Graphic Designer

Hey guys!

This is a little late to bring up right before our meeting, but I wanted to float the idea of asking this guy, http://mike-rinaldi.com/, to do our poster design.

I spoke with him today and he said the $50 honorarium would be fine. He makes some beautiful stuff.

Let me know what you think :)

beginnings of our official website!

Lookit! Justin has been hard at work on our new Wordpress site!

http://ahcsconference.wordpress.com/

Thanks Justin :) we can talk more about how this is shaping up tomorrow at our meeting,

Cheers!

D

Final meeting time

Hey all! I've just emailed you about this but here's the doodle poll to finalize our meeting time.

http://www.doodle.com/p64gvydyb23sgsp7

see you all soon!

D

Tangible Thoughts :)

 Hey everyone. Below is a list of topics that could be in line with the theme:

-Troubling the tangible could include scholarship that explores or provides counter-narratives to those thought of as concrete fact. For example, I am interested in alternative press coverage and would be interested to see projects that explore the alternative press as providing spaces where oppositional narratives can be found. 

-Tangible communication could include language systems involving symbols and touch, for example when pictures are used to convey meaning for people who can’t communicate through speech or sign language. This could be an attractive area for disability theorists.

-Tangibility could be connected to archive studies. What are the issues that accompany archiving tangible objects (books, newspapers, personal possessions etc.)? Also, we could see projects that explore efforts to digitize the tangible? Projects in this area could make the digital tangible by drawing attention to the network of servers, archivists, and policy makers that are part of the process of digitizing the tangible.

-The tangible could be include trauma and affect theorists, by asking what role the tangible plays in connecting victims of traumatic events to past, as well as the tangible and it’s connection to catharisis? Basically, what is the risk involved in holding onto the tangible when it could affect you negatively?

These are just some ideas. Sorry it has taken me so long. I am holed up in my office trying to finish two papers and drinking as much coffee as possible.

Paul

MEETING TIME before the holidays

Hi everyone -

I do REALLY want to meet once before everyone scatters for the holdiays. I know this is especially tricky this time of year, but it would be good to delegate some (small) tasks to do over the hols, get a sense of where we are with the CFP and to get a sense of where we stand/make some decisions together (esp. taking action on some keynote stuff). 

 I'm here until the 16th and I'd happily meet at any point, provided that we're quick and efficient so we can all get back to our own coursework/other things (although Mondays or Tuesdays are especially good for me).

I thought I'd just informally ask for now, is there a particular week that works best for everyone? this week, next, the week after? After I get a general sense of when works for the majority of us, I'll set up another doodle poll so we can decide on a specific time.

See you all soon!
D 

Some design ideas

Ok so I'm clearly just procrastinating! But I started fiddling around making potential headers for use on our CFP or website or wherever, I was inspired by Tomasz's point towards the Doubting Thomas image by Caravaggio, it's great! I have no design/photoshop skills, this was just me messing about with images and powerpoint.

(also don't know if we should be worried about using more contemporary images for our publicity, because of copyright or whatever...)

Anyway! These were easy to make and infinitely customizeable... these were just the first images that came to my head (my brain is mush right now)

And also, Wendy might have a lead on a *proper* graphic designer who might be able to do some work for us for a small stipend! But for the time being, this might be a quicker/easier thing to put out on a CFP...

The Tangible, some thoughts

Hi all !

Sorry for the delay in sending these notes ! I should have written this message the day we had our meeting before I got caught up in everything else !

So here are my thoughts :

I first thought of the tangible as a way to try to take a step back from all the theoretical frenzy surrounding the virtual or the cyberspace and maybe arouse original perspectives on it. To me, this theme also opens the door to ways of thinking about culture that could challenge the postmodernist stance and question the repudiation of our faith in perception and our constant focus on discourse as a way to analyze culture and society (see, below, the references to Belting and Jay).

In art, the tangible can evoke themes such as realism or still lives (it can be interesting to reflect on maybe some actualizations of these themes); modernist issues such as materiality, found objects, waste or trash; or more contemporary practices related to questions as actual as ecology in an era of global warming or, from a more technical point of view, practices that make use of gigantic, architectural or oppressing materiality (think of the Monumenta event in Paris or of the work of Serra, Kapoor, Eliasson,  Christo to name a few artists that are interested in scale and matter).

