[spectre] Fwd: CFP: Identity Crisis Network: International Conference (Zagreb, 23-24 May 25)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Luja Šimunović
Date: Jan 21, 2025
Subject: CFP: Identity Crisis Network: International Conference (Zagreb, 
23-24 May 25)

Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia, May 23–24, 2025
Deadline: Feb 28, 2025

The first international conference under the research project Identity 
Crisis Network invites scholars, curators, artists, and other 
individuals and collectives to join in a conversation that seeks to 
challenge established notions of identity and subjectivity in 
contemporary art and culture.

Organizers: Identity Crisis Network (Luka Cvetković, Klara Petrović, 
Michalina Sablik, Luja Šimunović and Vera Zalutskaya)

Location: Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia
Dates: 23th & 24th of May 2025

In the past few decades, the concept of identity has been marked as a 
fixed political determination. Given the term’s inherent fluidity, 
diversity, multiplicity, and ambiguity, attempts to narrowly define it 
have proven restrictive, stretching its boundaries and, ultimately, 
causing them to burst. Practices aimed at making marginalized groups 
visible in the art world have often led to compartmentalization or 
tokenization, deepening polarization and provoking culture wars within, 
as well as outside, art institutions. This position opens a space for 
questioning the very foundations of contemporary art practices and their 
potential to generate transformative experiences beyond normative and 
constraining limits. The Identity Crisis Network Conference seeks to 
explore whether it is possible to move beyond established categories of 
identity and simplified labels, both in cultural and political 
discourse. We aim to engage with these issues not through a one-sided 
critique but by examining the potential to generate change within the 
realm of art. Through this conference, we reflect on the philosophical, 
institutional, aesthetic, and political landscape we inhabit as artists, 
curators, and theorists – intending to envision new spaces where 
potential and contingent outcomes can emerge.

We welcome submissions engaging with questions related, but not limited, to:

How might we define identity? How can it be understood from various 
artistic, philosophical, or political perspectives?

What is identity politics today? How does it affect art institutions, 
and how can we build new institutions that are democratic and diverse?

How can we identify power dynamics within the art field, and what 
dominant discourses shape its relationships? How might these frameworks 
be transgressed, expanded, or dissolved?

In what ways can art engage with these issues? What is the future of 
politically and socially engaged art?

How can we move beyond biased categories when naming certain groups and 
identities in the art field, to avoid tokenization?

How might art, fiction, and speculation help us imagine new modes of 
being? How do the internet and emerging technologies play into these 
questions?

Keynote speakers: Jack Halberstam (Columbia University), Anna Longo 
(Paris 1–Panthéon-Sorbonne), Svitlana Matviyenko (Simon Fraser 
University), Simon O'Sullivan (Goldsmiths, University of London)

In order to apply, please fill out the Google form 
(https://forms.gle/p2H4fEfmFSGxeC2R8) by the 28th of February 2025. 
Along with research papers and presentation proposals alternative modes 
of participating in the conference are welcome – such as video essays, 
performative talks, and other formats up to 30 minutes.  Per proposal we 
provide: A fee of 250,00 EUR (gross); Accommodation in Zagreb; 
Participation in the travel costs.

You will receive information about the acceptance of your proposal for 
the conference by 14th of March 2025.

If you have any questions contact us at hello at identitycrisisnetwork.com

This project is realized with the support of the Adam Mickiewicz 
Institute as part of the international cultural program of the Polish 
Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2025.


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Identity Crisis Network: International Conference (Zagreb, 23-24 
May 25). In: ArtHist.net, Jan 21, 2025. <https://arthist.net/archive/43754>.