CAA 106th Annual Conference
Los Angeles, February 21-24 2018.

Art and Criticism in the Anthropocene

Chair(s): Giovanni Aloi, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, galoi@saic.edu
Caroline Picard, The Green Lantern Press, caroline@sector2337.com

Art criticism is currently at the forefront of a global revolution — the demise of art history as the central epistemological optic on art, combined with the critical fragmentation brought by visual culture, has enabled speculative realism to reshape art criticism as a new, politically charged tool. At present, posthumanist subjectivities appear indissolubly intertwined with capitalist forces and biosystems that are perceived from non-anthropocentric perspectives. Therefore, the reconfiguration of methodologies, approaches, and optics demanded by this new ontological turn situates art criticism as a productive, multidisciplinary forum by which to address challenges posed by the Anthropocene. This panel seeks to gather a number of original submissions from scholars and artists whose professional engagement revolves around the sociopolitical dimensions defining art in the current stage of the Anthropocene. This pivotal concept is leading artists, as well as art historians and art critics, to reconsider the roles played by capitalism and ecosystems in the reconfiguration of non-anthropocentric positions. More specifically, this panel will gather global perspectives on art criticism’s new political implications, showing how experimentation and multidisciplinarity map out new aesthetic territories; how new anthropogenic perspectives can help reconfigure concepts in art as a non-anthropocentric means to explore human/non-human relations; examining the effort and trajectory of criticism as an interface that can flex beyond its traditionally linguistic focus, thereby surpassing the acknowledged strategies of Western aesthetics; and exposing the ethical implications of cultural production by unpacking networks of material and socio-economic accountability as the imperative dimension which art criticism must attend.

More info and application guidelines:

http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/call-for-participation.pdf

All Bests

Giovanni
Dr. Giovanni Aloi
Editor in Chief of Antennae Project
Lecturer in Visual Culture:
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Sotheby’s Institute of Art
Tate Galleries
www.antennae.org.uk