The tangible might also raises issues related to the spectator's experience and the impact of new technologies on it. I remember, for instance, how this guy working at DHC described people's reaction to the recent exhibition of Ryoji Ikeda and his captivating, almost immersive video installations.  Not suprisingly, the guy noticed that if most visitors really liked the pieces, older visitors (baby-boomers and older) would sometimes have a hard time getting interested in it.

Inevitably, then, the tangible can be related to questions raised by the growing extent, in our everyday lives, of medias, technologies and the virtual extension of our lives and imaginary : should it be opposed or considered as a threat to tangible objects (e.g. newspaper, books, photo albums, cd, etc.) and experiences (e.g. social encounters, sexuality, etc.) or as a mere reconfiguration of them or even, as an evolution ? 

For Hans Belting (An Anthropology of Images) our relations to virtual images are anchored in the same triadic relation between the image, the body and the medium (defined as that which makes the image visible). It seems even inappropriate to say of an image that it is virtual. For an image, as long as it is not mental, is always made visible through a material support (a screen, a computer, a pad, etc.). Therefore, what is transformed in virtual images is merely the surface on which they are made visible. However, the new technologies bear witness to our distrust toward the material world and the utopia of a disembodied reality. What is really threatened by these images is the relation that ties them to places or localizations. In the age of globalization, the physical territory of a culture and its referents is people themselves and their memory.

Seen from that angle, the tangible is deeply connected to anthropological approaches of art and communication as well as to studies on memory. It can give rise to reflections on patrimony, inheritance and spirituality.

But of course, it can also be further developed with reference to affect theory, theories of perception, phenomenology and so on. It is also connected (negatively) to certain forms of iconoclasm, to a valorization of idea or even — from a lacanian perspective — of symbolization (language) against image or imaginary (see, on these issues, Martin Jay's Downcast Eyes, the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, 1993).

I put some thoughts into the choice of our keynote speaker and, personally, I really liked the idea of Jane Benett, Bill Brown (although I think he is in sabbatical this year) and David Freedberg. I would also suggest these names : Lorraine Daston (Objectivity, Things that Talks), Constance Classen (The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, The Book of Touch) and Martin Jay (Downcast Eye).

As for an image, I really like the Carravagio's Doubting Thomas (see Thomasz's post). I have had the same thought. But I am sure we could also think of evocative fonts or the use of a generic image.

That's about it for now ! I hope it helps !

Maryse

Precarious Perception: A Rapprochement of Risk & Tangibility in AHCS

SO...

While doing research for my final paper in COMS 655: Media & The Senses, I was careful to keep our theme of "The Tangible" in mind, and actually had a few ideas come to mind regarding the relationship of visibility/tangibility and risk/precarity.

My research for this paper, which seeks to examine themes of risk, trauma, and queer archive in relation to Bareback subcultures, has given me a new appreciation for the role that perception/visibility/the tangible play in structuring conceptions of risk and reward.

Essentially, deciding to take a risk is a decision that emerges out of holding the tangible and the intangible in dialogue with each other. We make a decision based on our very tangible material landscapes, yet we hold our material realities in an abstract conversation with the potential consequences, repercussions, and rewards that making a certain decision might entail.

So, how is risk negotiated within this ethereal conversation between lived reality and imagined future? How to bring the tangible and the intangible together in an imagined laboratory, within which we perpetually concoct what we believe are "rational decisions" that both take into account our immediate material realities, as well as the not-so-immediate future-reality which waits for us to decide and act before it can emerge.

It seems that by considering the ways in which our immediate, affective, material realities structure our abstract hopes, intentions, and incentives, we are able to locate the nexus of possibility within the amalgam of the tangible and the intangible. By thinking about the ways in which risk is represented and communicated, we can easily incorporate Art History and Communication Studies. That is, we can consider the ways risk is communicated or represented within visual culture, popular culture, television, film, music, literature, public discourse, and society as such, and through these various media consider the ways in which the intangibility of risk is translated into the tangibility of media and materiality.


