Ways of Knowing and Doing
Spectral Knowing and the Community (Art)-yet-to-come
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Valia Papastamou
The paper reflects on issues regarding the ethico-political and aesthetic modalities of artistic knowledges, further questioning what institutional critique and critique of institutions challenge for institutions of knowledge and community art. I approach specific practices that refer to and draw from post-studio art practice, community art, new genre public art and educational turn in art, through questions regarding embodied knowledges, critical engagement and issues of authorship/authority. In this direction, feminist/queer conceptualizations of the performativity of knowledge reinforce thinking about how knowledges are produced, diffused and multiplied as they intersect through the art, pedagogical, economic institutions that constitute the frame of reference for performativity. I further explore the challenges that arise regarding intersectional (e.g. gender, race, ethnicity, class) claims for transformative (artistic) knowledges demanding for more democratic ways of community making through collaborative and participatory methodologies so that knowledge institutions can be inhabited anew with others. Elaborating on the terms that such bodies of theory and practice take charge of the responsibility to the other to challenge hospitality, I critically engage with what is rendered im-possible for knowledge as openness to indiscriminate otherness. Beyond the antinomies of hospitality∙ the unconditional reception of the other and the conditional laws imposed for the (unconditional) hospitality, I propose that the undecidability of knowledge brings forth other ways of aesthetic/political aporias for the community (art)-yet-to-come, so that artistic knowledges are (re)instituted as traces of the unfinished work of knowing or what we would otherwise name as spectral knowing.
Featured Reframing Public Memory: The Role of Art in Postcolonial Narratives View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Melanie Hyo-In Han
This paper explores how public art and literary expression contribute to reframing collective memory in postcolonial contexts, focusing on Korea’s “Statue of Peace” and the poetry of Emily Jungmin Yoon. Both the statue and Yoon’s poetry engage with the complex legacies of Japanese colonization (1910-1945) of Korea, offering alternative narratives that challenge dominant historical discourses. The Statue of Peace, erected in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, commemorates the Korean “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. This paper examines how the statue, in its highly politicized space, functions not only as a site of mourning but also as an ongoing act of resistance, shaping collective memory and challenging historical narratives that have marginalized these women’s experiences. In parallel, Emily Jungmin Yoon’s poetry provides a literary space that resonates with the themes embodied by the Statue of Peace. Through close readings, this paper explores how Yoon’s work captures the emotional and psychological dimensions of “han,” a sentiment of unresolved trauma rooted in Korean culture. Yoon’s poetry serves as a cultural critique, engaging with the historical trauma of colonization and offering a space for collective grief and resilience. By employing interdisciplinary approaches, including art history, postcolonial theory, and literary analysis, this paper demonstrates how the Statue of Peace and Yoon’s poetry function as mediums for social engagement, reshaping collective memory, and fostering a more inclusive understanding of Korea’s past.
Investigating Barriers to Arts Engagement for Disabled People in Wrexham, North Wales View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alec Shepley, Grace Thomas
In November 2021, a research report was published authored by ‘On the Move’ and commissioned by the British Council called ‘Time to Act’ which focused on arts engagement by disabled people in Europe. The report evidenced the lack of accessibility in the arts for disabled individuals and a lack of confidence in arts environments including disabled people in their activities and events. 48% of respondents were not very/at all confident in the accessibility of artistic programmes for disabled people. The report also demonstrated the lack of consideration for disabled people in the planning and facilitation of arts events or programmes. This paper considers how these findings relate to Wrexham specifically. The paper forms an overview of how the arts are perceived within the area, by disabled communities and individuals. The paper articulates the development of a network of third-party collaborators who have an enriched knowledge and understanding of the arts community in Wrexham in relation to disability and community arts. Citing links made with local groups such as The Wrexham Miner’s Project (Art4All); Emerge Community Arts; Nathan Lee Davis (poet and disability rights activist); STAND North Wales; and Dementia Friends Art Group, the paper examines the challenges and identify possible ways forward in enabling local arts venues, event-organisers, and creative practitioners, to foster sustainable approaches to the perspectives of disabled people in Wrexham, with the aim to enable arts engagement.
Wild Gods: The Duende and the More-Than-Human
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jessica Wittig
The duende is that mysterious presence in art which makes our hair stand on end, causes our blood to quicken, and our breath to change; the force “everyone feels and no philosopher has explained,” so sayeth Goethe; “a struggle, not a thought” so sayeth poet and activist Federico García Lorca. This paper draws on studies of technology, Western secularity, and indigenous epistemologies to investigate the duende as a "more-than-human" agency, one that we can collaborate with to put pressure on what “art” means now. In the transition to modernity, our relationships with more-than-human beings sunk beneath explicit discourse about reality. As AI acts as a mirror for what modernity values most about human capabilities, the duende reminds us of the importance of seeing the language of the narrativizing mind versus being in the action of the sensing body. This paper argues against a mechanistic view of the earth, world, and ourselves. We are participants in a living cosmos, one that is alive with communication and collaboration. Our inheritance is not limited to scientific materialism: our other inheritances, including animism and the wisdom found in our bodies and art-making, may be up to the task of handling the shifts we’re experiencing with AI. By acknowledging our co-creative participation in a more-than-human cosmos, and the commitments that entails, we might find modes of art-making through animistic practices of relation; and, we may heal the rupture between tech (technology/technique) and art that lives in the space of rupture between thought and struggle.
Reimagine the Reality: Li Tianbing’s Representational Strategy of Cultural Things
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chen Gao
This study examines Li Tianbing’s use of cultural things in his artwork to represent and reimagine past reality, primarily through his memories of the China’s one-child policy era. The objective is to analyse how Li employs things to reconstruct reality and depict the relationship between memory, identity, and socio-political consequences of implementing the policy. This work is essential for reconsidering the role of visual representation in forming historical and social narratives, as the one-child policy has significantly impacted individual and collective identities and memory. Analysing Li’s application of things to describe memory and identity contributes to Art History and Material Culture Studies. This research utilises the Social History of Art to contextualise Li’s artwork within the historical framework of China’s one-child policy, the Material Culture Studies to identify the role of things in memory construction, a Biographical Approach to explore Li’s personal experiences, and briefly incorporates a Psychoanalytic Approach to address the psychological dimensions of identity. Through artefact and contextual analysis, this research investigates how Li challenges the boundaries of fantasies and reality. The study reveals Li’s strategies of representing the past reality by bringing back memories through cultural things. Li constructs a dynamic identity with ongoing negotiations with historical forces when dealing with the trauma left by the policy. Ultimately, the study argues that Li’s art portrays cultural things as ‘memory carriers’ in reinterpreting the past reality, offering an interdisciplinary perspective to expand the interpretation of representation and its influence on memory and identity.
