Call for Papers. Submission Deadline: 11th September 2009
Rethinking Complicity and Resistance:
The Relationship between Visual Arts and Politics
A two-day Postgraduate Conference, University of Aberdeen
23-24th October 2009
Sponsored by the Beyond Text Programme, AHRC
"The arts only ever lend to projects of domination or emancipation what they
are able to lend them, that is to say, quite simply, what they have in
common with them: bodily positions and movements, functions of speech, the
parcelling out of the visible and the invisible. Furthermore, the autonomy
they can enjoy or the subversion they can claim credit for rest on the same
foundation."
Jacques Rancière
The long contested issue of the relationship between art and politics has
lately re-emerged in critical debate, in conjunction with an explosion of
interest in political theory and the exhaustion of the postmodernist model.
Recent technological developments have radically transformed modes of
creation, circulation, assimilation and dispersion of images, reframing
perception and making investigation of the interdependency of visual arts
and politics an urgent ethical necessity. Yet now that activism, militancy
and engaged art are back on the agenda, it is essential to analyse
contemporary artistic practices and thought in an attempt to discover not
just what art can say about politics, but what art can and cannot do as
politics. As many of the critical models developed in the last decades have
been absorbed and assimilated by the structures they were trying to
destabilize, as the avant-garde and radical art has become a commodity, as
revolutionary projects and ideas neutralize themselves and lose their
corrosive power, we ask: can art be an effective political gesture? And if
so, how?
This conference invites a critical rethinking of the complementary concepts
of complicity and resistance: asking complicit with what; resistant to what?
It does so in the context of current critical debate in the field of
contemporary visual arts, promoting a provocative and challenging
exploration of the technical, thematic, and institutional
possibilities/limitations/implications of artistic strategies aimed at
intervening in the political.
Keynote Speaker: Zeigam Azizov. Born in Azerbaijan, the London-based artist
and theorist studied art and philosophy in Azerbaijan, Russia, England and
France. His work has been exhibited worldwide and he is currently teaching
at the University of Klagenfurt.
The conference organizers invite papers that explore the relationship
between contemporary visual arts and politics at both theoretical and
applied levels. Recognizing the need for an approach that overcomes
disciplinary boundaries, we welcome abstracts from practitioners with an
interest in theory, and research students from a wide variety of
backgrounds.
Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
- Revolution / Counter-Revolution
- The Politics of Visibility
- Artists and Institutions
- Physical Traces / Digital Traces
- Beyond the Critique of the Spectacle
- Boundaries, Migrations, Peripheries
- State of Violence / State of Fear
- Human Rights and Ecological Collapse in the Global Era
We welcome proposals from postgraduate students within and outside the UK.
We have two bursaries available for travel and expenses; if you would like
to be considered, please let us know when you submit your abstract.
Please send a 250 word abstract and a brief biographical statement to
Rachele Ceccarelli ((r03rc7 /at/ abdn.ac.uk)) and Lorna Muir ((lemuir /at/ abdn.ac.uk)) by
September 11th. Applicants will be informed about the outcome of their
submission shortly after the deadline.
Papers will be automatically considered for publication in the first issue
of Interstices: Critical Interventions in Visual Culture, an online graduate
journal being established at the University of Aberdeen, with the support of
the AHRC¹s Beyond Text Programme.
For further information check the webpage www.abdn.ac.uk/visualculture, or
contact the conference organizers:
Rachele Ceccarelli: (r03rc7 /at/ abdn.ac.uk)
Lorna Muir: (lemuir /at/ abdn.ac.uk)
Emma Grey: (emma.grey /at/ abdn.ac.uk)
Nicole Plumb: (nicole /at/ peacockvisualarts.co.uk)
