And we’re back with some very exciting events! This month, we find art at the heart of many fascinating discussions, exploring topics such as spaces and spatialization, contemporary forms of violence and the transgressive potential of queerness. We also look at trust and faith when it comes to money and investigate the connection between emotions and history.
As always, if you want your event to feature in our next events list or if you wish to write a short report, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our events assistant Aude at audef@allegralaboratory.net.
AAA Annual 2018 Conference: Artistic Locations
14-18 November 2018, San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California
This panel looks at the ways that art practice defines and depends upon particular spaces, be these museums, galleries, neighborhoods, cities, cafes, or homes. Bringing together developing themes in the anthropology of art with spatial themes developed in urban and transnational anthropology, these papers explore the social relevance of “artistic space.” How does artistic practice structure and produce space? What are the social and political consequences of this? Alternately, or in combination, some panelists may ask how existing spatial relations structure art practice, and how this impacts the way that art interacts with society.
While the particular points of theoretical engagement within this discussion are open, some potentially fruitful interventions could explore:
- How artistic practice interacts with the spatialization of social disparity (i.e. race, class, gender), and how artistic spatial production may impact social struggle along these lines.
- How artistic spaces imbricate within transnational flows of people, capital, and ideas.
- How does artistic practice mobilize spatial meaning in the production of urban imaginaries (c.f. Biron, Peterson) or in contest over national identity (c.f. Winegar, Canclini)?
- What does it mean for artists to produce “utopic” spaces within a broader urban context?
In addressing these questions, participants are encouraged to comment on what is gained by bringing spatial analysis and artistic concepts together. In what ways does this combination speak to broader concerns of anthropology? Is there something specific about artistic space that is intellectually productive? [more]
Deadline for submission of proposals: 3 April 2018
Conference: Art & Violence Now
11 June 2018, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
How does contemporary art address issues of violence? What role does violence play in mass popular culture? What forms does violence take today, and do we have an adequate critical vocabulary for theorizing contemporary forms of violence? How does violence put pressure on models of visual experience, on forms of subjecthood, and collectivity? How do online and digital media frame violence, and are these media inherently more violent than other, older forms?
Whether engaging Slavoj Zizek’s Lacanian reformulation of the principle of violence as the foundation of symbolization and language, or Adriana Cavarero’s feminist phenomenology of violence in terms of ‘horrorism’, or directly reappraising earlier avant-garde theories, such as Georges Bataille’s analysis of the sacred function of violence, or Simone Weil’s theorization of ‘force’, we invite a wide range of theoretical perspectives, in exploring the above and other questions. Topics may include but are not limited to: temporalities of trauma and questions of immediacy and mediation; questions of scale, as described by the ‘micro’ and the ‘macro’ of violence and aesthetic form; how art responds, on the one hand, to the violence at arms-length of drone warfare, or refugee camps and prisons located off the mainland, and on the other, to the intimate structures of systemic as well as interpersonal violence in everyday life. Hate-speech online, and the snowballing, autonomous character of social media mob violence, as highlighted for example by Angela Nagle in Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (2017), foreground the ways in which our technologies shape new forms of violent collectivity, and call into question the continuing viability of violence, trauma and shock as part of our critical vocabularies; once used by the historic avant-gardes to signal theoretical transgression, challenge and subversion. In the end, perhaps the question this conference asks most deeply is, does violence itself have a history? And is the ‘now’ of art and violence today distinguishable from other moments through an examination of its representation in performance, traditional media, social media, digital etc.? [more]
Deadline for submission of proposals: 6 April 2018
Conference: Imagine Queer: Exploring the Radical Potential of Queerness Now
12 October 2018, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
The aim of the conference is to consider interdisciplinary approaches to the transgressive potential of queerness today. Considering grassroots LGBTQ+ activism, artistic practices, as well as academic discourse of queer theory, we seek to identify and address issues arising in the current transnational socio-political conditions. How can biopolitics be challenged by queer temporalities? How can radical activism of preceding decades be re-contextualised and employed now? Can queer social formations, based on friendship, kinship, and affective communities, be used to reconsider the heteronormative structures aided by the legislation in the international context?
