Enfilade

From the Call for Papers:

Becoming the Work: Body Reification Practices in Exhibitions and Museums
Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), Gatineau, 21–22 May 2021

Organized by Mélanie Boucher with Anne Bénichou and Éric Langlois

Proposals due by 25 September 2020

In this pandemic period of our history, which links unprecedented physical restrictions with an unlimited access to the Internet, people appear to have maintained a singular interest in personifying the canons of art history and publishing the results of their experimentations on social media (GUNTHERT 2015, LANGLOIS 2015). Museums, which had to shut their doors, also use social media to maintain acquisition modes of works that function by way of a self-recognition in a production from the past. But before this hopefully short pandemic period, museums had recently already fueled this popular fascination of imagining oneself as a work, as is borne out by their greater acceptance of allowing visitors to take pictures in their rooms (CHAUMIER, KREBS & ROUSTAN 2013) and the education and marketing activities that primarily invite them to appropriate their collections (CIÉCO). In addition to this presentism-oriented interest (HARTOG 2003) of museums and the public for the work of art and more broadly for tangible heritage, there is also the interest of artists, who since the start of the new millennium have more insistently initiated performances in museums or in making them a subject of their performances, quite often by revisiting works of ancient art (BÉNICHOU 2015, BISHOP 2012, BOUCHER 2017). While these popular and artistic identification and remake practices seem to have been amplified since five or ten years, the public visibility they enjoy plays a role in this (HEINICH 2012). The recognition of cultural and gender diversity has also had an impact on the uses tied to works of the past, which moreover contributes to considering exclusion in a critical perspective. These uses can help to reveal specificities as well as the differences that mark groups and individuals. The biggest inclusivity that museums who are sensitive to social demands seek to achieve (BARRÈRE & MAIRESSE 2015) is thus also expressed through their way of inviting audiences and artists to ‘take possession’ of their works to make them their own.

However, these initiatives are not solely a product of our times and the bodily techniques they require have been put into practice without recourse to technology, in contexts and periods that are sometimes far removed from our own (BOUCHER 2017, BOUCHER & CONTOGOURIS 2019, BREDEKAMP 2010, RAMOS 2014, VOUILLOUX 2002). Already in a distant past, human beings have recognized themselves in works of art and examples of an identification with a tangible object go far back, at least to their appearance in mythological stories. Moreover, the first museum-based demonstrations of the genre can be traced back to the revolutionary context of opening the Palais du Louvre’s Museum and its other indoor and outdoor sites to the public. The colonial exhibition, popularized through world fairs, as well as displays derived from popular entertainment, which these initial planetary gatherings developed (BOUCHER & PARÉ 2015, MONTPETIT 1996), also contributed to the inversion of the living and the inanimate, thus leading to a self-reification and a reification of the other. If these manifestations can still be observed today, particularly in artistic, cultural and social expressions, the technological developments that facilitate them have multiplied the possibilities of these practices and their results in addition to increasing their visibility coefficient. Stagings that are digitally captured and shared, consequently revive the historical practices, which in turn makes it possible to step back from the current context.

What can one comprehend from these bodies from past and present who exhibit themselves with or in the place of the works? And from these images and the stories that testify to them? Can their poses be linked to a desire for identification and appropriation, for conservation, or on the contrary one for vivification and critique, or mere playfulness? In what regard do they oblige us to rethink the dialectic that unites the subject with the object and which unites social groups between each other as well as singularities? This colloquium aspires to find answers to these questions by focusing on exhibitionary apparatuses developed by the artists and museums as well as those that audiences have appropriated in various eras. Taking specific and exemplary cases as a starting point, the event will seek, for example, to envisage the contribution of the tableau vivant, mirror, diorama and the zoo, reenactment, performance and choreography, analog and digital recording, selfie, mobile apps or dissemination platforms about the practices, their development and agency. In short, this colloquium sets out to revisit certain foundations of the museum and of exhibitionary practice in order to include within it an ontological reflection on the conservation and representation of the person.

We invite researchers, museum professionals and artists to submit a proposal for a presentation, performance-presentation or performance which can be conveyed live or in a pre-recorded form, as part of the colloquium that has been designed for an online dissemination.

The proposals should include:
• A title (a maximum of 150 characters, including spaces)
• An abstract (between 100 to 150 words max.)
• A short bio (between 100 to 150 words max.)
Proposals are to be sent to Jessica Minier <minj11@uqo.ca> before September 25, 2020. Participants’ in person contributions as well as the reception in an auditorium room will be determined over the fall-winter 2020–2021, in respect of social distancing measures.

