The 4th Annual Conference of the Nordic Network of Avant-Garde Studies
The fourth annual conference of the Nordic Network of Avant-Garde Studies will be held in Reykjavík on the 29th-30th of September, 2007. The subject of the conference is "Avant-Garde and Violence". The conference will be hosted by the University of Iceland and the Iceland Academy of Arts.
Since the early 20th century the link between avant-garde aesthetics and the notion of violence has been a much debated subject, which continues to draw the attention of scholars and artists and to generate polarized debates. The conference offers a forum for 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. The aesthetics of the avant-garde is often represented through a rhetoric propagating a cult of destruction, terror and violence, yet the avant-garde is also frequently seen to embody a radical pacifist critique of war and violence. There is, in other words, a paradoxical relation between the avant-garde and the notion of violence. Since the early 20th century, the aesthetics of the avant-garde has come to represent different responses to an age of military intervention, genocide, radical change and destruction. 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 of the mass media sublimation of war.
Those interested in attending the conference are kindly asked to contact Benedikt Hjartarson at the University of Iceland for further information (benedihj@hi.is).
Download the list of keynote speakers and contributors (pdf) (updated)
Download the abstracts for the conference (pdf)
Click the "read more" link below to see the program for the conference or
download it as a pdf
THE 4TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE NORDIC NETWORK OF AVANT-GARDE STUDIES
Reykjavík: 29th-30th of September, 2007
Program
Saturday, September 29th
10.00-10.30 Opening of the conference
10.30-12.00 Keynote speaker (Askja, Room 1)
Boris Groys: Avant-garde Art Strategies: Iconoclasm as Artistic Device
12.00-14.00 Lunch break
14.00-15.30 Avant-garde Aesthetics, Violence, and Emancipatory Politics (Askja, Room 1)
Patricia Leighten: Violence vs. Creativity in Kupka’s Anarchist Art and Aesthetics
Tania Ørum: Revolution as Personal or Discursive Practice in the Danish Avant-garde of the 1960s
Tiina Purhonen: Emancipation Politics of Contemporary Art
14.00-15.30 Masochism, Sadism and Cruelty: Avant-garde Aesthetics and Theory (Askja, Room 2)
Jonatan Habib Engqvist: Evil Gifts? On Bataille, Groys and Terror Economy
Nikolaj Lübecker: The Politics of Masochism in Georges Bataille 1935-36
Geir Svansson: [Title still needed]
15.30-16.00 Coffee break
16.00-17.30 Avant-garde, Terror, and New Media (Askja, Room 1)
Barrett Watten: Bad History Redux. Language Poetries and the Iraq War
Erin S.Hanas: Artist or Terrorist. The Case of Steven Kurtz
Mikkel Bruun Zangenberg: Belligerent Aesthetics
16.00-17.30 Figures of the Avant-Garde: Militancy / Militarization / Messianism (Askja, Room 2)
Tammy Lynn Castelein: Storm Troopers, Barbarians and Militarization: Walter Benjamin and Ernst Jünger on the Avant-garde
Bram Ieven: Militancy of the Avant-Garde: Utopias between Lenin and Deleuze
Joost de Bloois: Messianic Militancy: Political Violence and Messianism in Contemporary Italian Autobiography
Sunday, September 30th
9.00-10.30 Keynote speaker (Askja, Room 1)
Mark Antliff: War against War: Anti-Militarism, Anarchism and the Vorticist Aesthetic of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
10.30-10.45 Coffee break
10.45-12.15 Avant-garde Aesthetics and Its Counterparts (Askja, Room 1)
Hubert van den Berg: Long Live Degenerate Art! Some Notes on a Forgotten Arab Avant-Garde Initiative against European Totalitarian Terror
Halldór Björn Runólfsson: [Title still needed]
Per Bäckström: Music for Lettuce. The Violent Reception of the Nordic Neo-Avant-Garde
10.45-12.15 Acts of Violence, Terror and Destruction (Askja, Room 2)
Kimmo Sarje: Weapons and Machines as a Work of Art
Marianne Ping Huang: Das Beckwerk: A Work in Progress on Democracy, War and Terror
Nils Olsson: The Literal Avant-Garde of Gertrude Stein. Warfare and Aesthetics
12.15-14.00 Lunch break
14.00-15.30 Avant-garde Aesthetics and Mediated Violence (Askja, Room 1)
Richard Murphy: Fiction, History and the Avant-Garde: Violence and the “Modernist Event”
Hlynur Helgason: ‘Déclasse’, in Reference to ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ and ‘Inland Empire’
Irma Erlingsdóttir: [Title still needed]
14.00-15.30 The Soviet and Post-Soviet Context (Askja, Room 2)
Charlotte Greve: Friend or Foe. The Russian Avant-Garde in Retrospect
Kristine Danielson: The Photography of Boris Mikhailov. Post-Soviet Conceptualism and the Social Body
Jón Ólafsson: The Concept of the Purge in Stalinist Discourse and Imagery
15.30-16.00 Coffee break
16.00-17.30 Technology, Avant-Garde and Utopianism (Askja, Room 1)
Lamija Kosovic: Re-imag(in)ing of the Posthuman
Úlfhildur Dagsdóttir: From Night of Steel to Lovestar: Avant-garde and Cyberpunk
Sylvain Briens: The Utopia/Dystopia of Global Communication in the Swedish Literary Avant-Garde. A Peaceful Dream or a Totalitarian Nightmare?
16.00-17.30 Avant-Garde Aesthetics, the Holocaust and Jewish Identity (Askja, Room 2)
Bodil Børset: Stomp my Head. Violent Radio in Emil Boyson’s Poem "Loudspeaker Devotion"
Torben Sangild: The Broken Voice – On Steve Reich's Different Trains
Irina Carabas: "Down with the avant-garde for it has prostituted itself." Avant-Garde, Jewishness and Totalitarianism in Romania
17.30-18.00 Presentation: Next Activities of the Nordic Network of Avant-Garde Studies (Askja, Room 1)
20.00 Dinner