[spectre] (fwd) CFP: How we work together (Ottawa, 8-10 Oct 19)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Dr. phil. Franziska Koch
Date: Sep 7, 2019
Subject: CFP: How we work together (Ottawa, 8-10 Oct 19)

Korean Cultural Centre/Carleton University Ottawa, October 8 - 10, 2019
Deadline: Sep 15, 2019

Call for papers
“How we work together: ethics, histories and epistemologies of artistic 
collaboration”

November 8, 2019, panel chaired by Franziska Koch (Heidelberg 
University) in the framework of the 1st TrACE Academy “Worlding the 
Global: The Arts in an Age of Decolonization,” organized by the Centre 
for Transnational Analysis (CTCA) of Carleton University, Ottawa; panel 
venue: Korean Cultural Centre Canada, Ottawa.

This funded panel will critically engage with issues of collaboration 
within the larger framework of the 1st TrACE Academy (Transnational and 
Transcultural Arts and Cultural Exchange) “Worlding the Global: The Arts 
in an Age of Decolonization,” November 8-10, 2019, Carleton University, 
Ottawa. The international call invites researchers at every career 
stage, from early career to senior, to share new research on 
collaboration, which stresses transnational and/or transcultural 
perspectives and complicate existent (master) narratives of 
collaboration. Although the conference itself focuses on the age of 
decolonization, the panel is open to include earlier case studies as well.

Collaboration is fundamental to and characteristic of many artistic 
endeavors not only in our contemporary, technologically wired and 
heavily mediated times, but has also marked artistic practices 
throughout the ages and in many places of the world. Indeed, we might 
argue that artworks – shaped as objects, performances, or concepts alike 
– more often than not come into being by engaging many hands and 
relating more than one (master) mind. Still, the modern European 
romantic notion of the singular (white, male) genius who “fathers” and 
authoritatively signs a masterpiece continues to inform art historical 
narratives, serves as a strong identitarian figure in the art market and 
haunts curatorial practices. However, post-colonial, feminist, queer, 
Indigenous and network theoretical discourses have successfully 
questioned this convention in the last decades, while artists have taken 
collaboration more seriously than ever.

This becomes particularly evident in the field of socially engaged art 
practices as demonstrated in catalogues such as “Get together” 
(Kunsthalle Wien 1999), “Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art” 
(Tate Modern, London 2003), “Kollektive Kreativität” (Kunsthalle 
Friedericianum Kassel 2005), “Living as form” (Thompson, 2012) or the 
“Coop” exhibition at Bangkok Biennale 2017. Yet, the cultural 
implications of this seemingly global “participatory” (Kravagna 1998) or 
“collaborative turn” (Lind 2007 and 2009) have only recently come under 
scrutiny. Critically building on a debate that discussed activist versus 
antagonist strategies as characteristic for the turn (Bourriaud 2002 and 
2006, Bishop 2004 and 2012, see summary by Miller 2016). Grant Kester’s 
“The one and the many” (2011) deliberately introduced case studies from 
the “global South” to the debate in order to un-pack and undermine the 
prevailing theoretical approaches and regional specific genealogies. 
Significantly, he questioned the deconstructivist paradigm, which 
pervades the debate and ignores the cultural as well as historical 
specificity of an originally French strand of aesthetic discourse that 
has increasingly been taken as universal.

The panel aims to bridge earlier inquiries into cultural and historical 
differences and entanglements with more recent transcultural and 
transnational perspectives (e.a. Juneja 2018 and 2017, Tomii 2016, 
D’Souza 2014, Kravagna 2013) when discussing artistic collaboration in 
an age of decolonization and globalization. As part of the TrACE Academy 
“Worlding the Global” which seeks to relate long separated discourses of 
settler-colonial, Indigenous, migrant, diasporic, and other 
transnational and transcultural histories and ways of knowing in art, 
the panel aim is to understand how these perspectives enact and 
(co-)constitute the global when “we work together.” The panelists are 
asked to move towards understanding decolonization as a multi-sited and 
collaborative engagement with histories, epistemologies, power, 
migration, capital, and culture. Given the International Indigenous Art 
Exhibition "Àbadakone / Continuous Fire / Feu Continuel" at the National 
Gallery of Canada as a starting point, the four speakers should engage 
at least with one of the following questions:

- How to write and present art history in ways that critically 
acknowledge and distinguish collaborative authorship (auctorialités) and 
local as well as global cultural entanglements?
- How do collaborative artists/works address issues of situatedness in 
spatial as well as temporal regards? In other words: how do 
collaborative strategies contribute to “worlding the global” beyond 
dominant binary narratives?
- Does artistic collaboration serve particular functions in the process 
of decolonization? What roles do collaborative practices play in the 
expression of Indigenous voices?
- What are the conditions and limits of artistic collaboration?
- How are ethics, epistemologies and histories of collaboration 
(in-)formed by cultural contexts? What role does transculturality play 
in artistic collaboration?