References

BARRÈRE & MAIRESSE 2015 – BARRÈRE, Anne, François Mairesse, Eds., L’inclusion sociale : les enjeux de la culture et de l’éducation, Paris, L’Harmattan, coll. “Les cahiers de la médiation culturelle”, 2015, 164 p.
BÉNICHOU 2015 – BÉNICHOU, Anne Eds., Recréer/Scripter: mémoires et transmissions des œuvres performatives et chorégraphiques contemporaines, Dijon, Les Presses du Réel, coll.: “Nouvelles scènes”, 2015, 525 p.
BENNETT 1995 – BENNETT, Tony, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, London and New York, Routledge, 1995, 278 p.
BISHOP 2012 – BISHOP, Claire, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London and New York, Verso, 2012, 382 p.
BOUCHER & PARÉ 2015 – BOUCHER, Mélanie, André-Louis Paré, Eds., thematic issue “Diorama”, Espace art actuel. Pratiques et perspectives, winter 2015, 128 p.
BOUCHER 2017 – BOUCHER, Mélanie, “Pour une histoire du corps muséifié”, Cultures et musées, dossier “Conserver et transmettre la performance artistique” (edited by Jean-Marc Leveratto), no. 29, 2007, p. 81–96.
BOUCHER & CONTOGOURIS 2019 – BOUCHER, Mélanie, Ersy Contogouris Eds., dossier “Stay Still : histoire, actualité et pratique du tableau vivant”, La revue de l’Association d’art des universités du Canada (RACAR), vol. 44, no. 2, 2019, 214 p.
BREDEKAMP 2010 – BREDEKAMP, Horst, Théorie de l’acte d’image, Paris, Éditions de la découverte, coll.: “Politique et société”, 2010 (2015), 376 p.
CHAUMIER, KREBS & ROUSTAN 2015 – CHAUMIER, Serge, Anne Krebs, et Mélanie Roustan Eds., Visiteurs photographes au musée, Paris, La Documentation française, coll.: “Musées-Mondes”, 2013, 317 p. CIÉCO – Research and inquiry group CIÉCO: Collections et impératif évènementiel/The Convulsive Collections, Museum Collections in the Context of the Event Imperative, accessed on June 15 2020, at http://cieco.umontreal.ca/
GUNTHERT 2015 – GUNTHERT, André, “La consécration du selfie”, Études photographiques, dossier “Interroger le genre / Retour sur l’amateur / Personnage de l’histoire”, no. 32, 2015, accessed at https://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques/3529?lang=en
HARTOG 2003 – HARTOG, François, Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps, Paris, Seuil, coll. “La Librairie du XXIe siècle”, 2003, 262 p.
HEINICH 2012 – HEINICH, Nathalie, De la visibilité : Excellence et singularité en régime médiatique, Paris, Gallimard, 2012, 593 p.
LANGLOIS 2015 – LANGLOIS, Éric, “La cybermuséologie et ses nouveaux objets culturels : mise en contexte et études de cas”, Muséologies, Les cahiers d’études supérieures, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, p. 73-93.
MONTPETIT 1996 – MONTPETIT, Raymond, “Une logique d’exposition populaire : les images de la muséographie analogique”, Publics et Musées, no. 9, 1996, p. 63–82.
RAMOS 2014 – RAMOS, Julie, avec la collaboration de Léonard Pouy Eds., Le tableau vivant ou l’image performée, Paris, Institut national d’histoire de l’art et Mare & Marin, 2014, 366 p.
VOUILLOUX 2002 – VOUILLOUX, Bernard, Le tableau vivant. Phryné, l’orateur et le peintre, Paris, Flammarion, coll.: “idées et recherches”, 2002, 477 p.

From UAAC/AAUC:

Universities Art Association of Canada / l’association d’art des universités du Canada
Online, 15–17 October 2020

Proposals due by 31 July 2020

Co-organized by Simon Fraser University, The University of British Columbia, and the UAAC Board of Directors

This year’s conference will be held online. While the organizers regret that they will not have the opportunity to welcome you in Vancouver, we hope you will join us for what promises to be a stimulating weekend of panels, roundtables, workshops and plenaries, including two live keynote addresses featuring artist Stan Douglas and art historian Charmaine Nelson.

