K.U.Leuven - Arts Faculty
Erasmushuis
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21/03
B - 3000 Leuven
Events > Conferences
FORTHCOMING
19-20 November 2010
MINOR PHOTOGRAPHY: THE CASE OF (POST)SURREALIST PHOTOGRAPHY
Location: Leuven
The Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography organizes an international conference the aim of which is twofold:
Firstly to open the debate on the use value of the notion of minor‐photography for photo theory. Minor photography is understood as a type of photography that, similar to the ‘minor literatures’ theorized by Deleuze and Guattari, develops new visions of the medium due to a specific use of its own peripheral position, both geographically and institutionally, and to its creative distance from the ‘centre’.
Secondly, to apply this notion to a largely overlooked corpus of (post)surrealist photography both in Belgium and in other ‘peripheral’ locations in its dynamic relation to the ‘dominant’ language of the centre (or centres: Paris, London, New York).
Hence, the conference will be divided into two parts, although overlapping papers are also welcomed.
French Theory: reception in the visual arts in the United States between 1965 and 1995
Location: Brussels
There are many American artists, active in the second half of the twentieth century, whose practice and theory have been infuenced by philosophy, literary studies and social sciences. In this regard, several French scholars have benefited from early sustained interest. Among these are major figures such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida or Gilles Deleuze. Many thinkers whose writings have come to constitute the corpus of the so-called French Theory. The influence of this French thought in the American universities, from the mid-1970s on, notably contributing to the emergence of the Cultural studies, has been the subject of several studies, including the important and recent work by Francois Cusset. However, the reception of such a thinking in the specific field of the visual arts has not yet been the subject of systematic research, with the exception of a few and relatively dispersed studies. Among the laters are some essays by Sylvère Lotringer considering artistic practice posterior to the mid-1970s, and by Sande Cohen. Still, it turns out that some artists could gradually have access to various pieces of this corpus as soon as the second half of the 1960s, thanks to first translations, conferences, travels or the presence of one or the other author itself on the territory. Thus, this symposium intends to study the reception of this French thought in the field of the visual arts from 1965 until 1995.
The artist as theoretician: reciprocity between theory and artistic practice between 1965 and 1985
Location: Louvain-la-Neuve
During the second half of the sixties, a peculiar figure appeared in the US and Europe afterwards, a figure that is still challenging the dynamics of the artistic « scene » : the artist-theoretician. In the wake of the conceptual claim for a reinstatement of the use of language in the artistic field, the critical and theoretical activity of numerous artists constitute a topic still largely ignored. Although being heirs to the artists of the Soviet avant-garde, who broadened their own intellectual prerogatives, the artists-theoreticians in the sixties until the heighties have yet a specific role. While the status of the former is based on a progressive and positivist paradigm – considering art theory as a science that needs to be enhanced and teached –, the status of the latter seems to correspond to many issues – of which this one-day symposium would like to render an account.
This one-day symposium does not intend to define the problem entirely, but to highlight specific itineraries. By examining how and why the most significant artists-theoreticians maintained the « liaisons dangereuses » (Rosenberg) between ideas and artistic practice, one would like to throw light on the very foundation of the complex status of the contemporary artist.
The Hopelessness of Contemporary Art: The Case of Renzo Martens’ Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008)
Location: The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB)
This symposium questions what hope can be offered by contemporary art in relation to political change when it concerns dire situations that appear as otherwise hopeless. It takes as its case study the 2008 film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty by Renzo Martens, 2010 recipient of the prestigious Culture Prize of the Flemish Community. An interdisciplinary gathering of distinguished speakers will examine the film’s investigation of the imaging of Congolese poverty, considering how it pressures the contradictions of humanitarianism, photojournalism, and concerned contemporary art. If the film poses the vexing question 'who owns images of poverty?', we will examine the ethics and economics surrounding representations of post-colonial suffering. The symposium will analyze the aesthetic and political implications of this provocative film, asking as well whether the claims for art’s political effectiveness have become all too complacent in recent curatorial, art-critical, and political writing. If so, can the critical exposure of art’s hopelessness, or at least its ambiguity regarding politics, represent a source of hope, distinct from despair?
Location: Hogeschool Sint Lukas, Brussels, Belgium
Within the framework of the artistic research project "(in)site, site-specific photography revised, applied to the archaeological site Sagalassos" an international conference is organised, aiming to explore the relationship between photography and history. How do photographers visualize heritage or, broader, history? What is the importance of place, particularly the place that remains after events took place. A related topic, central in the theory of photography and photography itself, is time. This conference also focuses on how photographers depict the past, when time has become 'past time'. The theme Imaging History, photography after the fact offers an opportunity to explore, both on a theoretic and artistic level, how history can be captured.
