Call for papers [1] for the international conference

 

CHANGING GLOBAL HIERARCHIES OF VALUE? MUSEUMS, ARTIFACTS , FRAMES,
AND FLOWS

 

University of Copenhagen / National Museum of Denmark, 20-22 August,
2018

 

Museums are said to classify the world; but the world is changing,
and so are the museum worlds and the worlds of arts and artefacts.
This conference explores how the world is imagined and classified
through the presentation, interpretation and classification of
artifacts; and how the global hierarchy of value (cf. Herzfeld 2004)
might be changing in through these flows and circulations.

 

In 2007, the German art historian Hans Belting coined the term
“global art” to indicate that contemporary art was no longer the
province of artists in the Global North, thus signaling a sea change
in the international art world (Belting, in Weibel and Buddensieg
2007). Art historians, prior to Belting had long stipulated that the
birth of modern art in 19th and 20th century Europe was partially
predicated on inspirations from outside Europe in the guise of
Orientalism, Chinoiserie, Japonisme, or “primitivism,” yet these
modern artists were almost exclusively from Europe and – later –
North America. Non-European artists went largely unnamed and
unrecognized, as French surrealist poet André Breton’s famous _mur
d’atelier_ revealed. Modern art from the Global South or rapidly
modernizing states in Eurasia and East Asia, was often dismissed as
derivative of Western art, while contemporary traditional art was
considered inauthentic (cf. Kasfir 1992).

 

Simultaneously, anthropologist Michael Herzfeld (2004) coined the
term “global hierarchy of value” to denote the global cultural
asymmetry that constituted the cultural successor to the political and
military domination of European colonial systems. In the arts, early
partial exceptions were Latin America, which – as the historical
product of creole nationalisms (cf. Anderson 1982) and hence as a
“pseudo-Europe” – saw the emergence of successful artists like
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and of movements like Brazilian modernism
and neo-concretism; and Japan, which experimented with locally
inflected, but modern, architecture. The imbalance in the
Euro-centered art world changed when the _Magiciens de la Terre_
exhibition was held in Paris (1989) and featured contemporary art by
both Western and non-Western –and named - artists in equal numbers,
albeit without implying an equal hierarchy of value.

 

_The
_ _Magiciens de la Terre_ exhibition marked the coming out of
contemporary artists from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania on
the global arts scene, and brought out in their participation in
numerous exhibitions such as the _Modernités plurielles_ at the
Centre Pompidou in Paris, but also in biennales, art festivals, art
fairs, and auctions around the world. Simultaneously, art institutions
and events outside of Europe and North America gained in global
prominence, by adopting the cultural forms, classificatory devices and
exhibitionary technologies developed in Euro-America and applying
those in their own contexts and for their own purposes. One could say
that while the modern period witnessed the emergence of a global
Europe, the current “post-postcolonial” period is marked by the
globalization of the other continents – at least in terms of the
arts: in that sense it is increasingly possible to speak of global
Asia, global Africa, global Latin America as geographic entities that
challenge the global hierarchy of value. 

 

At the same time, recent decades have seen the unfolding of
increasingly interconnected global networks of production, labor,
consumption, and capital accumulation, a process broadly known as
globalization. But can we also talk of a globalized taste regime or
set of preferences à la Bourdieu? Are recently booming or expanding
global players in Asia, Africa, and Latin America reconfiguring the
relative value of styles, objects, or traditional artifacts, thereby
challenging the old Eurocentric order and organization of the good and
the beautiful? Even if the West remains the universal unmarked,
attention should be given to the ways in which it is now often
amplified, mocked, or ironized by non-Western masters of its artistic,
architectural, or artisanal forms. How is globalization affecting
existing or emerging museums as economic and commercial players in a
world of accelerating mass tourism and brand fixation? How is the
complex past of European interaction and Eurocentric notions of
cosmopolitanism rethought and exhibited today in postcolonial theaters
of historical encounter, exchange, or conflict?    

 

This is the final conference of the project ‘
Global Europe: Constituting Europe from the Outside In through
Artefacts’ (see
http://globaleurope.ku.dk/
[2]).
The Global Europe project explores how the collection, circulation,
classification and museum exhibition of objects define Europe from the
outside in during Europe’s present loss of global hegemony –
especially in relation to Japan and four non-European BRICS countries
(Brazil, China, India, South Africa), in comparison with the early
modern period of European ascendancy. This ‘Changing Global
Hierarchies of Value?’ conference invites both paper proposals on a
range of topics that explore global networks of valuation and
validation and their local forms and entanglements in the current
period. The papers are expected to be empirically grounded, and may
– but do not have to – refer to the five countries targeted by the
Global Europe project.

 

The keynote speech titled
_Museum Transactions: Negotiating Knowledges, Governing Cultures
_ will be presented by Professor Tony Bennett of the Institute for
Culture and Society of the Western Sydney University in Australia.
Tony Bennett is the author of – among many other works – _The
birth of the museum: history, theory, politics_ (1995), _Pasts beyond
memories: evolution, museums, colonialism_ (2004), and _Making
culture, changing society_ (2013); and he currently leads the project
‘
Museum, Field, Metropolis, Colony: Practices of Social Governance’.
For more information, please see
https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/people/researchers/tony_bennett
[3].

 

The conference is convened by Prof Oscar Salemink, Amélia Siegel
Corrêa PhD, Jens Sejrup PhD, Caroline Lillelund and Vibe Nielsen, who
make up the research team for the Global Europe [4] project.

 

Please send your abstract (300 words max) and short bio (300 words
max)  to Marie Yoshida
[log in to unmask]
[5] before April 1st, 2018. For inquiries, please contact Oscar
Salemink
[log in to unmask]
[6].

 

 
http://globaleurope.ku.dk/activities/changing-global-hierarchies-of-value-museums-artifacts--frames-and-flows/
[7].

 


Links:
------
[1]
http://globaleurope.ku.dk/activities/changing-global-hierarchies-of-value-museums-artifacts--frames-and-flows/
[2] http://globaleurope.ku.dk/
[3]
https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/people/researchers/tony_bennett
[4] http://globaleurope.ku.dk/
[5] mailto:[log in to unmask]
[6] mailto:[log in to unmask]
[7]
http://globaleurope.ku.dk/activities/changing-global-hierarchies-of-value-museums-artifacts--frames-and-flows/


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