[artinfo] CFP: Art in Public Spaces - CSA (New York, 22-24 May 08)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From:     Cultural Studies Association US <csaus+ at pitt.edu>
Date:     13 Sep 2007
Subject:  CFP: Visual Culture Division--CSA 2008


Call for Papers

"Art in Public Spaces"

The Visual Culture Division invites submissions for the Sixth Annual Meeting
of the Cultural Studies Association (U.S.) to be held on the campus of NYU
in Greenwich Village, in New York City, May 22-24, 2008.

http://www.csaus.pitt.edu/frame_home.htm

Deadline: October 22, 2007

Art in Public Spaces

Public art, particularly in the form of monuments, has a centuries-old
history, one traditionally associated with civic and state ideals-ideals
that were increasingly subverted in the post-revolutionary era by the
destruction of extant monuments and the erection of anti-monuments.
Urbanization provided an important backdrop to the development of the public
spaces of modernism, enabling as it did the flourishing of mass culture and
mass media. As the nature and function of public space continued to shift
over the course of the twentieth century, so did the meaning of "public" and
of "art" in those spaces.

>From Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International to Maya Lin's
Vietnam Memorial; and from Spencer Tunick's Naked States to Creative Time's
Panasonic-funded The 59th Minute: Video Art on the Times Square Astrovision,
not only have the role and function of art in public spaces changed, so has
the definition of public art's "social responsibility." As the rhetoric of
globalization increasingly de-emphasizes the city in favor of the flows of
capital, information, and identity, what is meant by "public space" is less
clear as the boundaries between public, private, and corporate space are
increasingly blurred-if indeed they ever really were secure. Theories of
"public space" now often include not only the "virtual" public space of, for
example, Second Life, but, more problematically, even the "private spaces"
now made public on the Internet via webcams and surveillance.

In the face of Robert Smithson's "non-sites," of controversy over Richard
Serra's Tilted Arc, of graffiti gone high art, and of home videos gone
"viral," how are we to understand the ways that the art and visual culture
of public spaces intersects with or redefines social responsibility today?
Can we even talk about "public space" or "public art" anymore? What, if
anything, is lost or gained by the redefinition of these terms?

Topics might include, but are certainly not restricted to the following:

* The  nomadism of site-specific art characterizing encounters 
between local and  global artists characterizing biennales of the 
last decade
* The  AIDS quilt
* The  ongoing destruction of traditional monuments such as the 
Bamiyan Buddhas by  the Taliban in Afghanistan and that of Saddam 
Hussein by US troops
* Graffiti art, street art, tagging, web graffiti,  hacking
* Homelessness and private space in public
* Public space and invasion of privacy
* Surveillance in public and self-surveillance in  private

Please submit via email a 500-word abstract of a 15-20 minute paper
proposal, including name, department, and institutional affiliation, email
address, and one-page CV by October 22 to:

Kelly Dennis
Chair, CSA Visual Culture Division
Department of Art and Art History
830 Bolton Rd U-1099
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269-1099
kelly.dennis at uconn.edu