Or, responding to CFPs.
Art and Criticism in the Anthropocene
Art criticism is currently at the forefront of a global revolution — the demise of art history as the central epistemological optic on art, combined with the critical fragmentation brought by visual culture, has enabled speculative realism to reshape art criticism as a new, politically charged tool. At present, posthumanist subjectivities appear indissolubly intertwined with capitalist forces and biosystems that are perceived from non-anthropocentric perspectives. Therefore, the reconfiguration of methodologies, approaches, and optics demanded by this new ontological turn situates art criticism as a productive, multidisciplinary forum by which to address challenges posed by the Anthropocene. This panel seeks to gather a number of original submissions from scholars and artists whose professional engagement revolves around the sociopolitical dimensions defining art in the current stage of the Anthropocene. This pivotal concept is leading artists, as well as art historians and art critics, to reconsider the roles played by capitalism and ecosystems in the reconfiguration of non- anthropocentric positions. More specifically, this panel will gather global perspectives on art criticism’s new political implications, showing how experimentation and multidisciplinarity map out new aesthetic territories; how new anthropogenic perspectives can help reconfigure concepts in art as a non-anthropocentric means to explore human/non-human relations; examining the effort and trajectory of criticism as an interface that can flex beyond its traditionally linguistic focus, thereby surpassing the acknowledged strategies of Western aesthetics; and exposing the ethical implications of cultural production by unpacking networks of material and socio-economic accountability as the imperative dimension which art criticism must attend.
Art and Fiction since the 1960s
Fiction has been and continues to be prevalent in contemporary art. Most evidently this has taken the form of a number of novels written as art by figures including Bernadette Corporation, Mai-Thu Perret, David Musgrave, and Seth Price. In a different register, however, the strategy of producing “real fictions” (Hal Foster) has been adopted by both Hito Steyerl and Trevor Paglen to rehabilitate the documentary mode after postmodernism. Reciprocally, Walid Raad has transfigured documentary material into art by fictional means and this has been understood to reveal the “fiction of the contemporary” itself as a critical category (Peter Osborne). This session sets out from the position that contemporary art engages with fiction in historically distinctive and formative ways, yet it acknowledges that we do not currently have a critical history of the role of fiction in art since the 1960s and that this is needed in order to understand the genealogy of our artistic present. Consequently, the session will begin to construct just such a history, starting from the destabilisation of the traditional system of the arts that was consequent upon the collapse of medium-specific modernism. Papers are invited on salient, theoretically-informed aspects of the relationship between art and fiction since the 1960s.
Art History as Anti-Oppression Work
What would an anti-racist, anti-oppression art history curriculum in higher education look like and how might it be taught and implemented? Working from Iris Young’s five categories of oppression — exploitation, powerlessness, marginalization, cultural imperialism, and violence — how might art history be used as a liberatory methodology for dismantling these categories? More specifically, how can we use art history’s methodologies to address those “structural phenomena that immobilize or diminish a group”? This panel seeks papers from practitioners of art history who have used innovative approaches in the discipline as tools for addressing and dismantling structural oppression. Particularly of interest are examples of: successful introductory survey courses in this regard; department-wide commitments to anti-oppression work that have driven curricular decisions; student activism through art history; and effective community collaborations.
Art in Middle Eastern Diplomacy
Artistic expression in the Middle East has undergone a revolutionary renaissance in the last two decades. This increasingly dynamic movement of the contemporary art of the Middle East is often produced in contexts fraught with political, social, and military conflict, or at the crossroads of tradition and modernity. In this time of particular discord and disconnect with the Islamic world, this panel examines the contemporary art of Iran and the Middle East as the “soft power” that can build creative links between the past, the present, and the future while communicating knowledge and promoting cultural diplomacy through a variety of platforms. Forging relationships where politics cannot, the arts increasingly engage governments through artistic dialogue and exchange. Highlighting the diversity of expression, this panel seeks to examine the multi-faceted and complex development of the contemporary art of Iran and the Middle East through its artists, influences, and politics.