The Grapevine

CFP: Visual Activism Conference @ San Francisco

The International Association of Visual Culture (IAVC) invites proposals for its third biennial conference in San Francisco, March 14-16, 2014.

The conference is centered on the concept of Visual Activism.  How can we better understand the relationships between visual culture and activist practices?  There are ways in which art can take the form of political/social activism and there are also ways in which activism takes specific, and sometimes surprising, visual forms that are not always aligned with or recognizable by art-world frameworks.  How can we engage in conversations about abstract or oblique visual activism, for instance as is demanded in conditions of extreme censorship?  How can we approach the complexity of governmental or commercial ‘visual activism’ to better address hegemonies of visual culture (for example, in advertising and the mass media)?  What becomes of the temporal lag that attends such images, when the politics of visual production are only made legible in retrospect, with historical distance?  How does the past become a form of ‘visual activism’ in the present?  To what degree do forms of visual activism travel, and in what ways are they necessarily grounded in locally specific knowledge and geographically specific spaces?

Presentations should respond to these questions or related topics and may take the form of scholarly papers (20 minutes), artist talks (20 minutes), short performances (5 to 30 minutes), or lighting-round interventions (5 minutes).  Proposals should include a 400-word abstract, links to websites with additional publications or relevant images and information, and a CV. Please send proposals to edu@sfmoma.org (with ‘visual activism’ as the subject line) no later than October 1, 2013.

The conference is convened by Julia Bryan-Wilson (Associate Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art, UC Berkeley), Jennifer A. González (Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, Contemporary Art, Race and Representation, UC Santa Cruz) and Dominic Willsdon (Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs, SFMOMA) and will take place at the Brava Theater Center and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA.

Please email edu@sfmoma.org to be added to the mailing list to receive updates about the conference such as registration, the calendar of events and participants.

CFP: “Colour Me Queer” Session @ AAH Conference, London

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Colour Me Queer

Association of Art Historians (AAH) 40th Annual Conference
Royal College of Art, London
​April 10-​12, 2014

While art history as a discipline has adopted a queer postcolonial gaze to trouble the canon, most ground-breaking scholarship on art and visual culture from queer racialized perspectives has been accomplished outside its borders—albeit with some notable exceptions, such as work by Kobena Mercer and Amelia Jones.

This session specifically aims to explore how art history might develop a vocabulary and methodology that speaks to better understand transnational, diasporic, indigenous and decolonial bodies alongside their gendered and sexualized lived experiences. Colo u​r Me Queer does not signify fixed/specific otherness, but rather functions as a politics that interrogates epistemological limits of race, gender and sexuality.

If art history has been largely resistant to exploring queer racialized visualities, what are the tools necessary to dismantle the conventions of knowledge production around art? How can a queer racialized gaze affect the relationship between visual analysis and knowledge production? Do newer forms of art such as performance, film, video, and installation (rather than older forms more burdened by western art history like painting and sculpture) lend themselves more easily to queer racialized visualities?

Overall, this session considers the stakes involved in queer racialized methodologies in visual analysis as well as the opportunity to interrogate canonical formation. Papers will not only assess what a queer racialized lens affords art history but correspondingly, what visual analysis provides queer racialized lived experiences.  What tropes and themes are incited when queer racialized visualities come to the fore? And finally, what might a queer racialized lens still occlude from critical analysis?

By November 11, please email a 250 word abstract of a proposed paper of 30 minutes, including your name and affiliation, to co-chairs:

  • Natasha Bissonauth, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, nb337@cornell.edu
  • Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Florida International University, Miami, alpesh.patel@fiu.edu.

 

Meschac Gaba in Conversation with Chris Dercon @ Tate Modern

africanartinlondon's avatarAfrican Art in London

Beninese artist Meschac Gaba talks to Chris Dercon, Director of the Tate Modern.

The occasion: To mark the Tate’s largest acquisition and display of Meschac Gaba’s work, Museum of Contemporary Africa Art 1997-2002.

The conversation:
An opportunity to hear Gaba speak about his work and its journey to the Tate Modern. The talk will also feature personal anecdotes of Dercon and Gaba’s friendship. They’ve been buddies since 1996/7. In 2000 Dercon interviewed Gaba as Director of the Museum Bojimans Van Benunigen, Rotterdam, and later that year acted as a witness at his wedding. Documentation of the wedding features in the Marriage room of Gaba’s exhibition.

