animal Relations: Animals in Visual and Material Culture 1750-1900"

The “animal turn” has gained traction in the humanities and social sciences, bringing animals to the forefront of academic discourses. Visual culture can offer new insights into the animal turn, opening up new ways of
reading animals in art, and revealing nuanced human-animal relations. 1750-1900 was a crucial period in human-animal relations, yet representations of animals in both visual and material culture remain
underexplored.

This session aims to reevaluate animals in eighteenth and nineteenth-century artworks to shed light on human-animal relations through interdisciplinary perspectives. It encourages papers that integrate
perspectives from the animal turn to critically rethink how animals are represented, understood, and treated. We invite art historians, researchers and museum professionals to explore ways of challenging anthropocentric perspectives and empowering animal narratives.

The session will comprise 20-minute papers, followed by an invited roundtable discussion exploring future directions in historical animal-art history.

Papers might consider:
- Animals as art materials
- Trade and mobility of animals across global networks
- Pet culture and pet-owner relationships
- Conflicting categories of animals (ie. pets vs. pests or livestock)
- Menageries and animal collecting practices
- Animals and science
- Anthropomorphism and blurring human-animal identities
- Recognizing animal individuality, subjectivity and agency
- Moral and ethical shifts in attitudes towards animals, including animal welfare
- Visual cultures of meat and/or vegetarianism
- Animal cruelty and suffering
- Religious and spiritual beliefs on shaping human-animal relations
- Connections between nationalism and attitudes towards animals
- Methodological reflections on animal studies and art history

Paper Submission Details:
Please send a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), including your name and institutional affiliation (if any) to

Kate Nichols and Luba Kozak (e.k.nicholsbham.ac.uk and kozak20luregina.ca).

[2]
From: Eszter Erdosi
Subject: CFP: More-than-human worlds on the move: reframing and exploring migration
from a multispecies perspective in art

Migration, which we understand as moving from one location to another and intending to settle either temporarily or permanently, is fundamental to history on this planet. In recent decades, this has been reflected in postcolonial, Marxist and feminist scholarships, which have contributed diverse perspectives to discussions on migration, including in art history.

However, these otherwise rich discourses often continue to have a human-centric focus. Meanwhile, the migratory patterns of other species, such as plants and animals, have also been impacted by a myriad of factors, including –but not limited to– changes in temperature, extractive practices, habitat destruction, trade or hunting. This panel aims to further lines of inquiry on other-than-human migration in the past, present and future, by inviting contributions that discuss the movement of plants, animals, fungi, and more-than-human organisms in art and visual culture.

We invite papers that consider migration as embedded within larger networks and ecological systems, covering any period or continent. In doing so, this session seeks to contribute to a currently underdeveloped field of study, demonstrating the critical, theoretical, speculative and epistemological potential of art practice and history for multispecies discourses on migration.

Themes may include, but are not limited to:
- The movement of animal and plant species across different centuries,
from antiquity to the present
- The forced transportation and relocation of animals, especially in
relation to colonial histories of violence
- Interactions between migratory species
- Barriers to migration
- The multispecies nature of trade and its impact on material culture (for example, in products of animal origin, such as ivory)

Please send 250-word abstracts to Eszter Erdosi at E.Erdosisms.ed.ac.uk
and to Anne Daffertshofer at asd7st-andrews.ac.uk

[3]
From: Pamela Bianchi
Subject: CFP: Queer Spaces in Art and Architecture

"If orientation is a matter of how we reside in space, then sexual orientation might also be a matter of residence, of how we inhabit spaces, and who or what we inhabit spaces with." (Sara Ahmed, 2006)

Feminist and queer modernist approaches have contributed to questioning the patriarchal and heteronormative norms of architecture as well as the dichotomies inherent in the binary nature of spaces (domestic/public, center/periphery). Charlotte Perriand, Lilly Reich and Eileen Gray, first, and Dolores Hayden, Beatriz Colomina, Penny Sparke and Jill Stoner, later, have structured important works on ephemeral architecture regarding the notion of interiority, thus initiating a theoretical deconstruction of these normative boundaries.

