Alternative
Worlds
A retrospective of
the last 111 years
Call for Papers/ Art
Presentations
Seminar in Visual
Culture 2011
Deadline for proposals: 13 Dec.
2010
Institute of Germanic &
Romance Studies, Room ST 274
(School of Advanced Study, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square,
WC1B 5DN London)
This series of seminars acts as a forum for practicing
artists, researchers, curators, students, and others interested in visual
culture who are invited to present, discuss and explore a given theme within
the broad field of Visual Culture.
In an attempt to escape the doom and gloom of the
economic crisis the theme for 2011 is ‘Alternative Worlds’. The aim
is to examine the dreams, plans and hopes, but also the nightmares and fears
reflected in utopian thinking since 1900 in the Western hemisphere. What has
become of all those possible worlds? How do they reflect their contemporary
culture and society and what, if anything, do or can they mean for our present,
or indeed, our future? What alternative worlds are engendered by our own times,
by the world of 2011 itself? This is, hence not only a retrospective of past
utopias and their after-lives but also an invitation to look towards our
possible futures.
Looking backwards, we could revisit the Futurist utopia
of a mechanical universe based on the principles of speed and technology, or
look at the somewhat similar proposals of the American Technocratic Society for
a world based on the laws of engineering. Or we could examine the repercussions
of Hermann Sörgel’s plan for Atlantropa, a merger of Europe and Africa created by
damming the Strait of Gibraltar, meticulously worked out in the late 1920s and
promoted by Sörgel
until his death in 1952. Or we could look at the architectural utopias
of Modernism, at Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, or at GM’s 1939
Futurama exhibit of the ‘City of the Future’ with its intricate
congestion-free road systems. We could look at the social housing projects of
the 1950s and ‘60s – those that were built and those that were
imagined. We could look at the many futures inspired by the space age, or at
the alternative lives and societies envisaged in reaction to the Cold War and
the nuclear threat. We could revisit the multiple Ballardian worlds or the
various projects for the future proposed by the architects and artists who
contributed to “This is Tomorrow”, the exhibition held at
London’s Whitechapel Gallery in 1956 and restaged in 2006 at Tate
Britain. We could look at the social utopias of the 1960s, the communes, sex
and free love as a basis for a new society. We could look at the alternative
worlds inspired by the possibilities of robotics, cybernetics or genetics; or
at virtual worlds, like Second Life or all those parallel lives made possible
by social networking sites. We could look backwards and at the same time look
forwards.
Contributions on any of the above topics or on other
alternative worlds of the past and the present are invited from individuals
working in the fields of art history, philosophy, literary, cultural and visual
studies, fine arts, film and media studies, theatre, history, etc.
Artists are also invited to present new (and existing)
work on the theme.
Please send proposals for
art presentations (200 words plus images) or academic papers (200 words)
to Ricarda Vidal: [log in to unmask]"
target="_blank">[log in to unmask]
by 13 December 2010.
Please indicate which date you
would prefer for your talk.
Dates and times:
Wednesday 26 Jan. 2011, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
Wednesday 23 Feb. 2011, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
Wednesday 30 March 2011, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
Wednesday 27 April 2011, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
Wednesday 25 May 2010, 6.30pm – 8.00pm