The Art & Politics of Memory & Identity (At the Regency Town House)

Standard periodizations of the history of art distinguish between pre-modern, modern and post-modern. Today such a set of divisions is being challenged by alternative approaches that describe scopic regimes whose styles of representation and genres of art practices render some things visible and others beyond sight. These regimes set the parameters of representation, and are both expressive and determinant of the social and political structures that are their context.

This symposium will pose a series of questions about the role of artistic representation in the contemporary world. To what extent do figuration and narrative constitute necessary means for politically sensitized art practice? If it is the case since Malevich, that art must subvert itself, or must, at least, be hyper-sensitive to its status and limitations- how does that empower it politically? If practitioners, critics and historians have become familiar with the 20th century’s address to these questions, how is it that answers to them might now have been refracted in the 21st century?

The symposium is organized by the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts and Architecture in conjunction with the Haunch of Venison Gallery (London). It is designed to address questions about the direction of contemporary art practice, its responsibilities, its limitations and the relationship of these to curatorial decisions.

SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Tamar Garb
(University College London)

Ben Tuffnell
(Curator, Haunch of Venison Gallery, London)

Esther Leslie
(Birkbeck College, University of London)

William Kentridge
(Artist, Johannesburg)

Peter Seddon
(University of Brighton)

Tom Hickey
(University of Brighton)

Anita Rupprecht
(University of Brighton)

Graham Dawson
(University of Brighton)

Louise Purbrick
(University of Brighton)

Julian Stallabrass
(Courtauld Institute)

Charles Harrison
(Open University, UK)

Philip Miller
(Composer, Cape Town)

Douglas Dodds
(Curator, V&A, London)

Tessa Sidey
(Curator, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery)

Jessica Dubow
(University of Sheffield).

The symposium is part of a major, international, multi-media festival of the work of the world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge, and a series of concerts by the composer Philip Miller written to accompany films by Kentridge. The festival includes a dual-site exhibition of the artist’s prints, and of his image-projecting installations, a live performance of Miller’s score for the Nine Films for Performance in the Duke of York’s. The use of the artist’s animated films, Homage to George Méliès, as urban sculptures will constitute a dramatic intervention in the urban experience of the city, and will be a challenge to how exhibition spaces are conceived.