Okay--so, that was just a ton of brainstorming, and maybe be useless, or may be incredible profound. In any case, I hope this helps, and I think that--if you guys like these ideas--Tim Dean (Unlimited Intimacy) might be an incredible presenter, and he teaches at SUNY Buffalo, so it's not far at all.

So, let me know what you think! Love y'all and be good!

- Justin Wayne Lutz

conference website

hey guys -

we should probably get a conference website going, I've told Sara to inform the person who owns (and is paying for!) the last website to just shut it down, and I've saved all the info from that so we can add it to our own. Anyone have a preference for a certain blogging platform? we can stick to blogspot, but as I understand it, wordpress is more customizeable - but I'm pretty unfamiliar with all of this stuff - i can fiddle around with blogspot to a certain extent - do any of you have a handle on how wordpress works?

look at this fancy website that the grad conference committee for Western made: http://reactivatingobjects.wordpress.com/

tangible ramblings

The Tangible – my notes

-       How can artwork involve the body in ways that are ‘tangible’? Physically registered? Embodied engagements? The materiality of artistic practice

-       artwork that facilitates multisensory experience

-       immersive/participatory installations

-       synesthesia – when different tangibilities become confused?

-       use of ephemera/waste/detritus – what objects accrue more value as ‘tangible’ than others? Could tangibility be associated (problematically or no) with a form of physical ‘authenticity’?

-       what is the function of tangibility in artistic practice? Creating embodied engagements? Physical reciprocity? Associations with memory and personal experience? Facilitating intersubjective interactions within the exhibition space? 

-       And conversely, what about the intangible? How does a lack of materiality similarly (or differently) leave impressions on our bodies, our experiences?

o   Or when tangibility is transferred from one medium/sense to another? Like video art that visually/audibly attempts to convey a sense of haptic or olfactory experience

§  Laura U. Marks – The Skin of the Film and Touch (incidentally I’d love to see her as a keynote but she’s from BC and is more of an art-focused person.. still awesome though!)

-       What happens when tangibility slowly ebbs away? Does that equate with forgetting? I’m thinking of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Candy Spills

-       Tangibility – the circulation and the accrued social life of objects – Will Straw’s work on used bookstores and yard sales, how does the tangibility of objects change as they circulate through a city, accumulating ‘use’?

-       The tangible as something fearful, disgusting, abject

-       Feelings/affects that are tangible/palpable

-       Absence/lack as a tangible feeling – the lack or loss of something (or someone) taking physical shape – like Rachel Whiteread’s House and other casting work

-       How can typically non-tangible media (digital art for instance) create its own sense of tangibility? (Again, Laura Marks has a cool chapter on the haptic materiality of web art) 

-    The tangibility of ruined spaces - I've been reading a lot of work by this cultural geographer named Tim Edensor lately, he writes (pretty romantically) about the materiality of industrial ruins, and how these liminal spaces accumulate memory, create affordances for new uncontrollable experiences, etc

-     tangibility and public memorials - transferring a cultural/historical memory or trauma into something publicly tangible?

-       Or, a methodological question – how do we reinsert tangibility back into art historical research? We spend our days with slides and photocopies and jpgs, etc – writing about work we may not have ever seen in the flesh. But what does it mean to see something ‘in the flesh’? what are the problems of privileging that sort of immediate, physical engagement with a work of art as more ‘authentic’ or more ‘tangible’? Can art historical writing accrue a materiality/tangibility on its own terms, without a reliance on the physical ‘aura’ of an object?

Reading back over all of this, I guess what I’m mainly interested in is how tangibility can become unfixed as a material experience from objects, how it circulates, how it can seem stronger at certain points in an object’s trajectory rather than others. Also, how it can be used as a way to consider sensory experience, or as a way to explore how materials considered discardable/disgusting/abject convey certain affects.

Does that make any sense?

Tangible ->Mediating Virtuality + OOO?

