Art - What is it good for? Education, mediation, criticism
An international conference arranged at Linnaeus University, in Växjö, Sweden, August 19-20, 2020
Due to the present circumstances this conference will be entirely digital!
In this age of turbulence, the value of art is challenged. Why occupy oneself with art, or with teaching art and heritage, when the world is on fire? On the other hand: in critical times, art becomes more important than ever. When human rights are under attack, an awareness of history, of its traditions, symbols and experiences, provides arguments in support of fundamental democratic values. The history of art and culture sheds light on the present.
In the present Anthropocene period, we are exhausting the Earth’s resources. For the last three hundred years, humanity’s relation to nature has been determined by an industrially based, consumerist approach that keeps escalating. How can art help us to identify the driving forces and understand the effects? When the climate change becomes ever more alarming and global collaboration is threatened by nationalistic politics, we must rely on the capacity of art to communicate knowledge, understanding and insight beyond politically polarized arenas.
The aim of the “Art – what is it good for?” conference is to throw light on the function of art in times of crisis by bringing together participants from a range of academic disciplines and professions: researchers, art educators, art critics and artists. Our expectation is that the debates will bring about a recognition of art as fundamental prerequisite for freedom of speech in any society. The conference will provide a scene for exchanges across disciplinary boundaries that may prompt interaction between academia and society and stimulate interdisciplinary research collaboration between theoretical and artistic disciplines.
Keynote speakers
Nancy Thompson, Professor in Art History, St. Olaf College, Northfield Minnesota, USA, and Jennifer Borland, Associate Professor in Art History, College of Arts and Sciences, Oklahoma State University, USA – both founding members of the Material Collective
SU-EN, Choreographer and artistic director for The Butoh Company, Almunge, Uppland
Mathias Kryger, Performance artist, art critic and curator, Copenhagen
Paper sessions
- Art, populism and nationalism
- Teaching art in times of crisis
- Climate and art: the Anthropocene
- Heritage and democracy
- The infrastructure of art: the role of institutions in a sustainable art world
- Education and criticism: art as communication
Questions and information:
Jan Bäcklund
Linda Fagerström
Lena Liepe
Johanna Rosenqvist
Hans Sternudd
Keynote Abstract
Nancy Thompson and Jennifer Borland: Resistance and Engagement: The Challenges of Teaching Art History in the US Today
In this lecture, two members of the Material Collective will present ideas formed through conversation with all ten founding members of the MC, an organization dedicated to fostering respectful intellectual exchange and innovative scholarship in the study of the visual arts, in the academy, and in the broader, public sphere.
As we face the challenges of teaching in today’s environment, we embrace strategies that allow us to engage our students and stress the continued relevance of teaching Art History in a politically-divisive and image-saturated world. Many of us teach in institutions that face repeated budget cuts and favour disciplines that are perceived as career preparation. At the same time, our communities are often hungry for the intellectual and emotional engagement that art brings to society, as well as the possibilities that art offers for resistance and revolution.
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SU-EN: Body and the World
A communicative, visual and physical statement for Art - What is it good for?
by SU-EN, artistic director SU-EN Butoh Company, choreographer, dancer, artist, and curator
In my presentation, I will use words, dance, and actions to give you a taste of my creative universe.
A living world
Swarming of diversity
Absurd beings
Wondrous and ever-changing
A living body
Surrounded by distance
Breathing
Into and through matter
My body is nature
Is art
Is darkness
Is light
My body is … the world
Where my experience is coming from:
Being a student of the legendary Butoh dancers Yoko Ashikawa/Tomoe Shizune and the traditional dance master Yoh Izumo in Japan for many years.
30 years of own artistic activities in various countries/ cultures/ contexts/ collaborations.
Placing myself in challenging situations; personal, artistic, physical and and social.
A deep love and passion for life.
The Butoh Body comes to life in a paradox. It is never one or the other but all/everything at the same time. As soon as you think you can grasp this body, it is gone, changed, taken a new form. Placing my existence in the space – social, physical, psychological, historical – there are many spaces surrounding us. It is in the tension between existence and these spaces that a human struggle and art can begin. The speed of action rather than thinking. Thinking with the body, is the essence of dance. As soon as we think that shape is ”perfect”, we must destroy the shape. For this we use speed. Life is speed.
Since 1997 SU-EN Butoh Company has the headquarter in the forest, in Haglund Skola, Almunge village. I live and work in and with the nature. I struggle with nature. I interact and I try to listen. From this lifestyle, I have developed my dance work towards something what I call relation. I cannot exist without these plants or animals, so we must find a way together.
My dance is an aesthetic action or process. This aesthetics is born out of necessity. Like each plant and living being has the shape and functions due to the best way to survive in the environment they live in. Performing arts is a social activity, the encounter with other human beings is of essence. In a live performance event, there might be one spectator, or there might be many. The performance can take place in a cultural institution, but also in a persons home or workspace, as in our The Visiting Project or in site-specific locations such as our various projects in a Scrapyard in Uppsala. Recently I find myself drifting away from culture institutions and look for a more direct relation to the spectator. A relation, but through my artistic and physical statement. I may force my art into another being, but I trust that the meeting will always be fruitful (even if reactions from a spectator might be mocking, even violent or without any response). My dance and art is a choice, fuelled with intention to create a shift and a tremble.
Dirt shines. Space cracks. Time laughs.
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Mathias Kryger: Institutional critique, diagnostics of a sick world and the body of the art critic as a permeable surface
The foundation of the institutional landscape that constitutes the fields of fine arts (bourgeois art) is shaking, and as the planet is in crisis, so is the art world (let us call it that) along with the social spheres of politics and societal structures and the mental ecology of the individual: The history of art is a history of trauma and of violence and as the planet is experiencing something we could call trauma, so are the people who inhabit them.