HECAA Open Session (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)
Chair: Christina Smylitopoulos (University of Guelph), csmylito@uoguelph.ca

HECAA works to stimulate, foster, and disseminate knowledge of all aspects of visual culture in the long eighteenth century. This open session welcomes papers that examine any aspect of art and visual culture from the 1680s to the 1830s. Special consideration will be given to proposals that demonstrate innovation in theoretical and/or methodological approaches.

A full list of panels is available here»

From the Call for Papers:

Latin American Art, Visual and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century
Special Issue of Arts edited by Lauren Beck and Alena Robin

Abstracts due by 15 August 2020; completed manuscripts due by 1 February 2021

We invite articles dealing with Latin American art, visual and material culture of the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries. Any aspect of artistic expression, any theoretical or methodological approach, and any geographic region of Latin America will be welcome. Topics include, but are not limited to, workshop practices, art and propaganda, patronage, identity and gender, spirituality and art, mainstream and peripheral relationships, reception and transformation, collecting and exhibition practices, processes of looking and of attracting the gaze, historiographic considerations, and conservation and restoration. We are particularly interested in contributions that spotlight women, Indigenous people, and people of colour, although we will also consider articles that do not focus on these demographics.

We invite contributors to submit their research in English for consideration. Please note that there is a two-stage submission procedure. We will first collect a title and short abstract (maximum 250 words), 5 keywords, and a short bio (150 words), by August 15, 2020, via email to Dr. Lauren Beck (lbeck@mta.ca) and Dr. Alena Robin (arobin82@uwo.ca). Before August 30, we will invite selected abstracts to be submitted as 7,000–9,000 word papers for peer review by February 1, 2021. Journal publication is expected in mid- to late-2021, depending on the revision time needed after peer review. Each article will be published open access on a rolling basis after successfully passing peer review. More information is available here.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Lauren Beck — Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter, Professor of Hispanic Studies and Visual and Material Culture Studies, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick E4L 1C7, Canada. Interests: Early modern visual culture; settler-colonial studies; history of cartography; Empire

Dr. Alena Robin — Associate Professor, Department of Languages and Cultures, Western University, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada. Interests: Spanish American colonial art; New Spain; religious art; heritage protection; Latin American art in Canada

From the Materializing Race website:

Materializing Race: An Unconference on Objects and Identity in #VastEarlyAmerica
24–25 August 2020 (Zoom)

Organized by Cynthia Chin and Philippe Halbert

Proposals due by 1 August 2020

In a commitment to fostering nuanced interpretations of early American objects and meaningful dialogue on historical constructions of race and their legacies, we propose a virtual ‘unconference’ to share and discuss scholarship on the intersections of identity and material culture in #VastEarlyAmerica. This participant-driven, lightning round-style event will be held via Zoom, with two approximately two-hour afternoon sessions conducted in English. Energized by Dr. Karin Wulf’s call for broader, more inclusive histories of early America, we seek to promote a diverse cross-section of scholarship focused on North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean before 1830.

Macro Themes
• What were some of the threads or outcomes of the 1619 Project dialogue (and other relevant publications/discussions) that relate/interact/tessellate with material culture studies?
• Should the 1619 Project and its surrounding narratives affect material culture studies?
• Can the outcomes or discussions surrounding this dialogue engender new approaches/methodologies and discussions in material culture studies? How might it affect the way we as historians and curators interact with and publicly present objects? Does it present the ability to see “legacy” objects and historical figures/narratives differently as a result?
• How do we as historians approach or come to terms with our own family or ancestral narratives within the scope of the 1619 Project?
• What’s the next chapter in the discussion of race and early American material culture?

​Micro Themes
• Historians and material culture specialists as genealogists: how do our own personal family/ancestral narratives intersect with our study of early American history and material culture; the historian as biographer; the biographical object and the object biography
• Public history: new thoughts on old things, from the exhibition and display of objects in museum settings to historical and character interpretation
• New methodological approaches and revisions/additions to existing material culture frameworks. How can #VastEarlyAmerica work to expand the traditional American material culture canon?
• Object Case Studies: New interpretations of early American objects related to identity and race
• Jamestown and Plymouth/the Mayflower: new potential interpretations, Plymouth’s 400th anniversary
• Others?

This event is co-convened by Dr. Cynthia Chin (Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington) and Philippe Halbert (Yale History of Art).

For more information and submission details, please visit the Materializing Race website.