30 Jan 2010

Blind Spots - 8th International Symposium on Contemporary Art Theory in Mexico City

Speakers: Carlos Amorales, Vasco Araujo, Kader Attia, Klaus Biesenbach, Sabine Breitwieser, James Coleman, Dias & Riedweg, Rita Eder, Michele Faguet, Silvia Gruner, Barbara London, Tom McDonough, Lane Relyea, Martha Rosler, Jennifer Sorkin, Judi Werthein.

Director: Gabriela Rangel in collaboration with Jennifer Sorkin

Program

Thursday, February 4

15:00-15:15 Introduction by Gabriela Rangel (15 minutes)
15:15-16:35 Keynote speaker: James Coleman and Tom McDonough, James Coleman in Milan, 1964-1980.
Illustrated with images from the artist's archive, selected in collaboration with James Coleman.

Session One: The Tired Frame
Over the last forty years, non-narrative film has been the benchmark of a new kind of subjectivity. Since its origin, film is one of the few fields in which the linear narrative has always been contested. Filmmakers as well as artists have examined the experimental potentiality of the moving image through various formats, in museums, theaters, cinema, and the Internet. Why does the prevailing model for experimental film continue to be rooted in a discourse of narrative or modernist European cinema? At this juncture, are other paths possible-not only other nationalities, other histories-but other modalities of thinking that move beyond this tired frame?

16:35-17:45 Michele Faguet, What is pornomiseria?
Dias & Riedweg: Peripheral glances and cultural devices to open up a dialogue
Respondent: Barbara London

17:45-18:10 Questions & Answers
18:10-18:25 Intermission
18:25-18:40 Film Screening: This Functional Family, Judi Werthein's, 2007

Session Two: Make Your Own History: Histories of Self-Institutionalization
Through their own organizational initiatives, women artists and filmmakers (collectives, journals, festivals) achieved prominence throughout the 1970s and 1980s as educators, activists, writers, and thinkers. Having created important peer networks and organizations, many self-sustaining, what is the legacy of such alternative independent networks of circulation? How are such multidisciplinary projects received historically? What relationship do they have to aesthetic practice?

18:40-19:40 Sabine Breitwieser: From Female Creativity to Practices of Feminism – Some Women Initiatives in Austria
Judi Werthein: Obras contadas
Respondent: Lane Relyea

19:40-20:00 Questions & Answers

Friday, February 5, 2010

15:00-15:15
Introduction: Jennifer Sorkin (15 minutes)
15:15-16:15
Keynote Speaker: Rita Eder
The Body and the Mirror: Anxieties in Self-Presentation

16:15- 17:45 Intermission

17:45-18:00 TBD

Session One: Is the Political Still Personal?
During the 1970s, women artists examined the private dimensions of their lives in their artmaking practices, using narrative, appropriation, and irony to critique both universal and specific instances of exclusion in society. In film and video, such practices have become permanently associated with a political agenda, employing these aesthetic strategies to examine other forms of social or cultural repression. In an era when amateurs can become sophisticated cultural producers through new technologies, contemporary artists have had to alter their strategies accordingly, embracing distancing techniques such as those found in ethnographic practices.
What do artists mean when they say their work is 'political'?

18:00-19:40
Silvia Gruner: An Overdose of Me
Klaus Biesenbach: Political Minimalism
Martha Rosler
Respondent: Jennifer Sorkin

19:40-20:00 Questions & Answers

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Session One: Gendered Spaces. 10.00-11.20
Genealogies of power and control have never been gender-neutral. In viewing spaces as socially constructed, exploring the ways artists have shifted cultural production reveals a complex picture of the politics of embodiment and selfhood.
Vasco Araujo Super-Staging or the death of the Hero
Kader Attia TBD
Respondent: Sabine Breitweiser

11:20-11:45 Questions & Answers
11:45-12:30 Film Screenings: Eco, Vasco Araujo, 2008
Footage film-in progress, Kader Attia

12:30-12:50 Intermission
12:50-13:30 Performance: Carlos Amorales, A Mental Image


Program subject to change.