The aim of the conference is to particularly reconsider the functions of photographic images in artists' books. Thereof, it wishes to tackle the challenges that have emerged in recent theoretical debates on medium specificity and genre definition. Whereas traditionally the term of 'documentation' is linked first and foremost to photography and that of 'fiction' to the arts, artists' books using photography challenge this division in several respects (representational, functional, contextual). Common strategies in artists' books are, for instance, to base fictional narratives on documentary photographs taken out of their contexts (Broodthaers, Boltanski), to use photographs in artists books in order to document an event, to trace an activity or to visualize an artistic concept (Rusha, LeGac, Huebler),and to compose typological series of the everyday (Feldmann, LeWitt). All these examples have in common an equivoque, ambivalent use of photographs. On a structural level, the interstices between the images and the act of turning the page are often used to leave in suspense the photographic image between reproduction of the real and the imaginary fiction. This ambivalence is even reinforced if one takes into account the fact that artists' books, rather than constituting an autonomic genre, often are realized within a wider artistic project, enclosing e.g. installations, expositions, performances (Boltanski, Goldin, Richter, Rist). Over and above the reevaluation of functional, representational, aesthetic and contextual aspects concerning photography in artists' books, the conference suggests new views on the definition of the artists' book in exceeding the limits of the genre. The following questions might be raised:
If the function and the reception of photography changes according to the contexts of the realization and the presentation of the book, what are the consequences for the definition of the artists' book as genre?
How might one describe the use and the function of photographs in artists' books in comparison with other 'genres', e. g. the illustrated book, the photo novel, the photographic book?
Finally, the outlined items raise some fundamental questions concerning the concept of medium specificity, challenging the wide-spread oppositions of 'illustration - fine art', 'documentary - fictional', 'hybrid - specific', 'transparent - opaque', 'autonomous - context-bound'.
Included in the program of the Biennial of Photography Ottignies/Louvain-la-Neuve, the conference will be accompanied by an exhibition on photographic artists' books at the Museum of Louvain-la-Neuve.
21-22 November 2008
Aesthetics After Photography
Topic: 'Photography as a Medium (post-digitalisation)'
Venue: Stewart House, Russell Square, London
Times: Friday 12.30 to Saturday 18.30
Organisers: Diarmuid Costello & Dawn Phillips (University of Warwick)
The widespread use of digital technologies in recent years, and their capacity for seamless integration with the traditional photographic processes, has reawakened interest in the nature of photography as an art. This 2 day workshop explores the questions that digital media raise for photography from a philosophical perspective in the light of recent technologies:
What, if anything, does digitalisation tell us about the nature of photography as an art form? Is digitalisation internal to photography or an external adjunct? Is it a distinct medium or some hybrid intermediary form of traditional optics and digital processes?
What are the implications for pre-digital conceptions of what distinguishes photography? If every aspect of the final image can be controlled by the photographer, is there a difference in kind between photography and other depictive arts, notably painting?
If digitalisation undermines basic assumptions about the evidential nature of photography once taken for granted, how does this impact on the ontology of the photography image, and the epistemic value of photography in general?
With Maarten Vanvolsem as Guest Speaker: 'Photography Beyond the Still Image'
Facultat de Ciències Jurídiques. Rovira i Virgili University (URV)
Avinguda Catalunya, 35. Tarragona Organised by: Catalan Ministry of Culture and the Media in
collaboration with Rovira i Virgili University
With Hilde Van Gelder as Guest Speaker: 'A Place for Photography in Academia'
Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians: London 2008
Academic Session: Photography after Conceptual Art
with lectures of:
Hilde Van Gelder "The Shape of the Pictorial in Contemporary Photography" Alexander Streitberger "Victor Burgin, Thomas Demand and the Logical Structure of Photography"
...
Conference: The Unwanted Self: Contemporary Photography from the Low Countries
Coinciding with the opening of 'The Unwanted Self: Contemporary Photography from the Low Countries' exhibition, this conference explores the relationship between photography and cultural identities and whether there is a particular aesthetic that defines 'Dutch' or 'Belgian' photography. Accessible to a wide and varied audience, this conference provides a unique opportunity to meet and hear from some of the Low Countries leading photographic artists, historians and critics.
'Photography between Poetry and Politics. The Critical Position of the Photographic Medium in Contemporary Art'
Hilde Van Gelder and Helen Westgeest are Session Convenors at the Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians in Belfast (University of Ulster)
November 10th 2006
The Human Body. Religion and the Visual Arts
International conference curated by Prof. Barbara Baert and organized by the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre (project-coordinator Mieke Bleyen)
The symposium focuses on the field of tension between contemporary art and religion
Symposium Images of the Ancients / Images of the Moderns: similarities or differences? L’image des Anciens et l’image des Modernes: Permanence des problématiques?
organsed by the LGC, le Centre de Recherche sur l'Imaginaire (UCL) en le Groupe de Recherche sur l'Image et le Texte (UCL).
The proceedings of this conference are published as an edition of the online magazine Image [&] Narrative:
15. Battles around Images: Iconoclasm and Beyond -
Guest edited by Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé
May 12th 2006
Belgian Art Reconsidered
in the framework of the exhibitionproject "Bruegel Revisited"
Organizer: Prof. Hilde Van Gelder
Location: Castle of Bouchout in the National Botanic Garden of Belgium, Meise
