Call for papers: Ecologies of the Visual
The Third Visual Culture in Europe Meeting, Trondheim, 6-7 September 2012
Contributions are invited which address the relationship between ecology and visuality in the broadest sense. On the one hand several discourses have come to revolve around what Susan Sontag described in On Photography as an ecology of images, a perspective which raises both epistemological and ethical questions concerning our interactions with the image. On the other hand there are presently several indications of a pressing need for the field of visual culture studies to address what we might call the visualities of ecology, or the place of environmental issues in contemporary visual culture. Topics may include but are by no means limited to:
Images and Ethics // “Ecology” as a Metaphorical Nexus in Visual Studies // Visual Culture within and without the Ecology of Disciplines // Consumerism and Visual Culture/The Visual Culture of Consumerism // Climate Change in/and Visual Culture // The Rhetorics of Environmentalism in Media and/or Art // Apocalyptic Narratives in Visual Culture
To submit a proposal for a paper presentation, please email an abstract of approximately 200 words to the conference organisers, Nina Lager Vestberg (nina.vestberg@ntnu.no) and Øyvind Vågnes (ov@nomadikon.net), by 7 March 2012.
Journal of Visual Culture
The Machinima Issue – Free for you to access until 31st December 2011
Simply click here to access the content of this Themed Issue
Contributions to forthcoming open issues include:
Emmanuel Alloa on Visual Studies in Byzantium, David Cunningham on the Metropolis; Willem Flusser on the gesture of photographing, Tom Holert on Bildwissenschaft, Esther Leslie on liquid crystals, Lev Manovich on visualization, Lynda Nead on boxing, Jacques Ranciere on cinema, Nicole Starosielski on transoceanic cables, Janet Wolff on the power of images, Winnie Wong on appropriation in Chinese visual culture.
Forthcoming themed issues include:
In 2012
Ways of Seeing: 40 Years On, with contributors including: Mieke Bal, Jon Bird, Lisa Cartwright, Jill H. Casid, Hazel Clark, Laurie-Beth Clark, Mike Dibb, Jennifer Gonzalez, Dick Hebdige, Richard Hollis, Elizabeth Guffey, S. Heller, Ben Highmore, Martin Jay, Guy Julier, Louis Kaplan, Peter Lunenfeld, Tara McPherson, Marita Sturken, Griselda Pollock, Adrian Rifkin, Vanessa Schwartz, and Ming Wong.
In 2013:
The Archives R Us issue, with contributors including: Raiford Guins, Gary Hall, Chris Horrocks, Tom Holert, Juliette Kristenesen, susan pui san lok, Joanne Morra, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Vivian Rehberg, Marquard Smith, and Nina Lager Vestberg
The second biennial International Association for Visual Culture conference, NYC, May 31-June 2, 2012. See flyer attached
The second biennial International Association for Visual Culture conference:
‘Now! Visual Culture’
May 31-June 2, 2012
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor, New York, NY, 10012
See the flyer attached.
Email: nm45@nyu.edu
More details forthcoming in the weeks to come at: http://www.journalofvisualculture.org/blog/
“This special issue of the Journal of Visual Culture is a remarkable and much needed addition to the critical analysis and development of translation as a metaphor for creative acts and products. [...] I can wholeheartedly recommend ‘Acts of Translation’ to anybody interested in the critical engagement with cultures, whether historical or contemporary, visual or linguistic. It deserves to become an essential reference in departments of visual culture, fine art, art history and, importantly, also translation studies.”
Katja Krebs, Translation Studies, May 2010
Korean Contemporary Art on British Soil at Korean Cultural Centre, London, Friday 1st July
University of Westminster’s Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture Visiting Research Fellow Dr Young-Paik Chun has programmed an exciting event called ‘The Nomad Artist in a Transnational Era: Korean Contemporary Art on British Soil’ that might be of interest to jvc readers. All are welcome.
When:
Friday 1st July 2011, from 14:30 to 19:00
Where:
Multi-purpose Hall, Korean Cultural Centre, Grand Buildings, 1-3 Strand, London, WC2N 5BW (Main Entrance on Northumberland Avenue)
Programme
14:30 – 15:00 – Prelude
○ Digital Film Screening: Interview with Eemyun Kang
4482 Korean Contemporary Artists Group Exhibition
15:00 – 16:15 – Session 1. Academic Session – Theoretical approaches
○ Chair: Marquard Smith (Director, Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster)
○ Speaker: Young-Paik Chun (Reader, Department of Art History and Theory, Hong-Ik University, Seoul)
○ Commentator: Edward Allington (Professor, Head of Graduate Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art)
16:15 – 16:30 Coffee Break
16:30 – 17:40 – Session 2. Panel Discussion in Art Practice I – Curatorial Practice
○ David A Bailey (Director of ICF The International Curators Forum)
○ Ji-Yoon Lee (Director, Suum Contemporary Art Project & Academy)
○ Sook-Kyung Lee (Curator, Tate Liverpool)
○ Moderator : Jade Keun-Hye Lim (Independent Curator / APG in Museum Studies, Leicester University)
17:50 – 19:00 – Session 3. Panel Discussion in Art Practice II – Making Art Works
○ Mee-Kyung Shin (Artist)
○ Chan-hyo Bae (Artist)
○ Jin-Kyun Ahn (Artist)
○ Moderator : Stephanie Seung-Min Kim (Director, Iskai Contemporary Art)
W.J.T. Mitchell at University of Westminster on 13th June from 2-6, in The Board Room, 309 Regent Street.
