1st International Symposium: Representations - Struggles for Reality

Representations ? Struggles for Reality

Part of the Research Program on:
Aesthetic Lives, Artistic Selves

International Network for Alternative Academia
(Extends a general invitation to participate)

Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th of November, 2012
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Call for Papers

This trans-disciplinary project explores the
creation, consumption and dissemination of
representations. It aims to map out the
relationship between representations,
conceptions of the real and cultural
constructions of reality. Examining
representations as developing at the
intersections of epistemological, political and
ethical modes of enquiry, this symposium offers
the opportunity to reflect on the practice and
the theory of the constitution, legitimation and
social implications of image, art and the new
media.

We invite colleagues from all disciplines and
professions interested in sharing these
explorations in a collective, deliberative and
dialogical environment to send presentation
proposals that address these general questions
or the following themes:

1. Real and Imaginary ? A Political History

= To Represent or To Reproduce?
- How is it that representations reflect,
reproduce and create our sense of reality?
- How are representations and our concepts of
reality interlaced and intertwined?
- What role do abstractions, conversions and
distortions play in the construction of
representations and our bonds to 'weighty'
conceptions of reality?

= Power and Legitimacy
- What is at stake in the battles over
representation? What is the relationship between
power, reality and representation?
- What are the processes through which
representations are legitimized and canonized?
- How is a sense of belonging and identity
established in and through media, art and/or
artistic creation? How are the threads of power
and the needs for legitimacy played out in this
context?
- How are self-representations to be assessed?
How are misrepresentations to be responded to?
- Who gets to name what is real? What standard
of evaluation should be employed?

= You Say You Want A Revolution?: Rebellious
Representations
- How are images and ideas transformed into
action?
- What is the role of representation in
political activism, religious proselytism, and
contestation movements?
- How do representations fuel transformation and
change? How do representations thwart such
efforts?
- How are representations contested? What are
the spaces for such deliberations?

2. The Authentic, The Original, The Real

= On Authenticity
- In a world of reproduction, what is the
meaning and the value of judgments of
authenticity?
- What factors and institutions fuel the quest
for the perfect representation in art and
science?
- How are new technologies reconfiguring our
understandings of authority and expertise?
- Are distortions of reality necessarily
destructive? What are the potential productive
forces of distortion?
- What does the return to the representative in
contemporary representations reveal about
present day conceptions of reality?

= On Originality
- What is the relationship between The Original
and the original?
- How are new understandings of originality
reconfiguring our ideas of genius?
- In an era defined by pastiche and bricolage,
how is originality to be assessed?
- Given the prevalence of prequels and sequels,
remakes and remixes, are we bearing witness to
the end of creativity and/or the end of
originality?
- How are forgeries and fakes to be defined,
identified and valued?
- What is the role of the signature in new forms
of representation?

= On Reality
- How are images transformed into icons?
- In what ways do icons reflect reality? In what
ways do they deconstruct reality?
- How are multiple realities to be represented?
- How can emergent realities be captured?
- In what manner should competing
representations be assessed? What standards of
evaluation should be employed?
- What do pastiche, bricolage and hybridity
reveal about our notions of reality?

3. Being, Becoming and Performing the Aesthetic

= The Politics of Art and the Art of Politics
- What are the conditions for the possibility of
an aestheticization of politics? How are those
conditions met in contemporary cultures?
- What is the role of modern day patrons in the
artworld?
- How will the history of the politicization of
art be written?
- What does the history and the practice of
curating reveal about the intersection of art
and politics?
- What does the structure, organization and
operation of art schools reveal about the
politics in and of art?
- What factors shape and inform the development
of a political economy of representations?
- How are representations interpreted as
political gestures?

= Technology as Practice
- How are new technologies for the creation,
consumption and dissemination of representations
leading us to reconceptualize The Artworld?
- How is art being commodified in and through
new media? How are new technologies shaping and
being shaped by the commodification of art?
- How do new technologies redefine our
understanding of imagination?
- How is the relationship between technology and
practice being re-established in a post-internet
era?

= Creativity and Critique
- How might art be conceived of as a form of
critique?
- Can creativity be charted? What new models of
creativity might be offered to capture how
reality is transformed by representation and
representations are transformed by reality?
- How might creativity be conceived of as
critique?
- How are digital and virtual representations
leading us to define creativity?
- What new horizons, new metaphors, new means
for re-signifying life and experience in the
virtual and non-virtual worlds are being
envisioned?

If you are interested in participating in this
Annual Symposium, submit a 400 to 500 word
abstract by Friday 8th of June, 2012.  Please
use the following template for your submission:

First: Author(s);
Second: Affiliation, if any;
Third: Email Address;
Fourth: Title of Abstract and Proposal;
Fifth: The 400 to 500 Word Abstract.

To facilitate the processing of abstracts, we
ask that you use Word, WordPerfect or RTF
formats only and that you use plain text,
resisting the temptation of using special
formatting, such as bold, italics or underline.

Please send emails with your proposals to the
Annual Symposium Coordination address (rsr-
[email protected]) with the following
subject line: Representations ? Struggles for
Reality Abstract Proposal.

For every abstract proposal sent, we acknowledge
receipt. If you do not receive a reply from us
within one week you should assume we did not
receive it. Please resend from your account and
from an alternative one, to make sure your
proposal does get to us.

All presentation and paper proposals that
address these questions and issues will be fully
considered and evaluated. Accepted abstracts
will require a full draft paper by Friday 31st
of August, 2012. Papers presented at the
symposium are eligible for publication as part
of a digital or paperback book.

We invite colleagues and people interested in
participating to disseminate this call for
papers. Thank you for sharing and cross-listing
where and whenever appropriate.

Hope to meet you in Montreal!

Symposium Coordinators:

Cheryl Sim
Commissaire Associée
DHC/ART Fondation pour l'art contemporain
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Email: [email protected]

Wendy O'Brien
Professor of Social and Political Theory
School of Liberal Studies
Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced
Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Email: [email protected]

Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
General Coordinator
International Network for Alternative Academia
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Email: [email protected]


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Informational Note:

Alternative Academia is an international network
of intellectuals, academics, independent
scholars and practitioners committed to creating
spaces, both within and beyond traditional
academe, for creative, trans-disciplinary and
critical thinking on key themes. We offer annual
and biannual symposiums at sites around the
world, providing forums that foster the
development of new frames of reference and
innovative structures for the production and
expansion of knowledge and theory. Dialogue,
discussion and deliberation define both the
methods employed and the values upheld by this
network.

Visit our website at: www.alternative-academia.net

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