Conference and Book Launch
This conference celebrates the publication of Conceptualism and Materiality: Matters of Art and Politics (ed. by Christian Berger, Brill, 2019). The aim is to underscore the significance of materials and materiality within Anglo-American Conceptual art, as well as conceptualism more broadly. It challenges the notion of conceptualism as an idea-centred, anti-materialist enterprise, and highlights the political implications thereof.
The contributors focus on the importance of material considerations for artists working during the 1960s and 1970s in different parts of the world. In reconsidering conceptualism’s neglected material aspects, this group of international scholars will gather in London to reveal the rich range of artistic inquiries into theoretical and political notions of matter and material. They revise and diversify the account of a decisive moment in the history of twentieth-century art—a reassessment that carries wider implications for the study of art and materiality in general.
The conference is organised by Dr Christian Berger, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow, The Courtauld Institute of Art with the support of Professor David Peters Corbett. The event has been made possible through the generous support of The Centre for American Art and the Research Forum. More information on the book can be found on the publisher’s website.
Thursday, 10 October 2019:
16:00 Registration
16:30 Welcome and Introduction
Prof David Peters Corbett (The Centre for American Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Prof Sarah Wilson (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Christian Berger (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/The Courtauld Institute of Art)
17:00 Panel I: Materialisation and Dematerialisation (Chair: Jo Applin, The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Kavior Moon (SCI-Arc, Los Angeles)
Itinerant Matter: Michael Asher’s Air Works
Jacob Stewart-Halevy (Tufts University, Medford)
From Declarations to Natural Talk: How Conceptual Artists Learned to Speak
Response: Luke Skrebowski (University of Manchester)
Roundtable & Discussion
18:25 Break
18:45 Keynote and Book Launch
Alixe Bovey (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Introduction
Christian Berger: Book Presentation
Keynote: Sabeth Buchmann (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)
Conceptual Realism
Wine Reception
Friday, 11 October 2019:
9:00 Registration
9:30 Introduction
9:45 Panel II: Other Materialities (Chair: Christian Berger)
Larisa Dryansky (Sorbonne Université, Paris)
Immaterial or Incorporeal? Antimatter and the Dematerialization of Art
Magdalena Moskalewicz (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Notation, Aspiration, Science, and Labour in Early Conceptual Art in Poland
Response: Dominic Rahtz (University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury)
Roundtable & Discussion
11:15 Tea & Coffee
11:45 Panel III: Materiality and Communication (Chair: Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, Birkbeck College)
Niko Vicario (Amherst College)
Synchronizing Lag: The Materiality of Art’s Speed
Zanna Gilbert (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)
A Tactile Media: Edgardo Antonio Vigo’s Manual Multiples
12:35 Response: Michael Asbury (Chelsea College of Arts)
Roundtable & Discussion
13.15 Lunch Break
Panel IV: Materials and Affects (Chair: Klara Kemp-Welch, The Courtauld Institute of Art)
14:30 Luiza Nader (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw)
Affecting Conceptual Art
Response: Keti Chukhrov (University of Wolverhampton)
Discussion
15:30 Refreshment break
16:00 Yoshiko Shimada (Artist and Independent Researcher, Tokyo)
A Pink Banner to Show to the Nature: Matsuzawa Yutaka’s Conceptualism and the Spiritual
Response: Jelena Stojkovic (Arts University Bournemouth)
Discussion
17:00 Christian Berger: Closing Remarks
17:15 End