Where are we today? If “queer is already present both in architectural historiographies and historical architectures themselves” (Marko Jobst, 2023), what are the architectural, artistic and design solutions that can bring queerness into light? How are 21st-century artists and architects interpreting and using queer architectural experiences to promote new ways of conceiving queerness in private and social spaces? What were the pioneering cases that brought out the first contradictions?

The panel proposes to reconsider past and present cases by exploring visual art and architectural cultures of any historical period to reread and evaluate, through a contemporary perspective, some of the challenges
inherent in the topic of queerness. It aims to attract scholars from various disciplines and encourages papers with a transnational and transcultural outlook that reflect on, but are not necessarily limited to: queer spaces, environments, buildings and landscapes through art practices; intersections between queer artists and architects; save space, camp attitude, minor architecture, non-binary space; queer design and furniture;
exhibitions challenging the topic; virtual queer spaces – backrooms.

Submission:
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.

Please email your paper to: pamela.bianchiparis-belleville.archi.fr

You should receive a feedback regarding your submission within two weeks.

[4]
From: Elisabetta Rattalino
Subject: CFP: Elemental Thinking: New Approaches to Art and Landscape

"Elemental Thinking: New Approaches to Art and Landscape"

In their recent book, Reactivating elements (2021), María Puig de la Bellacasa, Dimitris Papadopoulos and Natasha Myers place the elements at the forefront of a re-examination of Earth's ecologies. Considering the
chemical elements of Mendeleev’s periodic table alongside the classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water, they argue that “the elements have been brought back in recent years to speak in old and new tongues, in
diverse contexts and practices, generating other ways of storying long-standing narratives”. They advocate "thinking with the elements" as a means of generating new insights into our social, political, and
ecological conditions and inviting us to imagine more-than-human narratives about the land.

This session takes "elemental thinking" as a point of reference for exploring artistic engagements with landscapes and environments. It asks how thinking through the elements, whether chemical or classical, might generate new art historical approaches to the land and landscape, both in response to the current environmental crisis and in reflecting upon earlier historical moments.

The persistence and omnipresence of the elements, across diverse ontologies and epistemologies, allows for elemental thinking to cross cultural, geographical and historical boundaries, inviting an expanded understanding of landscape and environment. We welcome proposals on all historical periods, geographical contexts, and artistic media. In addition to papers from art historians, we encourage proposals from artists, curators, and scholars working in disciplines adjacent to art history.

The session would be made up of 20-minute papers, followed by a roundtable discussion, facilitated by the session convenors, in which all speakers would be invited to participate.

Please send paper proposals (title and 250-word maximum abstract) directly
to both session convenors:

Elisabetta Rattalino, Free University of Bozen–Bolzano, elisabetta.rattalinounibz.it; Lara Pucci, University of
Nottingham, lara.puccinottingham.ac.uk.

[5]
From: Christopher Williams-Wynn
Subject: CFP: The CAyC network revisited

"The CAyC network revisited: Archives, methodologies, and critical perspectives on Argentina’s Centre for Art and Communication".

In 1968, the art critic and businessman Jorge Glusberg founded the Centre for Art and Communication (CAyC) in Buenos Aires. Over the following decades this interdisciplinary network of artists, thinkers and art
professionals, rife with contradictions, shaped the production and circulation of art from Latin America. CAyC fostered artistic exchanges within and beyond the region, from Argentina and Brazil to Japan and the
UK; organised ten International Open Encounters on Video Art; and hosted numerous events featuring natural scientists, philosophers, and literary figures. From the militarised repression of the 1970s into the post-1983
transition to democracy, CAyC also navigated multiple forms of political entanglement. Recent initiatives have begun to historicise CAyC, but its broader significance for global histories of contemporary art has yet to be
examined in detail. Due to its scope of activities, CAyC provides a productive methodological lens through which to examine the intersection of key issues driving current art historical scholarship, including
transnational connections and collaboration, interdisciplinarity, technological experiments, ecological approaches, and experiences of migration and exile. 
 
The session will comprise 20-minute papers and a 25-minute roundtable to reassess CAyC’s multifarious and contested impact across a range of geographies and artistic concerns. We invite proposals concerning
historiographic debates, methodological reflections, and case studies (of art works, exhibitions, and projects). Potential topics include: histories of art and technoscience; international, transnational, and global
interpretative frameworks; cybernetics and antipsychiatry; CAyC’s pedagogical programs and curatorial frameworks; race and gender dynamics; the role of CAyC’s archive(s); ecocritical and ecological concerns.

