REMINDER: Deadline to submit abstracts for Crossing the Boundaries XXI: Dis/Place is February 1

Crossing the Boundaries

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

April 26-27th, 2013

Binghamton University

 

A multidisciplinary, multivocal academic conference with a global geographic and broad temporal reach, presented by the Art History Graduate Student Union


Keynote Speakers:

Ariella Azoulay, Brown University

Julia Walker, Binghamton University

 

DIS/PLACE: To remove or shift from its place; to put out of the proper or usual place; to remove from a position, dignity, or office; to remove, banish; to oust (something) from its place and occupy it instead; to take the place of, supplant, ‘replace.’

The Art History Graduate Student Union at Binghamton University invites submissions from any historical or disciplinary approach that consider the subject of the placement and/or displacement (of knowledge, people, groups, and objects) for the 21st Annual Crossing the Boundaries Conference.  Propelled by a longstanding commitment to bring forth exceptional critical research, this year’s conference aims to investigate shifts and transformations in global societies, while aspiring to position them in a historical perspective. Specifically, we aim to consider how technologies, migration, archiving and visibility are not only utilized by and incorporated into apparatuses of power, but also how they have been (re)presented, understood and conceptualized from pre-modern eras to the present day. Current civic and international disputes warrant an investigation of historical gatherings, modes of circulation and dissemination vis-à-vis the politics and mechanism of the visual (whether of the photographic image, technologies of surveillance, portraiture and so forth) and their possible appropriation into practices of governance.

Potential topics might include (but are not limited to):

  • Production of visual knowledge and meaning
  • Civil history of zones of conflict and their presentation in media
  • Revolutions and visual media
  • Archiving machineries and procedures
  • Photographic and visual technologies of surveillance
  • Political economies
  • Mechanisms of visual representations
  • Cultural traditions and historical change
  • Migration of knowledge and peoples
  • Discourses of identities and differences
  • Museum practices and recontextualization
  • Consumption and dissemination of representations
  • Political positions and their emergence in art
  • Cultural exchange
  • Representations of social and political memory

The wide scope of this theme reflects our interest in creating a multi-disciplinary, geographically and historically unbounded forum for critical examination of the roles images have played in shaping both the past and the present.

**We additionally welcome submissions from artists whose work encompasses similar themes and concerns.

Proposals for individual papers (20 minutes maximum) should be no more than 400 words in length and may be sent by email, with a current graduate level CV to buctb2013@gmail.com (Attn: Proposal). Those wishing to submit hard copies of the proposal and CV should forward them to: Art History (Attn: Crossing the Boundaries), Binghamton University, P.O. Box 6000, Binghamton, NY  13902-6000. We also welcome proposals for integrated panels. Panel organizers should describe the theme of the panel and send abstracts with names and affiliations of all participants along with current CVs. A panel should consist of no more than three papers, each twenty minutes in length.  Deadline for submissions is February 1, 2013.
For more information, please visit the conference website at http://ctbconf.wordpress.com/.

“Quiet Cruelties” opens at University Art Museum

Quiet Cruelties: Prints, Sculpture, and Unique Works on Paper by Rimer Cardillo

image for Cardillo exhibition

Wasp, digital carbon pigment print, ca. 1974, printed 2011.

An exhibition of works from the artist’s collection

Binghamton University Art Museum

Fine Arts Building 213

January 24-March 23, 2013

 

Quiet Cruelties draws on four decades of Rimer Cardillo’s artistic production. After experiencing years of military rule in Uruguay, Cardillo fled to the US in 1979. He uses ambiguous printed imagery, as did Goya, to critique invidious violence that underscores oppression. Cardillo combines a great range of printing methods and techniques, from woodcut, engraving, and etching to aquatint, mezzotint, and silkscreen to create enigmatic visual statements that feature insects rather than individuals. Here, butterflies, moths, wasps, and grasshoppers suggest power and dispassion, weakness and vulnerability.

The emotive qualities of Baroque art and architecture, as well as centuries-old illustrated books of natural history inspire Cardillo. On this foundation he sometimes layers images of insects, seemingly tortured — impaled grasshoppers and splayed butterflies. Another series juxtaposes anthropologists’ photographs of ancient human remains in South America with plaster casts of animal carcasses. In this and in another series of bird casts and their prints, the artist draws the viewer to consider the ephemeral nature of life in a manner more common to the seventeenth century. Cardillo explores how humans, animals, and insects remain susceptible to violent forces outside their control.

Rimer Cardillo is Professor of Art at SUNY New Paltz. He exhibits internationally and in 2001 he represented Uruguay at the Venice Biennale. Cardillo will give a public lecture on his work at the Binghamton University Art Museum at the opening reception on Thursday, February 7 at 5:30 pm.

A small exhibition of early modern illustrated books of natural history, on loan from the Special Collections of the Binghamton University Library, will be on view nearby. Additional events include “An Entomologist Considers Art,” a gallery talk with biology professor Julian Shepherd on Tuesday, February 19, noon, FA 213; and “An Introduction to Biological Illustration: Its History, Uses, and Some Methods,” a workshop with Marla Coppolino, Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization on Saturday, March 2, 1–5 pm. To register in advance for the workshop, please call 607-777-2634. There is a $20 fee for the workshop.

Admission to the museum is free. For directions and museum hours visit artmuseum.binghamton.edu.