Encounters in the Socialverse: Community and Collaborative Art Practices

The 9th Annual Art History Graduate Student Association Symposium

Symposium Date: March 6, 2009

Submission Deadline: January 17, 2009

The Art History Graduate Student Association at York University will be hosting its 9th Annual Symposium on Friday, March 6, 2009. Graduate students and recent graduates in Canada, the United States, and abroad are invited to submit proposals.

This symposium focuses on the centrality of human participation in contemporary art practice. It seeks to engage with the ethics, the aesthetics, and the politics of community-based and collaborative art. We are interested in presenting papers stemming from the visual arts, theatre, architecture, dance, film production, and other disciplines.

This symposium aims to critically address questions posed by cultural historians and critics concerning the implications in collaborative art projects. Such questions include: How does active participation influence aesthetics? Does collaborative art practice, with its social interactions, shared assumptions and invisible rules, push or hinder the limits of relationality? How does the integration of human participation impact upon works of art? How has the proliferation of outdoor art festivals such as Nuit Blanche in Paris, Montreal, and Toronto permanently affected the way contemporary artists produce work? How has the response to such large-scale exhibitions influenced art practice? How has public or private art funding reflected this increased interest in accessible art? Do such art practices allow for the empowerment of communities and participants? How might the inclusion of community-based projects in institutions like museums, cinemas, and concert halls impact their criticality?

Presentations that touch upon questions relating to community and collaborative art practice in the following sub-themes are encouraged:

* artist collaborations and interventionist works

* authorship and cultural property

* developments in Relational Aesthetics

* legalities of human participation

* theories of time, space, and place

* embodiment and performance studies

* activism and social welfare

* the politics of inclusion

* accessibility issues

We invite emerging scholars to submit proposals that engage with any of these issues by sending a 300-word abstract of your paper, curriculum vitae, email address, and contact information by Friday, January 17, 2009 to:

info@yorku-ahgsa.ca

Attn: Symposium Committee

http://www.yorku-ahgsa.ca/