March 8 – 9, 2013
Keynote Speaker: Joshua Clover (UC Davis)
In the past two years there has been a substantial rise in the visibility of protest movements, often specifically local in their demands yet global in their implications and consequences. From the ongoing social uprisings addressing democracy in the Middle East, to the concerns with direct democracy in the Québec student strike, to growing protests against austerity measures in Europe, and the Idle No More movement here in Canada, the subjects of protest are numerable and varied. In scale, location and ideology, struggle is driven by individual desires as much as by multitudinous subjects and might respond to issues of politics, economy, arts, ethics, gender, education, social justice, and other institutions of human life. The unpredictable continuity of the Occupy movement across diverse locations, temporalities and topics speaks to the mutable aspect of contestation and the potential of subversive agitation.
This year, the 36th Annual UBC Art History Graduate Symposium takes up this critical juncture by considering historical and contemporaneous modes of claiming dissensus, of acting and thinking against structures of power, and of transgressing the limitations already inscribed in our surroundings. The symposium consists of nine presentations by promising graduate students from across North America and a keynote presentation by Joshua Clover, poet, critic and professor of English literature and critical theory at the University of California Davis. He will address the current relation of communism to anarchism in contemporary spaces of struggle in a presentation entitled “A Story of Two Squares, or, Post-Industrial Communism.” Jaleh Mansoor, art historian and assistant professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory (AHVA) at UBC, will moderate his talk and the following discussion.
In conjunction with the academic symposium, the concurrent exhibition Resonating Existent(s) brings together eight, Canada-based artists who address contestation by questioning the material and immaterial instruments of protest. The closing reception of the exhibition is scheduled for March 8th, 4:00–6:00pm, at the AHVA Gallery (Rm 112) in the Koerner Library, and will include a performance by the Git Hayetsk Dancers.
You are warmly invited to our two-day long journey of intellectual dialogue and critical reflection on the issues involved in the tensions between aesthetics and politics, education in universities and activism on street. Please make our event more engaging with your presence!
Schedule
Friday, March 8th
10:00am: Opening Remarks
10:30am: Morning session
Maeve Hanna (MA, Université du Quebec à Montréal)
Water Rights: Rúrí and the Protest of Iceland’s Waterfalls
Katherine Jackson (PhD, University of British Columbia)
The Politics of Process: Process and Production in Jeremy Deller’s ‘The Battle of
Orgreave’
12:00pm: Lunch
1:00pm: Afternoon session
Haythem Guesmi (PhD, Université de Montréal)
New Media and Aesthetics of Dissensual Politics
Michael Rattray (PhD, Concordia University)
Burning Bridges: A Brief Sojourn into Anarchist Pedagogy and the Québec
Student Direct Action
2:45pm: Keynote Speech by Joshua Clover (University of California, Davis)
A Story of Two Squares, or, Post-Industrial Communism
Moderator: Jaleh Mansoor (University of British Columbia)
4:30pm: Closing Reception for Resonating Existent(s) exhibition
AHVA Gallery (#112), Koerner Library, UBC
with a performance by the Git Hayetsk Dancers
Saturday, March 9th
10:30am: Morning Session
Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo, (PhD, University of California, Berkeley)
One, Two or None at All? Doubles and Mirrors in the Photographic Portraits of Empress Dowager Cixi
Kailani Polzak (PhD, University of California, Berkeley)
Spain, France, Moor and Mameluke: Visual and Ideological Confusion in Goya’s
Second of May 1808
12:00pm: Lunch
1:00pm: Afternoon Session
Joe Madura (PhD, Emory University)
Parallel Practices: Individual and Collective Dissent in the AIDS Crisis
Paisid Aramphongphan (PhD, Harvard University)
Baroque Contamination: Jack Smith, circa 1960
Gabriel Mindel Saloman (MFA, Simon Fraser University)
On Hiatus: The Imminent Impossibility of the Art Strike
3:30pm: Closing Remarks
The 36th Annual UBC Art History Graduate Symposium Committee proudly thank our donors for their generous contributions: Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies, Canadian Studies Program (UBC), Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory (UBC), Department of History (UBC), Faculty of Graduate Studies Dean’s Office (UBC), First Nations Studies Program (UBC), Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Museum of Anthropology (UBC).
Further info: www.ahva.ubc.ca
Contact: ahva.gradsymp@gmail.com
EYES on PROTEST: https://www.facebook.com/events/427623250649559/
RESONATING EXISTENT(s): https://www.facebook.com/events/217299238408892/