I've been trying to keep the CFP in mind, but it's got a lot to compete with. A crowded place, my head is these days. One auspicious thing, though, came via a Merleau-Ponty quote for my paper for Christine's class:

"We must habituate ourselves to think that every visible is cut out of the tangible, every tactile being in some manner promised to visibility, and that there is encroachment, infringement, not only between the touched and the touching, but also between the tangible and the visible, which is encrusted in it, as, conversely, the tangible itself is not a nothingness of visibility, is not without visible existence."
- The Visible and the Invisible, 134.

NEAT. Opens the door for talking about Heidegger and Virtuality, as well as maybe some Object Oriented Ontology? Possibly together?

Haha, and as with one breath I excitedly open the door for the topic, I want to, with the next, restrict the breadth of the discussion a little too. I think the best CFPs strike a balance of defining a research theme without breaking it down into infinite many questions and possible tangents. (Tangent -> Tangible? Argh.)

What do you folks think?

Finance nonsense

Hi again everyone - it's my last frenzied post of the day, i promise!

I just had another helpful email from Sara, last year's chair, and she had this information to share:

"There is another thing that I need to let you know from the start, but that I forgot to mention in my previous email. Because we don't have our own student account, the conference committee needs to pay for EVERYTHING UPFRONT, and then apply to the various funding sources with receipts and proof of costs/payments for reimbursement. I found that to be the most stressful and tedious process of organizing the conference. The committee was wonderful last year and everyone pitched in to cover the costs, drawing from savings and credit, but the previous year, Paulina (the committee chair) fronted almost all of the conference expenses on her own, which neared $2,000. It is incredibly frustrating and somewhat daunting, I know, so I would suggest addressing the issue with the committee as soon as possible. I recall last year that the PGSS was talking about working on establishing accounts for student groups to streamline this process, but I don't know if they have gone ahead with it or not. Perhaps it is worth looking into or talking to the GSA about. "




Not going to lie, this freaks me out a fair deal. I definitely DO NOT WANT to run our finances this way, seems far too stressful for its own good, nor do I expect any of you to carry that kind of financial burden either (and do I even have $2,000 to my name at the moment? that's a whole other issue, haha). I'm happy to cover smaller costs upfront for the time being (like a CFP design honorarium or something) but anything large is an unreasonable request of any of us, really.

What I'm going to try to do, then, is meet with Jacinthe Deschenes, who is the PGSS Student Life Coordinator (she controls all the student association accounts) sometime this week. I sat in on a meeting between she and Alexandra last week re: the finances for our Graduate Student Association, just so we could meet and I could tell her that I would be organizing our conference. She's really lovely and if anyone would know how to establish an account for our committee, it would be her!

So - is anyone (1 or 2 people, tops) able to spare a bit of time this week or next come with me to meet her? It would be massively helpful, I could really use an extra set of ears on this.

I'll get some student-governmental-ish advice tomorrow at the GA as well, on how to proceed.

Let me know please and thank you!

Ugh.

D

grants and last year's files

Ok! I've received some files in my dropbox account from Sara, last year's committee chair. I'll proceed to add you all to the shared folder so you can look at the material.

(just remember, as you're accessing the files, don't pull them out of the folder on to your desktop, because then no one else will be able to access them)

Also, it looks like last year's committee applied for this funding grant through the PGSS :

http://pgss.mcgill.ca/services/24/PGSS-Grants

Looks pretty straightforward, and they accept applications once a month!

Ok, I'll keep you all posted on my mini-update at the GA meeting tomorrow (and definitely feel free to come too, there will be freeeeeeeeeee naaaaaaachos. it's at 6:30 - thompson house room 404)

THE TITLE

Hi All,

Is the theme title: THE TANGIBLE?
or is it something else? what do you think would be the most attractive theme title for potential speakers? + do you think the title matters at all (is it just the main body of text in the CFP that matters?)

THE TANGIBLE/PALPABLE EARLY MODERNITY

Hi Everyone,

It may be a bit preliminary to pass my thoughts and ideas about the conduciveness of the theme ‘tangible/palpable’ to research on early modern visual culture before letting Maryse post her notes on the blog, but because I only have some time today, here we go:

CONDUCIVENESS OF THE THEME TO EARLY MODERN STUDIES

Overall, the theme should be of interest to medievalists/early modernists as it can be easily fitted into research on (1) the anthropology of the image [Belting, Freedberg, Stoichita, Daston], (2) the senses/sensory perception [San Juan, Loh, Taussig, Gaudio, Bal], and (3) the shifted epistemology of the image caused by ‘the crisis of the image’ (in Belting’s parlance).

