Keynote/Workshop (10-12, March 2022): Towards a Multi-Temporal Pluriverse of Art

Virtual workshop organized by Birgit Hopfener (Carleton University) and Karin Zitzewitz (Michigan State University) at Carleton University, Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Arts, and Culture, Thursday, March 10-12, 2022, and supported by the Ruth and Mark Phillips Professorship in Cultural Mediations (ICSLAC, Carleton University).

Current global ecological, political and social crises, this workshop argues, have once again underscored the urgency of unlearning universalized modern Western frameworks in order to uncover the world’s cosmological, epistemological and ontological heterogeneity. Co-constituted with the modern Western frameworks that have conceptualized the world in line with colonial and imperial Eurocentric power structures, art history has primarily reinforced social, political and epistemological inequalities and hierarchies.

This session approaches the broader decolonial project through the category of temporality. Despite post-structuralist critiques of historicism, art and art history continue to be dominantly governed by modern Western linear models of time, underpinned by notions of modernization, rupture, avant-garde, revolution, causality, progress and the denial of co-evalness of what is conventionally called “non-Western art.” This session embraces the decolonial concept of the pluriverse in order to explore the potential of art and art historical scholarship to un/recover the multiplicity of temporal and historiographic frameworks.

The workshop seeks contributions that decolonize universalized historiographic frameworks and temporal concepts of art and art history through combinations of Western critique and epistemological research into art’s multiple relations to time and traditions of (hi)story writing/telling. We invite papers that critically engage with alternative temporal frameworks of art, different ways of relating the past to the present and the future or contributions that analyze art historiographies, object biographies, historiographic art or historiographic exhibitions as articulations and evidence of engagements with multiple and/or entangled historiographic traditions and models, and their related concepts and functions of art.

While the workshop organizers focus on modern and contemporary art, we welcome papers grounded in diverse art historical periods and forms of research, including museum and curatorial studies and the anthropology and philosophy of art.

The workshop will take place as an online event at Carleton University, Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture on March 10, 2022.

More information

Latest from Blog

“Technological Pluralism” in WIRED (vol. 50, Sep. 2023) (JP)

『WIRED』US版の創刊から30周年という節目のタイミングとなる今号では、「30年後の未来」の様相を空想する。ちなみに、30年後は2050年代──つまりはミッドセンチュリーとなる。“前回”のミッドセンチュリーはパックスアメリカーナ(米国の覇権による平和)を背景に欧米的な価値観や未来像が前景化した時代だったとすれば、“次”のミッドセンチュリーに人類は、多様な文化や社会や技術、さらにはロボットやAIエージェントを含むマルチスピーシーズが織りなす多元的な未来へとたどり着くことができるだろうか? 空想の泰斗・SF作家たちとともに「Next Mid-Century」を総力特集する。 テッド・チャン、劉 慈欣、池澤春菜、マリアーナ・エンリケス、倉田タカシ、N・K・ジェミシン、高山羽根子、ウォレ・タラビ、藤井太洋、ユク・ホイ、齋藤精一、ベッキー・チェンバーズ、長谷川 愛、三宅陽一郎、山田胡瓜、ププル・ビシュト、川崎和也、津久井五月、逢坂冬馬、安堂ホセ、池上英子、市川沙央、市川春子、伊藤亜和、稲見昌彦、円城 塔、岡 瑞起、川和田恵真、斉藤賢爾、齋藤帆奈、Jen.two、Jini、柴田勝家、アンソニー・ダン、陳 楸帆、エレナ・トゥタッチコワ、野﨑まど、伴名 練、比嘉夏子、Peterparker69、ジョアンナ・ファン、フラン・ラブシャーニュ、松田桂一、宮内悠介、村上由鶴、和田夏実、吉上 亮、水野祐、なみちえ、川田十夢など。 More info Full Text