Art as Cultural Diplomacy (Extended Deadline)

Papers are still accepted for the panel:
Art as Cultural Diplomacy
As part of the 4th Euroacademia International Conference 'Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeaness Exposed to Plural Observers', Athens, Greece, 23 - 24 May 20134
Extended Deadline: 25 April 2014
Art as Cultural Diplomacy
Panel Organizer: Cassandra Sciortino, University of California, Santa Barbara
Panel Description
The panel "Art as cultural diplomacy" seeks papers that explore the function of art (in its broadest definition) as an instrument of cultural diplomacy by the state and, especially, by nongovernmental actors. The main theme of the session is the question of art and diplomacy in Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Papers are welcome which explore issues related to the role of art, diplomacy and the politicization of the European Union and its candidate countries, as are those which consider how the arts have pursued or resisted East-West dichotomies and other narratives of alterity in Europe and worldwide.
This panel considers art as an instrument of cultural diplomacy and the EU's goal of an 'ever closer union'. In the context of multiple crises confronting Europe in recent years, how have the arts contributed to the politicization of Europe? The panel intends to assess the viability of consistent efforts aiming to emphasize how can art be used to establish, develop, and sustain productive relations between nations and other stakeholders in international relations. How can it serve as a neutral platform for exchange? How might it be employed as a vehicle for facilitating EU cohesion that is at once inter-culturally flexible and cohesive enough to project a unifying identity. How can public policy and other stakeholders craft a framework to measure the degrees of difference between art as instrument of cultural diplomacy or propaganda? Is it relevant to consider the concept of E-Diplomacy that is the digital revolution and the emergence of social media as platforms for art to communicate across social, cultural, and national boundaries?
The panel seeks to combine a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how art?its various practices, history, and theory?are an important area of inquiry in the expanding field of cultural diplomacy. Selected papers will be invited for publication in a book.
Some examples of topics include:
~ How can art serve as a neutral platform for exchange to promote dialogue and understanding between foreign states?
~ How can art, including organized festivals (i.e. film, art, music.), cultivate transnational identities that undermine dichotomies of East and West, and other narratives of alterity in Europe and beyond it?
~ The implications for art as an instrument of diplomacy in a postmodern age where geopolitics and power are increasingly mobilized by image based structures of persuasion
~ How has/can art facilitate cohesion between European Union member states and candidate states that effectively responds to the EU's efforts to create "unity in diversity."
~ The politics of mapping Europe: mental and cartographic
~ Community based art as a social practice to engage issues of European identity
~ The difference between art as cultural diplomacy and propaganda
~ The digital revolution and the emergence of social media as platforms for art to communicate across social, cultural, and national boundaries?
~ Diplomacy in the history of art in Europe
~ Artists as diplomats
~ Art history as diplomacy?exhibitions, post-colonial criticism, global art history, and other revisions to the conventional boundaries of Europe and its history of art
~ The international activity of cultural institutes
Please apply on-line or submit abstracts of less than 300 words together with the details of affiliation by 25th of April 2014 to
cassandra.sciortino@berkeley.edu and [email protected]
See full details of the conference before applying at:
http://euroacademia.eu/conference/fourth-europe-inside-out/