Conference: Ordinary/Everyday/Quotidian, 26-7 September, York

Organisers for the two-day, interdisciplinary conference   "Ordinary/Everyday/Quotidian" at the University of York are currently calling for abstracts. The conference seeks to bring the quotidian onto the stage of academic debate and, by doing so, asks that we focus the rigors of critique upon the usually unnoticed or undetectable. Participants are encouraged

"to ponder, celebrate, and critique the quotidian, ranging from the furtive pleasures of pop to the dubious delights of junk: “Does it glow at the core with personal heat, with signs of one’s deepest nature, clues to secret yearnings, humiliating flaws? What habits, fetishes, addictions, inclinations? What solitary acts, behavioral ruts?”

The event has three confirmed keynotes - John Roberts (History of Art), Jennifer Baird (Classics and Archaeology) and Bryony Randall (English) - and will finish with a colloquium peopled by a further five academics from various humanities-based areas of study. With a keen interdisciplinary slant and compelling subject matter, the conference promises to provide a platform for some fascinating inquiry and dialogue.

Abstracts are due by 16 August and are welcome from any and/or multiple discipline(s). More information can be found on the website.

Conference & Exhibition: On Walking, 28-29 June 2013, Sunderland

At the end of June of this year, the University of Sunderland's Walking, Art, Landskip and Knowledge (W.A.L.K.) research group and the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (Sunderland) feature the multidisciplinary conference "On Walking". Following the momentum of a surge of academic and artistic interest in walking as a practice within the last decade, the two-day conference "seeks to examine and interrogate the practice and process of walking in all its cultural, ethnographic, poetic, and geographical ramifications." Timothy Ingold will bring his work on walking, ecology and perception to the floor as featured kenote at the conference, and a joint exhibition will take place at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, entitled "Walk On: From Richard Long to Janet Cardiff, 40 Years of Art Walking". The call for papers is unfortunately closed for this conference; registration details for all attendees will be posted to the conference blog shortly.

 

The exhibition, which presents works that "start with an artist taking a journey on foot, staking out new artistic territory – whether using the street as their studio, or the landscape as a place to inhabit and change through their presence, rather than merely represent at a distance", opens in June, coinciding with the Festival of the North East. It displays the works of artists such as Marina Abramovic, Chris Drury, James Hugonin, Ingrid Pollard and others, and will also feature curator and artists talks/walks throughout the exhibition period.

Book: Jean-Paul Martinon, The End of Man

Jean-Paul Martinon teams up with Punctum Books for this eloquent and  personal (or "bio-graphical", as suggested by the author) offering, The End of Man, just published this month. Discursively probing at the black box of "masculinity", Martinon reinscribes the term with corporeal possibilities, refusing to wear the divides of man-woman, male-female, masculine-feminine, virile-effeminate.

 

With nods to Levinas, Derrida, Nancy, and a plenitude of current queer materialist scholars, Martinon weaves between discussions such as those of the mandates of language, the male body's eschatological existence, and contingent relations between gendered bodies. And all the while he choreographs an elegant dance over, between and around the threads of masculine failure.

"But hush, this male body is slowly stirring, turning over, progressively regaining consciousness ... the need for mastery steadily clenching ‘its’ grip. This slow turn reveals his many sides, angular, hairy, robust, smelly, warm, delicate, graceful. An abyss in every crevice, a mass at every turn, this male body can reach neither a plenitude of meaning nor a truly stable referent. His language, like his body, betrays him at every turn: never quite masculine, ever more virile/effeminate, never enough feminine."

The End of Man is available from Punctum Books as an open-access ebook downloadable for free or in print for a small fee. We are also fortunate to have Jean-Paul Martinon's response to Catherine Malabou at our recent BiM event archived on our site (available for streaming on the player to the right or from our recordings page).

 

Lecture: Anna Gibbs, "Gestural Dispositions: On the Intermedial Migrations of Writing", Edinburgh, 26 October 2012; & Exhibition: "Art & Music - Search for New Synesthesia, Tokyo, 27 October 2012 - 3 February 2013

Those based in Edinburgh have the opportunity to attend a public lecture by Anna Gibbs, "Gestural Dispostion: On the Intermedial Migrations of Writing" next Friday (26 October), at the University of Edinburgh. Exploring the interstices of writing and gesture, Gibbs' presentation promises an incisive exploration of experimentation and corporeal imbrication in the practices of reading and writing.

 

The event is free and officially opens the Extending Gesture Colloquium (which Ky blogged here), a fascinating and intimate weekend event addressing concepts of the gestural in a number of different artistic and cultural fields. Registration to the public lecture is not necessary. More information on the event and the colloquium can be found at their website.

"Printed text suppresses the relation between writing and gesture, but what happens when text becomes a moving architecture into which we can enter, and when - becoming animated - it begins to exhibit strange behaviours?"



Otomo Yoshihide + Yasutomo Aoyama, "without records," 2012. Exhibition view from "x sound : On and After John Cage and Nam June Paik", Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeonggi-do, Korea.

For any readers of the BiM blog currently based in Tokyo (or planning to travel there within the next five months), The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is soon to be opening the third exhibition in their "Tokyo Art Meeting" series. Art & Music - Search for New Synesthesia (27 October 2012 - 3 February 2013) introduces internationally-established musician Ryuichi Sakamoto as general advisor to a project which sees to explore, sample and inhabit the complex relations between "music", form, texture and the visual. It features work by sonic artists such as John Cage, Tōru Takemitsu, Ryoji Ikeda, Otomo Yoshihide and  Florian Hecker.

 

The exhibition kicks off with a concert by Carsten Nicolai and is run in conjunction with the "Tokyo Sonic Art Award" open competition for young sonic artists.

"According to Sakamoto, our humanocentric modern society has developed a system of control over the social environment, information and nature. This microcosmic inclination is gradually being destroyed through globalization and the energy crisis. Against this sociopolitical background, Sakamoto uses sound and the visual to reconsider our relationship with nature in a broad sense, attempting to recall a macrocosmic way of thinking."

 

Colloquium: Extending Gesture, Edinburgh, 26-28 October 2012

After a busy early July and sadly prolonged absence, Ky is back again to flag a fascinating colloquium to take place in Edinburgh on 26-28 October of this year. Extending Gesture, organised by Tami Gadir and Fiona Hanley, who some of you may recognise from the BiM Conference two years ago, addresses the much overlooked and undervalued notion of the gestural in its many expressions, contexts and phenomenologies.

The organisers are currently calling for proposals of any length, form and discipline on the embodied nature of gesture. Arranged with a view towards academic intimacy and discussion, attendance will be limited to twelve, including keynote guests Dr Nancy Ann Roth (senior lecturer at University College Falmouth and key translator of the writings of Vilém Flusser into English) and Rolf Inge Godøy (professor in Musicology Studies at the University of Olso). Each presenter wil be given a full hour to present and discuss their work in whatever manner and distribution of time they deem is appropriate to the content.

Enquiries and proposals should be submitted to the organisers at edinburghextending@gmail.com by 10 August; further information and a contact form can also be found at their website.

"...What provokes the pulsating body to dance? Or the scribbling hand to scratch? What are the urges and itches that manifest the various gestures of our being? What is the character of their inception and how do we conceptualise them? What too, is this strangeness that shadows our gestures? What is its unique character in relation to each particular gesture? How can we capture and de–scribe such strange movements? What can the pauses in–between the gesture tell us about its nature? What role does anticipation play in gesture?"