WHAT: One-day symposium with book launch Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects and Art After 9/11 by Jill Bennett
WHEN: Friday 17 August 2012
Symposium 10:00 AM- 4:30 PM
Drinks and book launch 5pm
WHERE: Artspace, 43 - 51 Cowper Wharf Road Woolloomooloo, Sydney
COST: Free, Limited Seating, Bookings NOT required
Please contact Tristan Derátz tristand@artspace.org.au or or T: +61 2 9356 0555 for further details.
Presented by Artspace and the National Institute for Experimental Art, COFA, University of New South Wales
Bringing together leading theorists of contemporary art and culture, curators and artists over a single day, Another World will ask how twenty-first-century global crisises — whether financial, environmental, social or political — have transformed the context of art practice and analysis.
Key papers examining the shifting frameworks of art theory will be presented by Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York University), Jill Bennett (National Institute for Experimental Art, UNSW) and Terry Smith (University of Pittsburgh) – thinkers who each argue for new forms of critical visual studies and aesthetic practice, attuned to a changing, and increasingly volatile, political, economic and environmental context. Mirzoeff will discuss critical visual theory in relation to emerging political movements. Bennett will discuss 'practical aesthetics' in relation to politics and ecology. Smith will discuss contemporaneity and planetarity.
Mark Feary (Artspace) will convene an artists’ panel to discuss artistic responses to radically changed (and changing) political, environmental and financial contexts.
Kim Simon (Gallery TPW, Toronto) will focus upon image-based practices, asking where pedagogical and journalistic turns in contemporary art are leading us?
Blair French (Artspace / SCAPE Christchurch Biennial) will discuss the specific challenges facing contemporary art practice in Christchurch, New Zealand following the devastating 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.
The symposium will be followed at 5pm by the launch of Jill Bennett’s new book, Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affect and Art After 9/11 (I.B. Tauris, 2012) in the Artspace galleries and a private viewing of the exhibition Everything Falls Apart: 2, curated by Mark Feary and Blair French.
The participation of Nicholas Mirzoeff has been organized and supported by the National Institute for Experimental Art, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.
The participation of Kim Simon is supported by the International Visitors Program of the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body. In association with Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne and Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania.
Artspace is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. Artspace is assisted by the New South Wales Government through Arts NSW and by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