Organized by Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra (Birkbeck, University of London),
Catherine Spencer (University of St Andrews), and Christopher Williams-Wynn (4A_Lab: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut / Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz).

Submissions should include a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper, as well as your name and institutional affiliation (if any). The deadline for submissions is November 1, 2024.

Please email your proposals directly to the session conveners: m.polgovskybbk.ac.uk;
catherine.spencerst-andrews.ac.uk; c.williams-wynnkhi.fi.it

[6]
From: Caterina Caputo
Subject: CFP: Reassessing Collage and Photo-collage: from Avant-gardes towards Artificial Intelligence

Emerging from 19th-century personal postcards and photo albums, and later employed in advertising (Chéroux 2015), collage and photo-collage were embraced by the early 20th-century Avant-garde artists as a revolutionary language, challenging established codes and conventions in art.The two techniques developed in close relation to other verbal montages within the Cubist and Futurist experimentations (Poggi 1992), as well as in socialist-oriented Dadaist magazines (Bergius 2000) and Surrealists’ circles (Ades 1976; Adamowicz 1998). In these contexts, the collage was approached through multiple angles (Lamberti-Messina 2007), as can be deducted from the statements of Max Ernst, who considers it as a medium able to allow “the masterly irruption of the irrational into all areas of art, poetry, science, fashion, the private lives of individuals and the public lives of peoples” (Ernst 1936).

The hybridity of the procedure made the collage and photo-collage suitable for various possible artistic fields: from the execution of architectural plans and fashion sketches to advertising graphics, from the mise en page
of magazines and books to exhibition displays, films, and artworks (Dragu 2020). From this point of view, the new image, fragmented and reassembled, intended above all to provoke brief circuits of meaning, form, and
perception, questioning the very concept of representation and reality of the image. Significantly, collage continues today to be a technique used by contemporary artists to break the unity and linearity of many aspects of social and historical narratives, producing unexpected associations between heterogeneous elements. Recent studies in visual culture (Somaini 2023) and computer science (Buschek 2024) have highlighted the parallels between the mechanisms of avant-garde collage – in particular Surrealists – and
those of Artificial Intelligence, passing from a form of “psychic automatism” to a kind of “algorithmic automation” (Somanini 2023).

By looking at collage and photo-collage transnationally and through the prism of interdisciplinarity, we invite scholars from a wide range of perspectives to reflect on this artistic technique and the intrinsic value of ‘cut and paste’ that collage has since its very beginning up to recent applications with digital tools: its functioning in fragmenting and recomposing visual and textual contents can be seen as a basis of many operations of Artificial Intelligence and its algorithmic process.

Submission:
Please send paper proposals (title and 250-word maximum abstract) directly to session convenors (email addresses listed below). Proposals should include a paper title, abstract (250 words maximum), your name and institutional affiliation (if any).

The deadline for submission is November 1, 2024.

Caterina Caputo, IUAV University of Venice, ccaputoiuav.it
Carlotta Castellani, University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”, carlotta.castellaniuniurb.it

[7]
From: Katia Denysova
Subject: CFP: AAH 'Modernism's Future Pasts'

Panel: 'Modernism’s Future Pasts: Abstraction and Identity in ‘East-Central Europe’, 1910–1930s'

In an era of rising ethno-nationalism and cultural isolationism, the study of modernism in the visual arts is at a crossroads. As the universalist ideals and futurist social utopias of the early twentieth century appear increasingly suspect across the political spectrum, scholars urgently need new narratives about the origins of abstract art and design. What is the relationship between abstraction and cultural identity? And how can we tell the story of abstraction’s emergence differently?

