Second Annual Graduate Conference, School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom – 17th May 2013
Keynote speaker: Jonathan Harris, Professor in Global Art and Design Studies and Director of Research for the Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art and Design Media at the University of Southampton.
Call for Papers (Deadline: 1st March, 2013):
In the postwar period, maps have become increasingly common as an artistic medium, but this rise to prominence emerges from several distinct historical trajectories.
One important lineage is that linked to Conceptual Art and its legacy, where the map, like the diagram, has been used as a figure of social abstraction, raising questions about the space and its representation as well as art and communications technology. Elsewhere, groups such as the Situationist International and certain strands of performance art have been concerned with the production of art (or anti-art), in or as ‘real space’, something that pushes the boundaries of mapping and perhaps art practice to their limit. In such practices, maps have been an important means of producing, documenting and disseminating activities, whilst tactics of counter-mapping have been used to question representational hegemonies, even representation itself. Equally many artists have sought to contest what is at stake in mapping from a postcolonial standpoint – to redraw maps or to erase them altogether.
These are only some of the many engagements with map-making in postwar art. This conference will seek to both examine localised examples of such practices, but also to enquire after, and draw out, potential common threads. In more recent years, changes in technology, for example satellite navigation and locative media, and transformations in the (geo)political landscape have significantly impacted upon map-making practices. As such we are also particularly keen to consider contributions on recent and contemporary developments.
We invite abstracts of around 300 words for 20 minute papers, along with a short 50 word bio, by the deadline of 1st March 2013 to artandmaps@nullessex.ac.uk
Submissions from graduate students and researchers working within art history and related disciplines are encouraged. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Maps and Land Art
- Maps as documentation
- Postcolonial mapping
- Maps in Conceptual and post-conceptual art
- Psychogeography and Situationist Maps
- Maps and performance
- Mapping power relations
- Exhibition maps
- Counter-mapping
- Map collages
- Maps in painting
- Mapping technologies
- Locative Media
- Interdisciplinary approaches
For more information artandmaps@nullessex.ac.uk or see http://artandmaps.wordpress.com
Selected conference proceedings will be published in a special issue of rebus, the department’s online journal of Art History and Theory.