1)     Traditionally, early modernists have discussed images in rationalised and aestheticized terms (an outcome of the Cartesian body/mind split, and the post-Enlightenment discourse on aesthetics). Belting, Freedberg and Stoichita were instrumental in proving that such modernist attitude to the ontology of the image is flawed because it completely overlooks every-day encounters with images (be they cultic, political/dynastic or mythological), wherein images were in fact treated as animated beings. This of course goes well with Latour’s dictum ‘we have never been modern’, as well as the Heideggerian discourse on things that was later updated and re-worked by Brown into the thing theory. In my opinion, the thing theory is particularly useful because it challenges the binary opposition between subject and object, or in other words: between things (understood as physical objects and rights to them) and humans in Western epistemology. The fission of the subject from the object is particularly perceptible within the field of Renaissance studies, owing to the position of the Renaissance in traditional academia as the original locus of modernity, and modern subjectivity, in particular.

2)     Recent scholarship on the human senses is particularly suitable for our enquiry. In very brief, it stipulates that the changing modes of imagining in early modernity, such as mimesis or the concept of representation itself, shifted the very conceptual infrastructure for the practice and the theory of the senses. The early modern classification of the senses is a good initial entry into this question.

3)     The category ‘art’ (of painting, sculpture, etc.) emerged as an established element of elite cultural life only in early modernity. Hans Belting in his anthropological study of human response to imagery has written about this historical moment in terms of the ‘crisis of the image’, wherein ‘art’ replaced the ‘image’. According to Belting, ‘art’ was developed as a joint outcome of the Protestant iconoclasm that freed the painting from the presence of God, and humanist intellectual endeavours that linked painting to liberal arts. Or, to use Victor Stoichita’s terminology, the imago had become a quadro. For Stoichita, imagery displayed a high degree of self-awareness in the early modern period in terms of its epistemology. Consequently, the response of the viewer to the new ontological construct of quadro also changed and now included the cognitive recognition of this self-awareness. The quadro was self-reflexive not only through the intellectual awareness of the beholder but it also turned the beholder’s attention to the represented nature of painting.

POSSIBLE TOPICS/QUESTIONS (I’ll liaise with Alexandra for more options)

·       The living image (a sculpted Madonna that cries, a sculpted Christ that bleeds, etc.; they were automata; a lot of criticism of such practices coming from Luther)

·       Representations of touch (Doubting Thomas, the flaying of Marsyas, anatomy lessons, etc.)

·       Embodied interactions with images (kissing Christ’s feet, touching Mary’s garments)

·       The process of bronze casting, death masks (wax), sculpting the body of Christ out of wood (only anthropological approaches; no reactionary connoisseurship)

·       Image collections (assembling the former cultic objects in the  space of a lay gallery; how did this change the sensory experience with these things)

·       Early modern allegories of human senses (i.e. Brueghel)

·       The physical transport of images (this is when their physicality actually matters; what happens if they break/crack/discolour during the journey?)

·       Votive offerings

POTENTIAL KEYNOTES (from my selfish perspective)*

·       Hans Belting, Emeritus professor (may mean he has a lot of time; on a down note, he lives in Germany)
·       David Freedberg, Columbia (not far away) http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/faculty/Freedberg.html
·       Joseph Koerner, Harvard (even closer than NYC) http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k60328
·       Bill Brown, Chicago http://english.uchicago.edu/faculty/brown
·       Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute, Berlin http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/staff/members/ldaston
·       Igor Kopytoff, Penn State (he’s super interesting; he looks at things as if they had an agency of their own; he coined a term ‘biography of things’) http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~kopytoff/

*All the keynotes listed by Daniella are of potential interest to me, except the game theorists (as an early modernist, I couldn’t care less). I think that for the cohesion of the whole enterprise (and given our divergent interests), it makes sense to invite either a philosopher or an anthropologist: someone like Bill Brown or Igor Kopytoff would foot the bill advantageously for all of us.