The proposed panel invites papers (especially from early and mid-career scholars) that re-contextualise modernist art and its historiography by investigating and critically reassessing the entrenched polarity between the nationalism of folk practices and the universalism of the historical avant-garde in the region known as ‘East-Central Europe’. Focusing on the advent of abstract art and design in the first decades of the twentieth century, the panel will explore the generative intersection between the history of ethnology and the history of the avant-garde, linking the non-representational visual practices and folk and decorative art
traditions in the region of study. By exploring the dialogues within the ‘East-Central Europe’ and the artistic exchanges that existed in this multicultural space (in such cities, for example, as Lviv, Kraków, Brno, and Bratislava), the panel contributes to the processes of de-centring and dismantling the overtly Westernised and/or Sovietised/Russo-centric histories of modern art in the area. The panel will begin with opening remarks from the conveners and conclude with a roundtable discussion.

You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper, your name and institutional affiliation (if any).
Please send your proposals to the panel convenors (above) by November 1, 2024.

Megan R. Luke, University of Tübingen, megan.lukeuni-tuebingen.de
Katia Denysova, University of Tübingen, kateryna.denysovauni-tuebingen.de

[8]
From: Gabe Beckhurst
Subject: CFP: The Politics of the Handmade: Textures, Feelings, and the Matter of Trans Art History

This session draws attention to haptic and material engagements in modern and contemporary art history by exploring the handmade as a trans-specific methodology. We ask: How is trans art history made materially through the hand and body? What does trans art history feel like? And how are handmade processes (such as stitching, unravelling, moulding, assembling) conceptually useful in bringing art history and trans studies together?

Recent scholarship across art history, craft studies, queer theory, and trans studies has revealed a preoccupation with the handmade as a lived practice, creative strategy, and curatorial approach. Initiatives including the Museum of Transology and Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art (MOTHA) have used the museum ‘under construction’ to re-imagine institutional structures and classificatory systems rooted in classed, patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial ideologies, and reflect trans, nonbinary, and gender-diverse communities in non-monolithic terms. These conversations support the burgeoning turn towards other senses and mediatic histories, whether minimalism and abstraction (Getsy, 2015; Metzger and Ringelberg,
2020), the ‘shimmering’ presence of trans life (Steinbock, 2019), the ‘haptic tactic’ and ‘transaffective resistances’ of the archive (Delgado Huitrón, 2019), or the ‘textured labor of transgender embodiment and subjectivity’ (Vaccaro, 2010).

We seek to open up dialogue and explore how the handmade is applied and felt across multiple contexts, making the indexical traces, patterns of labour, and seams of exhibitions visible. We hope to hear from scholars, artists, curators, and practice-based researchers.

Proposals for 20-minute-long papers or creative presentations should include a title and abstract (max 250-word). Please send these directly to the session convenors (email addresses listed below). The deadline for
submission is November 1, 2024.

Daniel Fountain, University of Exeter, D.Fountainexeter.ac.uk
Gabe Beckhurst, University College London, gabe.beckhurstucl.ac.uk

[9]
From: Alyson Lai
Subject: CFP: Sensing, Perceiving, and Knowing in Modernism

Panel: "Sensing, Perceiving, and Knowing in Modernism".

Interest in German modernism has seen a resurgence in the UK, with exhibitions such as Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider at Tate Modern and Making Modernism at the Royal Academy. This has offered opportunities to reconsider perspectives and research approaches relevant to twentieth-century German art and European avant-garde circles.

Yet, a distinct strain of European modernism that emerged out of an active engagement with theories of sensation and perception remains overlooked. This session aims to recover the ways in which modernists deployed knowledge steeped in the philosophy of perception, psychology and science to negotiate the processes of orienting themselves and/or their spectator via visual forms. Walter Benjamin described Dadaist works as a ‘bullet’ attacking the senses of its spectator; August Endell formulated his architectural theory based on his knowledge of psychological debates on empathy and emotional expression (Alexander, 2017); Kurt Schwitters’s study of advertising ‘techniques of attention’ fed back into his own Merz practice (Stinton, 2021).

Whilst the foundation of this session builds from a focus on Germanic schools of thought, we welcome papers that explore artistic developments in the modern period broadly construed that highlight and move beyond the five senses. How was the act of experiencing foundational to artistic experimentation? How did a realignment of the senses via artistic means relate to agency? What artistic innovations were developed out of a ‘technologically mediated crisis of the senses’ (Danius, 2002)? We are interested in proposals that cut across disciplines, cultures, and European territories.

Please send your 250-word proposal to alyson.laiyork.ac.uk and argrasselligmail.com by November 1, 2024.