Call for Papers - On Absence: Loss and Immateriality in Art and Architecture

October 25, 2014
Stern Auditorium, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Keynote speaker: Wu Hung, University of Chicago, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History

The History of Art Department at the University of Michigan invites graduate students to submit proposals for 20-minute presentations for consideration for its biannual Graduate Symposium, On Absence: Loss and Ephemerality in Art and Architecture.

As historians of art and architecture, much of our work consists in piecing together fragments of the past to produce a clearer vision of lost visual cultures. Indeed, the discipline has long operated on the assumption that the objects and architectural spaces that remain with us in the present can be marshaled to conjure an absent past. But what if we instead turned our attention to the very absences that structure this historical and material record, from lost and destroyed works to intentionally ephemeral art to narratives neglected or marginalized by the discipline? What does the absence or ephemerality of an object or building say about its history and its presence? How does the perception of a work of art change once it no longer exists? In what ways does art historical writing and museum display produce its own absences by the objects and subjects it fails to put "on view?" This symposium will be dedicated to scholarship that seeks not only to fill in but to interrogate these archival and museal gaps and will consider the manner in which absent objects, contexts and narratives shape our understanding of art and its histories. The themes of absence and ephemerality are left intentionally open in order to encourage submissions on works from all time periods, in a variety of media, and produced in a wide range of circumstances and locations. Papers may address topics including (but not limited to) the following:

• Presence in absence
• (Dis)appearance
• Positive form in negative space
• Traces of objects
• Reproductions or forgeries of now lost "originals"
• Iconoclasm and other forms of destruction of art or architecture
• Immateriality
• Invisibility
• Art or architecture that cannot be perceived with visual faculties
• The metaphysical or nonphysical in art and architecture
• Cultural or personal memory of art or architecture that no longer exists
• The politics of museum display and storage
• Absent art historical narratives
• Ruins, abandoned architectural sites and other forms of partial absence
• Loss of an object's original context

Abstracts for submission should be no more than 300 words and must be accompanied by a cv.

Submissions are due by May 16, 2014, and should be submitted to the Symposium Committee by email at AbsenceSymposium@gmail.com.