CFP: Bringing Light to the Dark: Visual Sovereignties in Contemporary Indigenous Art of the Americas

Status  Sonny Assu.

Symposium - July 19-20 2019, 

 Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia

Beyond the Spectacle: Native American Presence in Britain, an AHRC funded research project at the Universities of East Anglia and Kent, is issuing a call for papers for a two-day academic symposium.

The symposium, second in the Beyond the Spectacle series, will conclude the summer residency of Sonny Assu, a Kwakwaka’wakw mixed media artist, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. It will also celebrate the opening of an exhibition of his works and historic Native Northwest Coast objects from the Sainsbury Collection, curated by Sonny at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. Sonny will open the conference on July with a keynote on his history of art-activism and his time living in Britain.

Bringing Light to the Dark takes its title from Sonny’s commentary on his own work, which so often explores Indigenous art as a response to settler colonialism, and its role in asserting Native sovereignty in the face of government suppression of Indigenous cultural production.

Sonny’s residency is the latest in a long history of Native American visitors to this country, bringing their knowledge and expertise to British audiences. This symposium offers an opportunity to acknowledge and explore their contribution to the entangled histories of Native American and British people.

We are inviting papers of approximately 20 minutes in length on the study of Native North American art and its long history of engagement with Native activism, identity, and sovereignty. Of particular interest are papers that engage with Beyond the Spectacle’s core remit to study the history of Native presences in Britain, including in the fields of history, literature, anthropology and other associated disciplines.

Please send abstracts (300 words maximum) with title and 100 word biography to:

beyondthespectacle@kent.ac.uk  by  25^th April 2019  

Any questions to Prof. Jacqueline Fear-Segal (AMA): j.fear-segal@uea.ac.uk

Successful applicants will be notified in the week following this date.

Oceania Symposium, Royal Academy

Thursday 27 September 2018
11am — 6pm

This symposium explores the power and diversity of Oceanic art, and the politics of its circulation, interpretation and curation today.

Drawing on the experience of leading scholars, experts and art-world professionals, this one-day symposium aims to offer a unique perspective on the art of the region of Oceania.

Responding to the magnificence, range and dynamism of works in the Oceania exhibition, this international symposium explores spiritual power, social value, style and history through the art of the region, from the earliest times to the present.

Subjects covered will include:

• Voyaging, place-making and encounter through Oceanic genres

• Oceanic aesthetics, performance and exchange
• The violence and cross-cultural fertility of the colonial encounter
• The making of collections from Oceania in Europe
• The revaluation and negotiation of those collections today
• Contemporary engagements with heritage in the Pacific
• Contemporary art from the Pacific on a global stage

Includes exclusive access to the Oceania exhibition throughout the day of the conference.

For full details of the speakers and to book a place please visit the Royal Academy website.

Indigenous Art in Britain

Call for papers: Symposium – Curating the Global Film Archive

Venue: Moving Image Archive, Kelvin Hall, Glasgow

Date: 28 October 2017

In 2017 Africa in Motion Film Festival collaborates with the Universities of Glasgow and Stirling on a year-long AHRC-funded project entitled Africa’s Lost Classics. This project aims to bring to UK screens some of the greatest African film classics, works that have been neglected or forgotten. Through this project, contact with archivists around the world have led to discoveries of films that were deemed lost, and collaborations with restorers have brought old and decaying film reels back to life. As such, we became newly aware that curators can re(dis)cover old films and transform films’ material deterioration into the cinematic experience the film was made for. By organising, as part of this project, a one-day symposium on curating the global archive, we aim to place African cinema at the centre of the global film archive, while providing a context of worldwide archival curation and research. During the Africa in Motion annual film festival and Black History Month in the UK in October 2017, we are also curating a large exhibition entitled African Film: Looking Back Through the Lens at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. Curated in conjunction with the Africa in Motion film festival and the symposium, this exhibition is motivated by the desire to revive lost histories, spaces and times, and it includes 15 key classic films accompanied by posters, contextual information and film clips. We invite scholars to submit abstracts on topics related to practical and theoretical uses of worldwide film archives, and the relationship between archives and curation. We are interested in the archives of the world: from the Balkans to the Far East, Beirut to Seattle, Cape to Cairo. Without wanting to limit the scope of the symposium or proposed papers, some of the central questions we wish to explore are:

• What is the role of the curator in bringing the archive to life?
• How do archives and film festivals perform as sites of memory and commemoration?
• Can festivals act as archives?
• How do we best access archives if the materiality of film is under threat?
• What has the digital revolution contributed to the preservation of cinema?
• What is the role of the archivist in curating retrospectives?
• How do history and the present enact the discourse between contemporary films and archival footage?
• How do films, archives and the cinema as a public space interact with the present and the future, and what is the archive’s role in preservation and access?

Please send 250-word abstracts and 100-word biographies (including relevant publications) to the conference organisers Dr. Lizelle Bisschoff at and Dr. Stefanie Van de Peer by 31 August 2017. Delegates will be notified of their acceptance by 15 September. We regret we have no funding available for travel or accommodation but delegates will have the opportunity to attend film screenings of restored African Classics at the Africa in Motion film festival (27/10 – 5/11) in Glasgow and/or Edinburgh, and visit the accompanying exhibition.

About the venue:

The Moving Image Archive is Scotland's national collection of moving image located at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. More than 2,000 digitised films are online in the Moving Image Archive catalogue, and a further archive of over 60,000 films about Scotland is being preserved at Kelvin Hall. These archives are accessible by booking an appointment with the manager of the Archive, please see online for more details.

Place of Sacred Art Symposium - 9th May

The symposium will consider the ways in which people reinterpret sacred art when it is displayed in new contexts or alongside art from different faith traditions. It will also consider how displaying different types of art in sacred spaces also transforms our understanding of the sacred and artistic.

There will be a variety of presentations exploring different aspects on the theme of the conference:

• An academic, theological overview of the topic: Rev Dr David Cheetham
• Multi-faith Art in a Christian Space: Very Rev Catherine Ogle and Ortit Azaz 
• Faith in a Secular Space? A Museum’ s Perspective: Dr Rebecca Bridgeman
• Unexpected Encounters with Contemporary Art in a Sacred Space: Very Rev Peter Bradley

The day is delivered in collaboration with The Church of England and Birmingham Cathedral. It will be hosted by Canon Dr Andrew Smith who will also facilitate discussions enabling participants to explore the topic together.

There will also be a chance to visit the ground breaking and award winning Faith in Birmingham Gallery at the Museum and Art Gallery with curator Rebecca Bridgman.

For full details see here.