Networks of Experience: Art and (Dis)Embodiment Conference

Any encounter between an audience and a work of art is experiential. Beyond this universal dimension, much contemporary art asks more of its viewers than just viewing. These works engage multiple modes of observation, sensation, participation, reflection, and (dis)embodiment that have the power to affect and engage bodies in new and adaptive ways. Art that demands physical attention, emotional labour, or visceral reactions crosses into new territory and invites varied modes of experience, including those of memory, haunting, and tradition. It can lead the audience to a deeper understanding of practices that affirm experiences from the past, as well as experiences of the Other that aim to dismantle Western colonialism. In this context, experience turns from an act of recognition of a meaning intrinsic to the object, to a meaning that is grounded in the encounter between the artist’s experience and that of the spectator. Keeping open the multiple threads of experience , this conference invites investigations of experience in contemporary art, across its various embodied practices: artists’ lived/personal experience as embodied in their art; the experiences of spectators and audiences; and experience as cultural legacy/history, including experiences of colonialism and decolonization.

The 2019 Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories Conference invites proposals for academic papers/practices from Graduate students, independent scholars, and artists.

Conference Date: March 15 – 16, 2019
Location: OCAD University, Room 190, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, Canada

Topics for discussion include, but are not limited to:
● Internalization/Affect of embodied experience vs. disembodied experience
● Institutional spaces and the shaping of experience (museums, galleries, schools)
● Individual and/or collective experience
● Sites, venues, locations of experience
● Virtual spaces, alternate realities, and re-embodiment
● Craft as embodied experience and site of resistance
● Experiences of transgression and subversion in contemporary art

The conference invites theoretical reflections, case studies, and/or performances on questions of (dis)embodied experiences in the discourses of contemporary art history, design history, new media studies, critical theory, visual arts, and art criticism.

This event is hosted by current OCAD University second year CADN (Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories) Graduate students Samantha Robbie-Higgins of Akin King, Rachelle Rabourin, Katherine Walker, Maddy McMillan, and Alessia Pignotti.

Call for Submissions - Creative Time Summit: Of Homelands and Revolutions

Creative Time, The Power Plant and The Art Gallery of Ontario invite artists, activists, and cultural producers in the Greater Toronto Area to propose ideas for breakout sessions for The Creative Time Summit: Of Homelands and Revolutions, a two-day convening for thinkers, dreamers, and doers working at the intersection of art and politics.

Following the first day of presentations at Koerner Hall, the Summit will offer a second full day of community driven, hour-long sessions designed to share tools, strategies, and actions with over 1000 international and local attendees. Sessions could take the form of roundtable discussions, workshops, panels, field trips, interactive performances, screenings,or other creative formats and may reflect on the themes ofthe larger Summit [see below]. At the same time, we encourage sessions that engage with the field of socially engaged art more broadly.

If you or your organization are interested in planning a to bring into focus pressing issues within your practice and communities, please submit a proposal for review by Wednesday, May 31 to summit@creativetime.org.

All selected organizers will receive a modest honorarium.

How to apply:

•     a brief 1-2 paragraph summary of your session idea
•     a title for your session
•     a short bio of all presenters (120 word max)
•     1-3 relevant links (website, blog, press, etc.) of your work.

All proposals should be sent via e-mail to: summit@creativetime.org with the subject line "CT Summit Toronto - Community Proposal." Sessions will take place on Saturday, September 30, 2017 at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Summit | Summary & Themes:
The 9th Creative Time Summit in Toronto will be co-presented by The Power Plant, with collaboration of the Art Gallery of Ontario, from September 28 to 30, 2017.

2017 is a year in which we commemorate two significant, but different historic events: the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation and the Centennial of the Russian Revolution. These two events serve as fluid axes for the title and overarching thematic of Summit 2017, “Of Homelands and Revolution.”

From here, we journey inside-out, moving to the hearth and realms of domesticity, the struggle for vibrant community life and sovereign homelands, and further, to the violent borders that produce exile, displacement, and refugeeism. On this path, we invite poetic, philosophical, and practice-based ruminations on belonging, sovereignty, security, and renewal. An urgent thematic throughline will be the ongoing struggles of indigenous peoples across continents and the multiple relations between home, land, culture, and community that they bring to bear.

For its part, despite a tragic end in violent and authoritarian regimes, the Bolshevik Revolution was an extraordinary event that, in the words of Leon Trotsky, one of its principal architects, allowed for the “direct interference of the masses in historic events.” 100 years later we look back at the contradictory legacies of the Marxist tradition and at the many forms of radical sociality, aesthetics and anti-capitalist organizing that it has inspired. A global turn to the right, as evidenced by the recent election of Donald Trump to the White House and the Brexit referendum increases the urgency of such reflection.

Summit 2017 invites participants to consider the many-layered political and aesthetic understandings of home alongside social movements—revolutionary ones at that—which have sought to summon a broader dream of social justice.

Making A Living Making Art: Creative Potluck

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