The funding of most of the travel and accommodation costs is secured by 
the organizer thanks to a grant from the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung. To 
receive the grant, selected applicants need to provide a short 
presentation of 15 min. length based on a longer manuscript, which will 
be circulated among the speakers one week before the panel. They have to 
commit to submitting the revised full paper (ca. 5.000- max. 8.000 
words) before the end of February 2020. Together with other written 
contributions selected by means of this call, the panel organizer will 
publish a theme issue in the peer reviewed and open access journal 
"Transcultural Studies" (Heidelberg University).

Applicants should send an abstract of max. 500 words and a short CV to 
Franziska Koch (koch at hcts.uni-heidelberg.de) until 15 September 2019. 
The selected applicants will be informed until 20 September 2019.

Dr. phil. Franziska Koch
Assistant Professor of Global Art History
Heidelberg Centrum for Transcultural Studies
Voßstr. 2, Building 4400, R. 105
D-69115 Heidelberg, Germany
E-Mail: koch at hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

——

References

Bishop, Claire (2004), “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” in: 
October, vol. 110, The MIT Press, New York, pp. 51-79.
Bishop, Claire (2012), “Participation and Spectacle: Where are we now” 
in: Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art From 1991-2011, The MIT Press, 
New York, pp.34-45.
Block, René and Angelika Nollert, eds. (2005), Kollektive Kreativität. 
Collective Creativity, (exh. cat.), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Revolver.
Bourriaud, Nicolas (2002), Relational Aesthetic, Les Presses du Réel, 
France, pp.11-24.
Bourriaud, Nicolas (2006), “Relational Aesthetic//1998”, in: Documents 
of Contemporary Art: Participation, The MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 160-171.
d’Souza, A. (2014), “Introduction”, in: Art History in the Wake of the 
Global Turn, ed. by J. H. Casid and A. d’Souza, Sterling and Francine 
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, pp. vii–xxiii.
Green, Charles (2001), The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from 
Conceptualism to Postmodernism, New South Publishing.
Juneja, Monica (2018), “‘A very civil idea…’: Art History, 
Transculturation and World-Making – with and beyond the Nation”, in: 
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 81, issue 4, pp. 461–485.
Juneja and Kravagna in Conversation (2013), “Understanding 
Transculturalism”, Transcultural Modernism, ed. by Christian Kravagna et 
al., Sternberg Press, Berlin, pp. 23-33.
Kester, Grant (2011), The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative 
Art in a Global Context, Duke University Press, Durham and London.
Kravagna, Christian (1998), Models of Participatory Practice, 
http://republicart.net/disc/aap/kravagna01_en.htm.
Lind, Maria (2007), “The Collaborative Turn”, in: Taking the Matter lnto 
Common Hands: On Contemporary Art and Collaborative Practices, ed. by 
Johanna Billing and Lars Nilssonszerk, Black Dog Publishing, London, pp. 
15-31.
Lind, Maria (2009), “Complications: On Collaboration, Agency and 
Contemporary Art”, in: New Communities, ed. by Nina Möntmann, The Power 
Plant and Public Books, Toronto, pp. 52-73.
Miller, Jason (2016), “Activism vs. Antagonism: Socially Engaged Art 
from Bourriaud to Bishop and Beyond”, in: FIELD, A Journal of Socially 
Engaged Art Criticism, issue 3, winter, pp. 165-183.
O’ Neill, Paul (2010), “Beyond Group Practice”, in: Manifesta 
Journal—Collective Curating 8, Amsterdam, pp. 37-45.
Reiko, Tomii (2013) “Introduction: Collectivism in Twentieth-Century 
Japanese Art with a Focus on Operational Aspects of Dantai”, in: 
Positions Asia Critique, Vol. 21, Issue 2, Spring, Duke University 
Press, pp. 225-267.
Roberts, John and Wright Stephen, eds. (2004), “Art and Collaboration”, 
Third Text, Vol. 18, Issue 6, London.
Thomson, Nato (2012), “Living as Form”, in: Living as Form: Socially 
Engaged Art From 1991-2011, The MIT Press, New York, pp. 16-33.

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: How we work together (Ottawa, 8-10 Oct 19). In: ArtHist.net, Sep 7, 
2019. <https://arthist.net/archive/21496>.

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