Configuring the Present across Arts and Media: A symposium focusing on innovation in contemporary arts and their dialogue with the past

Configuring the Present across Arts and Media: A symposium focusing on innovation in contemporary arts and their dialogue with the past

 

About ASAP:

The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present is an international, nonprofit association of scholars and creative artists dedicated to discovering and articulating the aesthetic, cultural, ethical, and political forms and significance of the contemporary arts. ASAP explores the paradox of the contemporary: that what is nearest to hand is hardest to grasp.  It offers a forum for cross-disciplinary discussion which aims to bridge academic specializations. ASAP regards “the present” as a moving target: its investigation can extend backward to earlier decades and precursor moments, but always with reference to their contemporary relevance.

Following ASAP/1, the Association’s founding conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, October 22-25, 2009, ASAP’s major event in 2010 will take the form of a two-and-a-half day symposium with a more specialized focus at the University of Trier, Germany, from 28-30 October 2010.

Call for Papers:

The arts of the present define and shape themselves by being different from the past - but in the very act of othering the past, contemporary arts also enter into dialogue with the past. The arts of the present transform or hybridise media and genre conventions, often responding to the emergence of new issues and themes in contemporary societies. The symposium will aim to address in more detail a key aspect of ASAP's Mission Statement - the priority, but also the difficulty, of grasping a Present that is currently unfolding around us - by focusing on how the arts of the present transform existing conventions and tackle contemporary issues through both a radical distancing from and a dialogue with the past.

Abstracts are invited which focus on contemporary issues, formal innovation or innovative reworkings of the past in the fields of print, film and performance narrative as well as visual and electronic media. Principle topics include:

The arts and key contemporary global issues:
The post-Cold War world
The post-9/11 world
The effects of migration and global mobility on cultural identities

Formal aspects:
Innovation and adaptation across arts and media: in print and film narrative; in visual and performance arts
Computer-generated worlds and/or contemporary game arts

Innovative dialogue with the past:
The representation and renegotiation of the past in contemporary film, drama and documentary texts
New directions in literary adaptation
Neo-Victorianism across the arts

Submission formats:
Abstracts of 300 words are invited for single papers, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographical statement.
Abstracts of 700 words for panels of three or four participants are also invited, accompanied by brief bio-bibliographical statements for each panelist. Panel formats are strongly encouraged which offer a dialogue by panel members around a key aspect or issue as opposed to single successive papers; the planned format of the panel should be made clear in the submission.

Please send all submissions to: asapuni-trierde 
Submissions deadline: 25 April, 2010

Symposium organiser: Hilary Dannenberg, Department of English, University of Trier