Date/Time
Date(s) - 27 Sep 2012 until 29 Sep 2012
12:00 AM - 12:00 AM
Category(ies) No Categories
The past two decades have been marked by a renewed concern with the agency, presence, and ontological status of crafted things, witnessed in a shift of interest across several fields from questions of iconography and meaning to questions of affect and efficacy. These developments call into question some of the binary oppositions that are foundational to the epistemologies and ontologies of Enlightenment (and post-Enlightenment) thought: animate-inanimate, subject-object, material-meaning, and so forth. They raise significant questions about the nature and operation of things in the world, their materiality, their ability to act or inspire action, and their relation to speech, texts, and words. Acknowledging the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the profound questions raised by these developments, the conference aims to examine the historical antecedents for these ‘new’ ways of thinking about the material world, to consider their implications, and to imagine the ways in which they might help us develop novel approaches to images, things, and words.
This event is jointly sponsored by Bard Graduate Center and the Institute of Fine Art’s Mellon Research Initiative (NYU), and organized by Jas Elsner, Finbarr Barry Flood, and Ittai Weinryb.
Multiple locations. For complete information, visit the website.