CALL --> (In)Direct Speech. Chineseness in Contemporary Art Discourse and Practice. Art Market, Curatorial Practices and Creative Processes | Prazo limite: 17 de Janeiro. International Symposium and Launch of the International Research Network for Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal, 16-19 March 2015. Keynote Speakers: Katie Hill (Programme Leader of Art of Asia and their Markets at Sothebyʼs Institute of Art, London), Carol Yinghua Lu (Independent Art Curator and Critic, Beijing, Keith Wallace (Editor-in-Chief of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art). Informed by post-colonial and post-1989 perspectives as well as critical area studies and post-modern cultural theories of art and visual culture, scholars no longer look at Chinese art as a visual expression of Chineseness, conceived as a long-standing, homogeneous geographic and cultural unit. Instead, they consider the ways in which cultural identity is constructed and the role of particular actors, who continuously claim, contest and propagate its boundaries. Such an analytical stance has emerged as a response to recent positions on Chinese culture that are either charged with (neo-) nationalist assumptions fuelled by the PRCs role as a rising global power or a result of long-standing Western strategies to essentialise the Chinese other. In the name of a global art history that is conscious of its epistemological limits, these scholars suggest a critical engagement with modernist, often Eurocentric assumptions that narrowly interpret works of (contemporary) art in terms of place, and call for a more nuanced methodological framework that questions the taxonomies and values that have been built into the discipline since its historical beginnings and have been taken as universal. Such a transcultural perspective seems particularly relevant given the increased migration and mobility of Chinese artists since Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy and the growing interconnectedness of the art worlds (in-)formed by economic and technological globalization. In particular, such an approach takes into account the continuity of a long-term historical cross-cultural dialogue, which is often overlooked when speaking about Chineseness, but lies at the core of many processes of cultural and artistic demarcation. This includes, for example, the examination of non-Chinese artists, who have actively responded to what they perceived as specifically Chinese, thereby supporting the notion in turn, while embedded in (very) different institutional, economic, and political power relations than their Chinese colleagues. The international symposium (In)Direct Speech. Chineseness in Contemporary Art Discourse and Practice. Art Market, Curatorial Practices and Creative Processes seeks to critically address constructions of Chineseness that are apparent in three often entangled spaces of the art world across the globe: in the art markets institutions, in the exhibition halls, and in the artists studio. Art historians, curators, and artists are invited to engage with the following key questions and to explicitly address pertinent socio-cultural, economic, and art historiographical aspects. i) How does the market’s labelling power shape canonization and how do economic categories and criteria direct processes of cultural identification that lead to discursive as well as institutional in-/exclusion of specific artworks and their makers? ii) How do notions of Chineseness inform the curatorial practice and thereby support or defy the writing of a distinct Chinese art history? What kinds of taxonomies govern the choice of artworks and displays of contemporary “Chinese” art outside and inside the People’s Republic of China? How do curators realize the frequent claim to represent China when they present contemporary artworks created in China? What concepts of tradition and contemporaneity do they use and how do they explain them? iii) How do Chinese and non-Chinese artists engage with notions of Chineseness? How do they relate to cultural traditions and link an (imagined) past with the present and future in their artistic practices? How do they negotiate desires of cultural belonging with political and/or economic aspects of claiming or discarding a specific cultural identity in their individual approaches? What are the rationales driving the cultural essentialism or relativism of their positions in turn? Taken together, the international and interdisciplinary symposium will discuss the voice(s) of Chinese contemporary art in a global context and examine what kind of China-images they project. The participants will engage with cases of indirect speech, in which Chinese as well as non-Chinese artists, cite China as a motif or address it by explicitly using (pre-modern) techniques associated with Chinese culture, such as ink and rice paper or Chinese characters. They will also address cases of direct speech by artists, curators and art dealers, who proclaim cultural and artistic uniqueness, critical attitudes towards the Westernization of aesthetic standards, or - on the contrary - try to forge a place for their works in the global art discourse by avoiding cultural distinctions. The symposium thus aims to make visible the historicity of Chineseness as discursive and practical construct and to analyse how agents and institutions contribute to its changes during the last three decades. The symposium creates an opportunity for scholars, curators, artists and other professionals working on contemporary Chinese art to discuss their projects, recent research, and the latest trends of the growing field. Its programme includes the launch of the International Research Network for Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art, which will be based on a suitable academic social media platform that ensures easy accessibility, global outreach and a secured space for the sharing of professional information as well as in-group discussions. It will particularly address the career needs of junior scholars with non-permanent institutional affiliations and a lack of funding to support their often expensive research travels, enabling them to quickly and internationally gather helpful information together with the support of senior researchers. It is planned to be institutionally affiliated to a university - probably Heidelberg University - to ensure a sustainable, non-commercial and democratic administration by chosen representatives of its scholarly members. +info/fonte: arthist.net/archive/9108
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:34:47 +0000
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