The eagerly awaited ‘Audience with W.J.T. Mitchell’ will take place in The Boardroom, 1st Floor, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster, on Monday 13th June 2011 from 2-6. All are welcome, and attendance is free, but you must RSVP to Sharon asap here: sinclas@wmin.ac.uk
Cloning Tom: An Audience with W.J.T. Mitchell
Monday 13th June 2011, 2:00-6:00pm , 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster
To celebrate the publication of Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (University of Chicago Press), the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture is thrilled to host an audience with Professor W. J.T. Mitchell. Mitchell will deliver a presentation entitled ‘The Historical Uncanny: Phantoms, Doubles, and Repetition in the War on Terror’. His presentation will be followed by a Roundtable with contributors including Maxime Boidy (Strasbourg), Abdelwahab El-Affendi (Westminster), Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths), and Mitchell himself. The event will be chaired by Dr Marquard Smith (Westminster).
The event is FREE but booking is essential so please RSVP to Sharon Sinclair: sinclas@wmin.ac.uk
Professor W. J. T. Mitchell is Editor of Critical Inquiry and the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, the Department of Art History, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of seminal books including What Do Pictures Want? and Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, and editor of collections such as Against Theory, Landscape and Power, On Narrative, and Picture Theory.
Maxime Boidy is the French translator of W.J.T. Mitchell’s Cloning Terror (with S. Roth) and has also translated books by Susan Buck-Morss and Mike Davis, as well as Mitchell’s Iconography. He is a doctorial candidate in the Laboratoire Cultures et Sociétés en Europe at Université de Strasbourg.
Dr Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Reader in Politics at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster and co-ordinator of the Centre’s Democracy and Islam Programme. He is also currently an ESRC/AHRC Fellow in the Global Uncertainties Programme working on a project entitled ‘Narratives of Insecurity, Democratization and the Justification of (Mass) Violence.’ Dr El-Affendi is author of books including About Muhammad: The Other Western Perspective on the Prophet of Islam, The Conquest of Muslim Hearts and Minds, For a State of Peace: Conflict and the Future of Democracy in Sudan, Rethinking Islam and Modernity, and Who Needs an Islamic State?
Dr Marquard Smith is Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, and Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Visual Culture.
Dr Eyal Weizman is Director of the Centre of Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work includes buildings and stage sets in Israel/Palestine and Europe. Weizman works with a variety of NGOs and Human right groups in Israel/Palestine. He co-curated the exhibition A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, and co-edited the publication of the same title. These projects were based on his human-rights research, and were banned by the Israeli Association of Architects. They were later shown in the exhibition Territories in New York, Berlin, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Malmoe, Tel Aviv and Ramallah. His books include Lesser Evils, Hollow Land, A Civilian Occupation, and the series Territories 1,2 and 3.
Concepts of Scarcity – Wednesday 1st June, University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus, 6:30
1 June 2011: Iain Boal and Lyla Mehta on Concepts of Scarcity
Scarcity and Consumption is part of Scarcity Exchanges, a series of exchanges on and around the topic of scarcity, bringing together some of the leading thinkers in the field to expound on one of the most pressing, but often avoided, issues of the day.
Iain Boal is a social historian and co-founder of the Retort collective, an association of radical writers, artisans, and artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Cruz. He is presently Research Fellow of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London. In his remarks, “Scarcity and the necessities of life”, Boal will review the Reverend Malthus’ definition of economics as “decision under scarcity”, and asks whether another economics, indeed another world, is possible.
Lyla Mehta is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex and an Adjunct Professor at Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She is a sociologist and her work focuses on the politics of scarcity, water and sanitation, gender, forced displacement and resistance, rights and access to resources and the politics of environment/ development and sustainability. Several of her publications have been concerned with scarcity including the recently edited work ‘The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation’. Her talk is entitled ‘Taking the scare out of scarcity: Why ‘perfect storm’ narratives serve to keep the poor poor’.
Wednesday, 1 June 2011, 6.30 pm, University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus, London
This event is free but registration is required.
The International Association for Visual Culture is coming…
Keep a close eye out for forthcoming information on the International Association for Visual Culture.
A little background:
On 29th May 2010, as the final session of the three-day conference entitled ‘The 2010 Visual Culture Studies Conference’ held at University of Westminster, London, the subject under discussion was the proposal to establish an International Association for Visual Culture Studies. During the session, with presentations from Jeremy Gilbert (University of East London), Michael Ann Holly, and Stephen Melville (Ohio State), and convened by Marquard Smith, a motion was proposed formally by W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago) that the Association be established. This motion was seconded by Lisa Cartwright (UC, San Diego), and the motion was passed.
At the start of April 2011, Michael Ann Holly, Starr Director of Research and Academic Programming at The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and Marquard Smith, Founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Visual Culture, convened a colloquium of international scholars, museum educators, and practitioners of visual culture at The Clark to discuss further the founding of such an Association – what would be its aims and mission, and how it would function in its service to its members. Following on from this colloquium, the Clark group is moving forward with the formal founding of an International Association for Visual Culture.
The Association for Visual Culture will be launched officially at a conference in New York in May 2012, convened by a group of New York State-based scholars, led by Nicholas Mirzoeff (NYU).
Information will be available soon regarding the Association’s official launch, the chance to register interest in the Association, to receive updates, membership offers, etc.
Watch this space…
