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LIEU : University of Barcelona, April 26 - 28, 2016DEADLINE : Sep 30, 2015Global Art Challenges: Towards an “Ecology of Knowledges”The International Conference Global Art Challenges: Towards an “Ecologyof Knowledges” aims to reformulate established approaches to the studyof global art in the face of ongoing challenges in that field. Buildingon sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santo’s concept of an “ecology ofknowledges” (2007), the conference seeks to go beyond “abyssal thinkingin modern Western-based conceptions” of art and to trace lines ofinquiry into new epistemological approaches to global art studies. Astheorized by de Sousa Santos, ecological thinking, understood as acounter-epistemology, recognizes the plurality of heterogeneousknowledge(s) and highlights the dynamic interconnections that existbetween them . Hence, faced with a longstanding monocultural conceptionof knowledge and art an “ecology of knowledges” conceives ofknowledge-as-intervention-in-reality rather than a hierarchicalpreference of Western knowledge(s) over other forms of knowing.This approach proposes an emancipatory attempt to supersede predominantepistemological frameworks that continue to reproduce the powerstructures that have dominated Western thinking since the Renaissance.Despite the spatial turn of global studies, longstanding monocultural(Western) conceptions of knowledge and art continue to impact and shapethe study of global art, as well as its theorization and the validationof artistic practices around the world. An “ecology of knowledges”, assuggested by de Sousa Santos, is a useful concept to counteract thisperspective. It recognises the plurality of artistic knowledge(s) andits socio-political agency in modern and contemporary global art. Thisconcept grapples with the current debates surrounding the need toreassess global art study’s methodological tools, calling for theimportance of a transcultural and horizontal art history that puts theaccent on transnational transfers, cultural encounters, circulatory andtransformation processes.This conference seeks to discuss, from a methodological,epistemological and practical perspective, the possibilities ofdeveloping an “ecology of knowledges” in art history, regarding alsoartistic and institutional practices. It looks for ways to overcomeWestern hierarchies and enter into a proactive dialogue betweenpractices, methods and discourses. Such perspectives, we hope, willcontribute to questioning taxonomies, values, temporalities, anddichotomies that have not just been a part of the art historicdiscipline since its foundation, but that have been imposed asuniversal and taken-for-granted. Finally, the conference seeks tobecome a platform for debating the possibilities of breaking that(Western-dominated) view within art history, seeking a starting pointfor a change of paradigm in the understanding of global art.Conference Objectives:The International Conference Challenges of Global Art: Towards an“Ecology of Knowledges” aims …- … to highlight, revalorize, and investigate new and “alternative”forms of knowledge production regarding global art, identifyingnon-Western and non-normative knowledge(s), know-how and practices.- … to put forward forms of hybridization and different temporalitiesby taking into account local as well as global dynamics in thecontemporary art scene.- … to identify knowledge(s) and cases in whichreal-world-interventions are enabled, highlighting local resistances,subaltern experiences and political agency.- … to highlight the transfers and circulatory processes in artisticpractices and art history by questioning discourses and notions (suchas modernism) that were built on the dichotomy between West andnon-West.- … to foster thinking about new concepts for the study of global artthat supersede the subject/object of knowledge binary.- … to think of other methodological tools and strategies in ArtHistory and Global Art Studies that could be useful within theframework of an “ecology of knowledges”.- … to discuss the role of Global Art Studies, and of Art History moregenerally, within the global setting of modern and contemporary art.The conference will feature four panels and a round table discussion.Every panel will be comprised of five speakers, with an allocatedspeaking time of 20 minutes each. All three panels will be presented bya convenor who will encourage debate among the participants. Theclosing round table discussion will articulate the themes of theconference and provide a space for dialogue among the conferencepresenters.Scholars, arts practitioners, researchers, and graduate studentsworking in the field of global art are invited to submit proposals forone of the following panels:Panel 1. Critical Perspectives in Global Art HistoryKeynote Speaker: Monica Juneja (Universität Heidelberg, Germany)Convenor: Anna Maria Guasch (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)This session aims to question and to reformulate established approachesto the methodological study of global art history in the light ofon-going debates in the field. Such an undertaking seems especiallyrelevant when considering that the spatial turn has often led to anextension of existing approaches and to a perpetuation of conceptualimperialism historically embedded in Western art history. Guidingquestions of the session are: How can we gain a global and integrativeperspective and avoid the dangers of reproducing similar asymmetriesbetween artistic productions around the globe? What are the tools thatallow us to highlight multiple locations, temporalities and processesof transcultural configurations? In how far can an ecologicalperspective enrich and articulate our view on global art history?Panel 2. ‘Close Others’ in ‘The West’Keynote Speaker: Klara Kemp-Welch (The Courtauld Institute of Art,London, UK)Convenor: Nasheli Jiménez del Val (Instituto de InvestigacionesEstéticas-UNAM, Mexico)This session addresses the need to continue decentering cultural andaesthetic paradigms regarding the Cold War era. Despite