Meschac Gaba in Conversation with Chris Dercon

Starr Auditorium
Wednesday 3 July 2013,
Time: 18.30 – 21.00
£12, concessions available
Ticket holders’ private view of the display after the talk from 20.00–21.00

Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG

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NYC Draft Riots and Bastille Day Inspire Walking Tours By Eric K. Washington

SYMP: “American Art in Dialogue with Africa and its Diaspora” @ Smithsonian American Art Museum, Oct. 4 & 5, 2013

“American Art in Dialogue with Africa and its Diaspora”
Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and G Streets NW, McEvoy Auditorium, Washington, D.C.

Friday, October 4, 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 5, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

This two-day symposium examines the role of Africa and its diaspora in the development of art of the United States, from nineteenth-century portraiture to American modernism; from the Harlem Renaissance to the contemporary art world. Speakers include Chika Okeke-Agulu of Princeton University, Krista Thompson of Northwestern University, Jeffrey Stewart of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Celeste-Marie Bernier of the University of Nottingham, James Smalls of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and artist and distinguished scholar David C. Driskell.

The full schedule is available at AmericanArt.si.edu/research/symposia/2013/terra.

Register at www.America-Africa.eventbrite.com.

This is the fourth of five Terra Symposia on American Art in a Global Context, which are supported by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Natural Histories: A Note on Cotton Trees and Jamaican Art

nationalgalleryofjamaica's avatarNational Gallery of Jamaica

TOM CRINGLE’S COTTON TREE: This Ceiba, or Silk Cotton, tree is of a type common to many parts of Jamaica. Its majestic spread of branches provides shade and shelter, and you will notice, a host of many types of parasitic plans. This particular tree was mentioned in ‘Tom Cringle’s Log” a 19th century novel by Michael Scott. Cotton trees are believed by the superstitious to be the haunt of “duppies” (ghosts)

Jamaica Tourist Board, Kingston, Jamaica

The Silk Cotton tree or Ceiba Pentandra is indigenous to the tropical Americas, Jamaica included, and a variety is also found in West Africa. One of the largest and most visually spectacular indigenous trees, the Silk Cotton tree takes more than a century to reach its typical size – up to 40 metres high and with the diameter of its trunk up to 3 metres – and to develop its dramatic buttress roots. The…

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Ellen Gallagher @ Tate Modern

africanartinlondon's avatarAfrican Art in London

Ellen Gallagher’s first major UK retrospective is currently being held at the Tate Modern until 1 September. The title of the exhibition, AxME, is a play on words: to resemble the cartoon corporation Acme, known for its outlandish products that fail catastrophically, also a reference to the African-American vernacular for “Ask me”.

Gallagher’s work is gorgeously intricate, bringing together myth, nature, art and social history in painting, drawing, relief collage, print, sculpture, film and animation. In 2007 a series of her Watery Ecstatic paintings, inspired by the myth of the Black Atlantis – an underwater city populated by the descendents of Africans thrown off slave ships – was shown at the Tate Liverpool.  To know more about her work and how she creates be sure to read this Guardian interview with her from a few weeks ago. Also: Jackie Kay’s review of her Tate Liverpool show, Coral Cities.

A standout piece from…

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Reading recommendations for the indigenous history newbie

Kai's avatarAn Indigenous History of North America

There’s an unfortunate lack of books that a) comprehensively cover Native American history, b) do so in a way that is respectful of Native people, c) illustrate why Native American history is important, and d) are actually readable and accessible by the general public. But I’ve attempted to cobble together some kind of list of recommendation, aimed at people who are interested in learning more about Native history but don’t really know where to start, with a heavy emphasis on why and how Native American history is important on a world scale, since that seems to be something many people need clarified.

1491 by Charles Mann. I would pretty much call this the number one must-read book on Native American history for the non-specialist. This book does a lot of things all in one: it directly addresses the assumptions that are made about Native history, it covers the history…

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What if people told European history like they told Native American history?

Some serious levity.

Kai's avatarAn Indigenous History of North America

The first immigrants to Europe arrived thousands of years ago from central Asia. Most pre-contact Europeans lived together in small villages. Because the continent was very crowded, their lives were ruled by strict hierarchies within the family and outside it to control resources. Europe was highly multi-ethnic, and most tribes were ruled by hereditary leaders who commanded the majority “commoners.” These groups were engaged in near constant warfare.

Pre-contact Europeans wore clothing made of natural materials such as animal skin and plant and animal-based textiles. Women wore long dresses and covered their hair, and men wore tunics and leggings. Both men and women liked to wear jewelry made from precious stones and metals as a sign of status. Before contact, Europeans had very poor diets. Most people were farmers and grew wheat and vegetables and raised cows and sheep to eat. They rarely washed themselves, and had many diseases because…

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