International Symposium:

The lost-and-found: revising art stories in search of potential changes   

Lisbon, December 6-7, 2023

The call for individual contributions is still open for the International Symposium The lost-and-found, Lisbon (6-7 Dec 23). The deadline for sending proposals for individual and collaborative contributions has been extended to 10^th July 2023.

We seek individual and collaborative contributions responding to the call (the full CFP can be found here via IHA or here via University of Wrocław); and to already accepted panels listed below.

Contributions must be on material that has not already been published. A prospective presenter should also be willing to develop the proposed contribution into either a book chapter or journal article, should it be selected for inclusion in a publication. Contributions must be in English.

Please submit your proposal with ‘The-Lost-and-Found’ in the subject line, and send it to lostandfoundlisbon@gmail.com.

If you are responding to specific panels listed below, please submit your proposal to panel Chairs. Their contact details are included below the description of each of the panels.

Please submit a single document with the following information:

1. a title for your contribution

2. an abstract up to 300 words in length; please specify the type of contribution (for example, individual or collaborative presentation, panel, object-based workshop, walkshop, stroll, gift giving and/ or sharing)

3. a short biography, including your current institutional affiliation (up to 150 words)

Applicants will be notified of decisions at the end of July 2023.

Updates on conference fees will be communicated at the beginning of July.

Specific panels:

1. Unmaking – the peripheral spaces of curiosity

Katherine McKittrick, in ‘Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis’ (2015) argues for us to become ‘implicit to a creative-intellectual project of reimagining what it means to be human and thus rearticulating who/what we are’ (p2).  She further suggests that any vision of the future must be acknowledged in terms of knots, threads and unwindings of histories and narratives in relation with one another. In this endeavour, the human stories (his-, her-, its-, their-) become collective self-inscriptions, necessarily and vital adaptive to situation, ecological and geopolitical.

I am seeking a group of artists and theorists who want to join me in this creative panel discussion (taking the form of a call-and-response).  Participants should want to use curiosity and adaptivity as a means by which to think care-fully about how we might inhabit the underside of human-ness.  I propose, through a selection of interventions, that we might think and act beyond the violent act of exclusion and exclusionary thinking.  Together, this panel will explore the possibility that curiosity, as a peripheral practice, can form new ontologies, pedagogies and ways of being in community.

If you would like to be considered as part of this panel, please send me (c.dormor@westminster.ac.uk) a short proposal (up to 300 words) outlining your artistic, theoretical, historical or other response to this call.  Daring and radical responses are encouraged, as are those from underrepresented groups.

References:

McKittrick, K. (2015) Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Duke University Press

2. Panel: Spirituality and empowering women’s storytelling   

Contemporary turns and paradigm shifts in the humanities – from the post-Cartesian recognition of the primacy of ‘I am’ over ‘I think’ to posthumanism and affectivism – look askance at metaphor and symbolism. Yet we still need stories, tales, myths, anecdotes, gossip, fantasies, even as we fear being captured by toxic ideologies and reject misogynistic universal truths. Does, however, the world of indigenous cultures come alive before our eyes, resurrecting powerful women and non-identity creatures that legitimise the rejection of contemporary tools of oppression and control? Do the ethic of care and respect for the non-human world have the potential to create new protagonists? Beyond any doubt, contemporary artists are keen to tell empowering stories that express a set of beliefs and convictions for a more inclusive world, where exploitation is not the main principle. What affirmative stories, embodied in the artworks of women artists (not necessarily contemporary, but seen anew) could be considered particularly empowering and hopeful today? What are the works and stories that build the spirituality of contemporary women? Can we learn something from nuns and art that used to and still surrounds them? Can works of old art made by and/or about women be revived today (that is, go beyond their museological or antiquarian nature), tell new stories or update those of the past? We invite proposals for papers reflecting on one or more problems enumerated above, to be presented during our event in Lisbon. The deadline for sending abstracts is 15^th June 2023.

Please send proposals to Anna Markowska anna.markowska@gmail.com and Agnieszka Patala agnieszka.patala@uwr.edu.pl