CALL FOR PAPERS

2015 WOLLESEN MEMORIAL GRADUATE SYMPOSIUM

GRADUATE UNION OF STUDENTS OF ART, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

JANUARY 22, 2015

OBJECTS AND AFFECTS

The last fifteen years have seen a marked rise in art historical and theoretical attention to both objects and affects. This is evident, for instance, in the recent and contemporaneous rise of fields such as affect theory and object theory, and of art historical practices based in material culture and neuro-psychological analysis. As scholars and artists move further from the dogma of twentieth century methodologies (e.g. dominant strains of semiotics, social history, and formalism) they have exhibited new interest in the social, cultural, and political lives of things and materials and of sensations and emotions. As such, these engagements with the material and immaterial have generated new considerations of otherwise repressed or ignored phenomena in both theory and experience.

By looking at quotidian and inanimate matter, or at sensory experiences that remain irreducible to language and meaning, objects and affects reveal the blind spots in how we construct and view the world. It is therefore increasingly important to understand how the production and reception of art and culture is not simply the creation of conscious human agency, but is informed by these many materials and sensations. At the same time, any assumed separation between these domains remains dubious, as both point to sources of experience and agency that lie beyond the conscious, individual subject; that is, in a world shared among things and feelings, through bodies and experiences. In this respect, we invite proposal for scholarly presentations that explore the social, cultural, and political implications and ramifications of objects and affects within aesthetic and cultural production.

Hypothetical topics include, but are not limited to:

The use of readymade or found objects.

The influence of phenomenology in art practice and theory.

Archives, cabinets of curiosities, collections, and the ordering of things.

Technological invention and the object-based mediation of existence.

Sensation and aesthetic experience.

Technological invention of art marking and art history practices.

Social and cultural histories of materials.

Actor network theory and political assemblages.

Please submit an abstract of under 250 words and a CV to gustasymposiumgmail.com by November 7, 2014.