Ever since the Italian futurists declared war to be the only hygiene of the world, further praising militarism and the destructive gestures of the anarchists in their first manifesto from 1909, the link between avant-garde aesthetics and the notion of violence has been a much debated subject. As more recent examples, such as the scandal originating in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s remarks on September 11th, have shown, the association of avant-garde aesthetics with violence and terror still seems to generate polarized debates which are far from having been exhausted. Whereas the art of the avant-garde is often represented through a rhetoric which propagates a cult of destruction, terror and violence, the art and writings of the avant-garde often come to embody a radical pacifist critique of war and violence. Speaking of the avant-garde in relation with the notion of violence is in fact highly paradoxical. Since the early 20th century, the aesthetics of the avant-garde have come to represent different responses to an age of military intervention, genocide, radical change and destruction (as expressed, among others, in responses of different movements and artists/authors of the avant-garde to the Great War, the Second World War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf Wars). These different responses reveal the heterogeneous character of avant-garde aesthetics and draw attention to its instrumentalization within different ideological contexts in the 20th century, ranging from a cult of war, destruction and violence, to a pacifist rejection of the rhetoric of military intervention and the medial sublimation of war. The conference will be open to papers discussing different aspects of the relationship between avant-garde aesthetics and (political, psychological, linguistic, corporeal, sexual and social) notions of violence from the early 20th century to the present. In line with this aim the conference will be open to papers fitting the following categories:
Avant Garde and Terror
- Avant-Garde and the Totalitarian State (e.g. Fascism, Stalinism)
- The Dissociation of Aesthetic Form (e.g. as a response to the dismemberment of the body, the fragmentation of identity and the dissolution of traditional social structures in the 20th Century)
- The Avant-Garde and the Anarchist Movement in the 20th Century
- The Concept of Violence in the Discourse of the Aesthetic Avant-Garde
- Avant-Garde, Violence and Sexual Identities
- Avant-Garde and Terrorism

Avant Garde and War
- Avant-Garde and Genocide
- Avant-Garde and Racial Politics
- The Avant-Garde and the Pacifist Movement
- Avant-Garde Aesthetics and War as a Media Event
- Avant-Garde Literature/Art and the Aestheticization of Violence

Keynote speakers at the conference will be Prof. Mark Antliff (Duke University) and Prof. Boris Groys (Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlruhe).
Papers presented at the conference will be published in an edited volume of articles in Autumn 2008.

Proposals for papers should be sent, along with a short abstract (10-12 lines), to benedihj@hi.is before April 15th 2007.