Dunedin School of Art
ART AND FUTURE: Energy, Climate, Cultures
A SYMPOSIUM at the DUNEDIN SCHOOL OF ART, 14-15 October 2016
Following seven successful symposia held at the Dunedin School of Art, from ‘Illustrating the Unseeable: Reconnecting Art and Science’ (2009) to ‘Art and Design’ (2015), the Dunedin School of Art, together with the Centre for Sustainability, the Centre for Science Communication and the Department of Sociology at the University of Otago, is organising an eighth symposium entitled ‘Art and Future: Energy, Climate, Cultures.’
Art has always had to do with identity—with kin and class, with gods and demons, with past and present, and also with aspirations and fears for the future. Instead of leaving the future to fate, Post-Enlightenment Modernity has often cast science and technology as tools to craft a future, a future better than any past, conquering disease and deprivation, ushering in the good life for all. Yet the positive outlook of the 1960s has been shaken by an overabundance—of people, of goods, of waste, of environmental destruction. At this moment, when confidence is being eroded by despair as the utopian project is threatened by disaster, it may be an opportunity to assess interlocked themes, the conflicting knowledges and values that give rise to our current alarm and the part art might play in their in their elucidation and unravelment.
How has art seen the future? Have these visions helped or hindered clear thinking? Can art be a useful tool in sorting the significant from the trivial, the really important questions that matter from passing alarums? Has art a role in making change or is it simply an expressive device for those with time and/or money? Has art agency, particularly the sort of agency that might help us find our way through the apparent present crises? These themes will form the focus of this symposium.
In order to keep the focus on agency the symposia organisers have added a subtitle—Energy, Climate, Cultures—and invite contributors to explore the interconnections between these in the contexts of place and space, of the material and the cultural, of science and art, of the limits of our planet and the limitlessness of our aspirations.
THIS IS A CALL FOR PAPERS RELATED TO THE BROAD THEMES OF THE SYMPOSIUM on OCTOBER 14-15 2016. It is also a call to artists to offer works for a selected exhibition that will run from 3-21 October 2016.
The final date for submissions of abstracts for papers and/or proposals for artworks is 15 May 2016. All abstracts will be peer reviewed before finalising the programme. Artworks will be selected from the proposals for exhibition. There will be no charge for registration. All enquiries should be addressed to peter.stupples@op.ac.nz
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