Exhibition: A Journal of the Plague Year. Fear, ghosts, rebels. SARS, Leslie and the Hong Kong story, 16 May - 20 July 2013, Hong Kong

Lam Qua, Portrait no 48.Yang Kang, 1830-1850. Oil painting. Courtesy Yale University, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library.

Independent art space in Hong Kong, Para Site, explore the changing stories of a city in a new exhibition A Journal of the Plague Year. Fear, ghosts, rebels. SARS, Leslie and the Hong Kong story over the may to July period.

Showcasing an impressive list of internationally established talents and local artists, the exhibition threads its way through the "disparate though interconnected" visions and revisions of Hong Kong (places, spaces and people) in the wake of epidemic, economic and political instability and waves of human migration which occurred as a result of the SARS outbreak of 2003. Pathogenesis, politics and xenophobia meet the funereal and civic solidarity in strange combinations in this often overlooked tale of the last decade of Hong Kong.

"When the city became the epicenter of the most significant airborne epidemic in recent years - the SARS crisis of 2003 - the unparalleled shutdown of the city and the atomisation of society in quarantined segments lead to an unexpected shift in the political awareness of the Hong Kong citizenry. ... After that moment, the image of a de-politicised and soullessly pragmatic commercial hub could not anymore tell the whole story about Hong Kong."

As the contributors come from an array of professional backgrounds, including academics, journalism, film-making and the more creative arts, the responses to this quite challenging theme promises to be both varied and intriguing. A Journal of the Plague Year also includes two outdoor performances by Lygia Pape on 17 and 25 May. Check the Para Site website for further details.

Conference: Death, Dying and Disposal, 5-8 September 2013, Milton Keynes

The 11th biennial interdisciplinary conference Death, Dying and Disposal is set to take place under the auspices of the Faculty of Health & Social Care at the Open University in Milton Keynes from 5-8 September of next year. Revolving around the theme of "Theory Meets Practice", the organisers seek not only to address the cross-currents of theoretical and practical engagements of the field of death and dying studies, but to spotlight the underappreciated influence of practice in shaping, informing and transforming the theoretical field.

 

The call for abstracts invites presenters from across a range of disciplines and interests including professional groups involved in the area, academics and researchers. There are two deadlines for abstract submission set at 3 December 2012 and 4 March 2013.

"The underpinning rationale of the conference theme is to encourage a more overt engagement between theory and practice which moves beyond the notion that theoretical ideas are relevant to practice to highlight the iterative nature of death and dying studies. Indeed it is only through practice in all its forms, that theories can be developed, challenged and their usefulness evaluated."