Aesthetics, Politics and Histories: The Social Context of Art AAANZ Conference 2018
December 5-8, 2018, School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Call for papers for the panel – How humans think (chirped the sparrow): Art-jamming the anthropological machine
Session convenor(s): Fernando do Campo (University of New South Wales) Submit paper proposals to: f.docampo@unsw.edu.au
The ‘question of the animal’ remains central to all political, aesthetic and social dimensions of human history; exemplified in the ways that we assume human-centric bias as a species. Continental philosophy defined ‘the animal’ in ways that perpetuate this ignorance, while numerous thinkers have since proposed the need to counter this. The emergence of the posthumanities and its many iterations and subheadings, offers a theoretical in-road into ways of (borrowing from Matthew Calarco) ‘jamming Agamben’s anthropological machine’. Calarco proposes that identifying humans’ perpetual anthropocentrism is not enough, we must locate new methods of resistance. Contemporary art and its many discourses epitomize our anthropocentrism, while offering ways of finally countering it. Various forms of anthropomorphism; the re-narration of non-human species histories through ficto-criticism; the re-authoring of zoological archives via the curatorial turn; new material hierarchies/isms; pausing to listen to the conversation that emerges ‘when species meet’ – art-jamming the anthropological machine. This panel seeks papers that consider the complicated and nuanced ways that we have historically engaged and/or taken for granted the presence of non-human animals in contemporary art. Can the human animal work with the non-human animal, to be simultaneously subject and author of its own history of representation?
General call for Papers: http://aaanz.info/wp-