significantacademic projects such as Former-West, the idea of ‘the West’ is stillusually taken as shorthand for Western Europe and North America. Theconcept of the West therefore remains limited to an established seriesof hegemonic centres, irrespective of the transformations of the globalcultural and political field since 1989. This panel explores therelationship of the former hegemonic centres of the West to their‘close-Others’ in Europe and the Americas (Southern and EasternEuropean; Central and Southern American), and vice-versa. The aim is torethink the conception of the West itself from a range of dialogicaland dialectical perspectives and to thereby destabilise the conceptinternally. We propose to treat the West as a pluri-cultural andpolycentric matrix, defined by the encounters and exchanges of multiplecultures. In addition to challenging centre-periphery dichotomies, thissession seeks to bring to light the transcultural and multivalentprocesses that the development of modernity and postmodernity hasentailed. We are especially interested in assessing the subalternpotentialities of artistic practices and knowledge developed outsidenormative spheres. Guiding questions of the sessions are: How do theperspectives on race, gender and ideology that have emerged indifferent parts of Europe and the Americas vary? What might thesevariations contribute to the wider project of ‘provincialising theWest’?Panel 3. Visualizing Global NetworksKeynote Speaker: Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (École Normale Supérieur,France)Convenor: Paula Barreiro López (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)This session aims to outline the possibilities of mapping the diverseartistic and intellectual networks of cultural transfer and their closeintertwining with the social, political and economic spheres.Globalisation is, in this context, understood as a process that startswell before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its roots can be traced backto a long history of global exchanges and increasing social mobility,which relate to the economic and political as well as to the culturalfields. Guiding questions are: How can we visualise transnationalpatterns and which are key characteristics of today’s globalexperiences, such as circulations, exchanges and networks? How can sucha multi-level conception with various players and agencies challengebinary models that still shape the discipline where culture is seen toflow from metropolitan centres of the Western world to the peripheries?In which way(s) can the visualization of global networks reveal thecomplexity of artistic creation by bringing to surface the multiplicityof practices and “knowledges” that configured the cultural world?Panel 4. Art-as-intervention-in-reality. Ecology of Knowledges and institutional practices.Keynote Speaker: Maria Hlavajova (Basis Voor Akuele Kunst, Utrecht)Convenor: Christian M. Alonso (Universitat de Barcelona)The panel proposes to think about (and from within) contemporaryartistic practice at the present time, the latter characterized byZygmunt Bauman as the “condition in which rulers no longer can rule andthe ruled no longer wish to be ruled” . This context poses the need forreassessing and rearticulating basic notions for the understanding ofwestern epistemologies such as progress, critique, nature-culturerelations, the very idea of state-nation and furthermore the museum andthe artistic institution. Therefore this panel suggests discussing waysthat manage (or that could manage) reorienting the activity of artisticinstitutions in our contemporary world by implementing an “ecology ofknowledges” in the experimental and discursive field. Bearing in mindthat the “ecology of knowledges” understandsknowledge–as-intervention-in-reality a guiding question is: Which rolecould the integration of various artistic practices (as knowledgeproduction) and their political agency play in the reconfiguration ofthe artistic institution at present time?Scientific CommitteeMonica Juneja, Universität HeidelbergKlara Kemp-Welch, The Courtauld Institute of Art, LondonBéatrice Joyeux-Prunel, École Normale Supérieure, ParisMaria Hlavajova, Basis Voor Akuele Kunst, UtrechtAnna María Guasch, Universitat de BarcelonaPaula Barreiro López, Universitat de BarcelonaNasheli Jiménez del Val, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, D.F.Organized by:Anna Maria Guasch (UB), Paula Barreiro López (UB), and Nasheli Jiménezdel Val (UNAM, Mexico) and Christian M. Alonso (UB), within theframeworks of the research groups Art, Globalization, Interculturality(AGI: http://artglobalizationinterculturality.com/es/) andDecentralized Modernities: art, politics and counter-culture in thetransatlantic axis during the Cold War (MoDe(s) (HAR2014-53834-P)(https://modernidadesdescentralizadas.wordpress.com) at the Universityof Barcelona.Venues:Aula Magna. Department of Art History, University of Barcelona (UB)Auditorium. Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA)http://artglobalizationinterculturality.com/activities/conferences/conference-2016/ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONHow to submitPapers, creative projects and other non-traditional presentationsexploring the aforementioned topics are welcome.A completed application form (attached) including a 500 words abstractand a short biography (300 words) should be submitted to one of thepanels throught the webpage AGI(http://artglobalizationinterculturality.com/activities/conferences/conference-2016/)or send to globalartchallenges2016@gmail.com by 30 September 2015.Authors will be notified of their acceptance for a panel, thepublication, or both, by 1 December 2015.All abstract submissions (even if not selected for a panelpresentation) will be considered for the publication Global ArtChallenges: Towards an “Ecology of Knowledges”, an edited volumepresenting the results of this conference to be published by theUniversity of Barcelona.Please note that at this time the conference organizers cannot providetravel grants or accommodation stipends for presenters.