Looking forward, we are interested in restoring the potential of transgressive queer activism, much of which has been now directed into the struggle of LGBTQ+ communities to enter the realm of normative domesticity, compromising its ability to challenge the state apparatus. Based on interdiciplinary, cross-national, and transhistorical research practices, we seek to address these questions in relation to nationhood, citizenship, and human rights. We encourage academic and practical responses to the analysed problem from interdisciplinary, cross-generational, and multinational perspectives. [more]
Deadline for submission of proposals: 31 May 2018
Workshop: (Mis)trust, money and debt in interdisciplinary perspective
15 June 2018, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Trust and faith are basic attributes of modern monetary systems. Trust is also recognized as a public good, the maximization of which yields growth and harmony. But if we know what ‘trust’ is – or ought to be – do we therefore understand its opposite? Is ‘mistrust’ always the inverse of ‘trust’? Does mistrust lead to strictly vicious circles of societal destruction? Similarly, are narratives of bursting bubbles, economic decline and corrosive structural violence the only kinds of stories that can be told when considering money and mistrust? This workshop aims to explore the roles, qualities and affordances of (mis)trust within socioeconomic life, as well as create a space for dialogues across disciplinary boundaries and methodologies. We begin from the general situation of human beings often having to cooperate with untrustworthy others, of mutual obligations and expectations bridging subjectivities shot through with mistrust and perhaps especially so when money and debt is involved. Thus, we welcome contributions that (1) suspend assumptions about the concepts of trust and mistrust, and (2) explore the expression and importance of (mis)trust in diverse political economies and sociocultural settings. [more]
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 15 April 2018
Conference: Emotions: Engines of history
23-24 November 2018, University of Silesia in Katowice, Sosnowiec, Poland
The etymology of the word “emotion,” whose first use dates back to the sixteenth century, betrays the multiplicity of its meanings. Derived from the Middle French emouvoir (to stir up), it traces its origins back to the Latin emovēre (to remove or displace), which in turn comes from the Latin movēre (to move). The notion of movement, then, or a change of state, has always accompanied the way people conceptualise emotions. History is, similarly, a record of movement, fluidity, and volatility, and this approach is increasingly being extended to the study of humanity’s past, with emotion studies bringing increased sensitivity to historical, literary and cultural enquiries. Approaching emotions as “engines,” that is catalysts of past events and processes is, however, fraught with challenges. It is largely due to the fact that the roles of irrationality and emotionality as motivating elements in history and its narratives are not easy to determine and often elude scientific study due to their intimate and highly personal nature. Likewise the very thought that historical decisions affecting the lives of many might have been made under the capricious influence of somebody else’s emotional state fills us with dread. And yet, we suspect or perhaps even know that many events of both distant and not so distant past have been dictated by emotional disposition and moods of those who made them. If fear, hatred, desire, disgust, pity, envy, love and shame affect our individual choices, they might as well influence the decisions whose consequences go beyond one’s singular or communal experience. From the Ides of March, through the separation of the Church of England from Rome, to the role of the social media in the most recent presidential elections in the USA, emotions have shaped and influenced historic events giving rise to groundbreaking social and political changes.
Seeking to bridge the gap between various approaches to the study of motivations in the past, the conference Emotions: the Engines of History aims at a multidisciplinary examination of the connection between emotions and history as well as of the multiplicity of ways in which this connection has manifested itself across cultural and literary studies. Thus, we invite scholars working in various disciplines and fields of study to consider the points of intersection between the study of emotions and the study of history, and to engage in a discussion concerning the representations of these intersections in different media across cultures and centuries. [more]
Deadline for submission of proposals: 31 May 2018
Featured image (cropped) by giveawayboy (flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
