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Contemporary art and the Politics of Process conference
Type: Conferences & Symposia [View all]
Posted by: University of Notre Dame and George Washington University
Deadline: Fri, April 20th, 2018
Contemporary Art and the Politics of Process
Friday, April 20, 2018
University of Notre Dame in England, London, U.K.
Co-chairs: Elyse Speaks, University of Notre Dame
Bibiana Obler, George Washington University
Location: 1-4 Suffolk Street London, UK SW1Y 4HG
Description:
In 2018, the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square will showcase The Invisible Enemy Shall Not Exist by Chicago-based Iraq-American artist Michael Rakowitz. Previous versions of this work, which he began making in 2007 for indoor venues, consist of reconstructions of looted Iraqi museum artifacts, all of which have been intricately refabricated by Rakowitz and a team of assistants out of various types of paper – packaging for Middle Eastern foods and Arabic newspapers foremost among the materials chosen. The process is painstaking, and the labor cannot go unnoticed, despite the cheap, insignificant quality of the materials with which the artifacts are reproduced. That Rakowitz’s work will be given such a platform in the current political climate both in the U.K. and the U.S. is significant. It speaks to the way in which artistic processes today play a central role in producing a critically viable aesthetic practice that engages with such public political issues as immigration, war, and national identity. In this, his work is an extension of one strain of art making that has expanded throughout art of the twentieth century, namely a means of drawing out the politics of an artwork through a loaded use of materials and processes that both challenge artistic convention and draw art into dialogue with larger cultural frameworks. From the practice of synthetic cubism and collage in the early twentieth century through today, artists have increasingly turned their attention to the use of unconventional materials in order to foreground the way in which the process of constructing an artwork constitutes an explicit and meaningful part of the conversation about what it is the viewer is asked to apprehend. This one-day event will explore recent scholarship on questions of process within the field of contemporary art.
Schedule:
10:30-12:30 Morning session - Labor
10:45-11:15 - Kim Grant, University of Southern Maine, “Making People Part of the Process: Amateurs, Assistants and Social Engagement.”
11:15-11:45 - Catherine Spencer, University of St. Andrews, “False Flowers: Abstraction and Extraction.”
11:45-12:15 - Elyse Speaks, University of Notre Dame, “A Labor of Love and the Politics of Process.”
Lunch 12:45-2:15
2:15 - Afternoon session – Resistances and Revisitings
2:30-3:00 - Pamela Corey, SOAS, University of London, “Sonic Materialities and the Politics of Identification: The Art of Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier.”
3:00-3:30 - Eva Bentcheva, SOAS, University of London, “On the Heels of Forgotten Histories: Assemblage, Research and Re-Enactment in Contemporary Southeast Asian Art”
Break
4:00-4:30 - Bibiana Obler, George Washington University, “Fast Fashion/Slow Art.”
4:30-5:00 - Jo Applin, The Courtauld Institute, “Art Work as Trap.”
5:45 Closing Remarks and Reception
Please register for attendance at our event website or contact espeaks@nd.edu for more information.
Event website: London Global Gateway Conference: "Contemporary Art and the Politics of Process"
Posted on Mon, March 19th, 2018
Expires on Fri, April 20th, 2018
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