This is a call for papers for a session at the upcoming conference of the Royal
Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers in Edinburgh, 3 - 5 July 2012.
*** CLOSE DEADLINE! Please send in your abstracts until January 29th ***
Abstracts should be between 250 and 500 words.
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Art and resistance. Questions of distinction, duration and expansion.
In this session, we want to discuss the limits of art and resistance in public places. While actions such as impromptu performances, entities such as flash mobs or practices like street art are often referred to as instances of or opportunities for social change, their actual effects remain understudied. If the ‘right to the city’ is at stake, however, it is necessary not only to reflect about possibilities for alternative development or about artistic ideals. It becomes necessary to also study the manyfold ways in which such practices, entities or events enter the practices of those who are in the places wherethey occur or not. We would propose that three distinct dimensions are important in this regard:
DISTINCTION: Understood in a Bourdieuan sense, what are the positions of those who enact and those who perceive the artistic expression or countercultural performance? Where in the social and cultural fields are they located? What is the standing of the mundane compared to the worth of the extraordinary? How will people with different taste be emotionally affected by performances, and does the experience change or stabilize their aesthetic preferences?
DURATION: How long does the event last? When do the last traces of an act of resistance disappear? Here, it becomes important to think both about the materiality of places and about memory, the duration of sensual impressions, and social and individual memory. In addition, the role of recording technologies is complex: while cameras etc. do serve to extend the time frame in which the event can be ‘witnessed’, they also fundamentally change access to the event - the access becomes mediated in a different way while also addressing a different set of people (e.g. youtube users instead of passers-by in a mall etc.).
EXPANSION: What is the spatial scale of the act, entity or performance? Does it affect only a very limited space or is the reach much wider? The geography of art and resistance is of crucial importance if one wants to understand its spatial
implications. Accordingly, we would like to invite presenters to examine the sensual and material extension of art and of practices of resistance.
We would like to encourage presentations that use concrete instances as the
basis of arguments about how art and resistance play out in public places. We are particularly interested in the limits of art and resistance and in the ways in which these limits could be extended. At the same time, it remains an open question to us if an extension of limits is actually to be wished for or not, since such an extension might also serve to water down the intended effect itself. In short, we are looking forward to explore the ambivalences of art and resistance together with the other presenters and with the audience.
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More info on the conference:
http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annua
l+international+conference.htm
Questions and abstracts to: [log in to unmask]
_______________________________________________
Dr Alice Gorman
Department of Archaeology
Flinders University
GPO Box 2100 Adelaide 5001
Mobile: 0428 450 418
http://www.flinders.edu.au/people/alice.gorman
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