It is that time of year again! This year’s annual Visual Studies Graduate Conference, themed “Recomposition,” is taking place at UC Irvine on April 3rd in Humanities Gateway 1030. Several colleagues of mine will be presenting papers if you are in the area.
The conference adopts the following interpretation of “recomposition”:
This theme explores cultural articulations of “recomposition” as a material, social, and aesthetic principle. Recomposition refers to a physical or material phase change, a process that oscillates uneasily between decay and regeneration. As opposed to the more negative “decomposition,” Recomposition requires an attention to processes of regrowth. In science, the laws of the conservation of matter and energy demands that whatever is lost must be gained elsewhere. Accordingly, Recomposition maintains that decay and growth, loss and gain, degeneration and regeneration must exist on a shifting continuum.
After a generative think-tank on the theme, the committee solicited papers along the lines of the following key phrases: deterioration, illness and death, uncounted objects and/or bodies, generative decay, weak affects, media archeology, aporia, active negation, dispossession, survival, endurance, conundrums of solidarity, governmentality of “crisis”, abandonment, ecological dilemmas, ruptures in history and temporality, dark economies, censorship and redaction.
Full schedule if you are interested!