EMPHASIS ON INTERDISCIPLINARITY

Given the uniqueness of AHCS Dept, and our own rather dissimilar research interests, we should emphasise in the CFP that diversity doesn’t need to mean chaos. Rather, we should turn this into a virtue. We should perhaps say something like: ‘We would like to invite speakers from a broad array of academic disciplines. However, given the unique interdisciplinary nature of McGill’s Department of Art History and Communication Studies, we will particularly welcome papers that can be simultaneously of interest to communications scholars, modernist and contemporary visual studies scholars, as well as scholars working on older periods.’ (Although perhaps this is a potential scarecrow?)

POTENTIAL IMAGES

Caravaggio's Doubting Thomas

Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas

THE TANGIBLE

I google image searched 'tangible' and this is what came up! Apparently it's a book of graphic design... just for some visual interest to our blog...

another google image search... do you think anyone would notice if we just used this for our posters?? haha

Hey all,

So within the next week or so, can you include some comments within this post on some potential research/paper avenues for the 'Tangible'? Ways that it fits into your own discipline, perhaps? This is to assist Saelan, Fran and Anne as they write up the CFP. .

Thanks everyone!! 

Meeting #2 notes - Monday November 19th

Meeting #2

Wendy, Daniella, Anne, Tomasz, Paul, Maryse, Saelan, Fran, Anne Sophie

Li’s suggestion; the Disposable – concern that it would not apply to more historical research

The Innovative – Tomasz’s suggestion – trying to complicate the value that newness has in contemporary (and historical research) questions about presentism, media archaeology scholarship, contemporary practices that use obsolete technologies

- negative connotations of the title? Can we think of a title that encapsulates these themes that is a different title?

           

The Tangible

The Forgettable – is the forgettable already too common a theme? What about the “unforgettable”?

-       to forget, ‘on forgetting’

Voting time….

We are doing our theme of THE TANGIBLE!!!!

EVERYONE: post blurbs with ‘tangible’ notes – as in, how it relates to your own discipline, etc, to the conference blog

Potential Keynotes… here we are ‘dreaming big…”

Jane Bennett

David Freedberg

Bill Brown

Levi Bryant

James Elkins

Jussi Parikka

Martin Hand

Haidee Wasson

Ian Bogost – game theorist

Lynn Hugues 

Partnering with other organizations?

Esse

Formats – bookshop

Special issue with In Circulation?

AHCS Conference Committee

Hi all! This is our blog - hope this works, here's just a copy of the email I sent you all re: our first meeting:

1. The (Tentative) Schedule:
Dec 14th - have the CFP sent out on listservs
Early January/Start of semester - resend the CFP
Jan 25 - due date for CFP
Feb 22 - email chosen student speakers
April 26 - Conference!
April 27 - Faculty Colloquium

2. The Potential Themes (and keep in mind that these could include any number of synonyms/alterations)
The Innovative
The Forgettable
The Tangible

WE WILL VOTE ON THESE ON MONDAY!

3. The Sub-committees (Justin - we're sad you couldn't make it today, is there a particular subcommittee you'd like to help on? Preferably one of the first two as they have less people?)
Daniella: your general secretary/chair/fuhrer/queen - I will be bouncing between all of these groups to facilitate communication and pick up slack!)
Communications: Saelan, Fran, Anne
Organization: Anne-Sophie, Wendy, Alexandra
Session Planning: Tomasz, Li, Paul, Maryse


THINGS TO THINK ABOUT FOR MONDAY:
- think about the potential themes and which you would prefer, after our meeting on Monday we will (hopefully) each be writing up little 2-sentence blurbs about how the themes fit into our own disciplines, to assist the Communications team with the CFP
- think about potential keynotes that you'd like to see
- anything else you think we may have forgotten to discuss/delegate today

THINGS I'LL BE WORKING ON FOR MONDAY:
- I'll continue to liaise with Sara about the docs from last year so we can figure out some more details about how the previous committee worked
- I'll try to understand Moodle to set up a shared online space for us if we can all communicate (although if I can't figure it out, I'll switch to blogger or something)