[csaa-forum] FW: CFP: Transforming Aesthetics (Sydney, July 2005)

[Danny Butt]

CfP: Transforming Aesthetics (Sydney, July 2005)

The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (NSW Chapter) in
association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Centre for
Contemporary Art and Politics, UNSW present the conference,

TRANSFORMING AESTHETICS

July 8-9, 2005, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney.

Proposals for papers (with abstract) to be submitted to
DonnaB at ag.nsw.gov.au by November 20, 2005

Transforming Aesthetics explores the response of aesthetic theory to new
forms of art and exhibition practice, emerging in relation to post-9/11
politics, globalization, post-colonialism and the demise of
Euro-centrism.

The entanglement of art with politics frequently prompts art theorists
to import concepts from cultural/political theory. But art is not simply
a field of application for theory; rather, concepts and theories may be
understood to emerge from the visual. For this reason it is crucial to
attend to the specifics of visual or aesthetic languages. New forms of
political and post-colonial practice call for a new set of critical
terms ñ for an expansion and re-evaluation of the field of aesthetic
theory. Thus this conference maps the ongoing transformation of
aesthetics.

Framework and foci

A significant trend in contemporary thought holds that the links between
things are more important than the meaning of an object in isolation.
Michel Serres argues that we no longer need ontology but desmology
(desmos = link).

Within contemporary art theory there has been a shift away from the
study of meaning toward the study of process: in Deleuzeís words, art is
defined not by what it means but by what it does. Nicholas Bourriaud has
coined the term ërelational artí, proposing that the art object is no
longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally.

Artists, curators and theorists have long understood that context ñ both
physical and cultural ñ is fundamental to the perception of art.
International ëbiennaleí exhibitions that survey contemporary practice
provide a structure in which the issues of relationality become
unavoidable: how does an artwork change when it is transplanted to a new
setting and viewed in a new cultural, social or political context; and
how do we understand the relations between different works, juxtaposed
in an exhibition?

Postcolonialism and theories of globalisation have provided a framework
for identifying new kinds of transcultural relationships in the arts,
but what kind of aesthetics does this call for? In addition to
Bourriaud's relational aestheticsí, theorists, as well as curators and
artists have advanced concepts such as empathy as critical terms for
understanding visual art dynamics.

Building on the previous AAANZ NSW Chapter conferences, this conference
will focus on new understandings of the dynamics of art, and of the
links between. The conference sessions will highlight different concepts
or tropes of relationality such as interculturalism,
transnationalism/globalism and subjective relations such as empathy.

Sessions include:
Relational Aesthetics;
Rethinking the Anti-Aesthetic tradition;
How images shape contemporary thought (art-driven aesthetics); The
impact of non-western and postcolonial art on aesthetic discourse; The
inter-cultural and the transcultural; Distributed Aesthetics and new
media art

Confirmed speakers include Nicolas Bourriaud and Ernst Van Alphen.



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