Radical Aesthetics & Politics Conference Program

Conference Details

Date: December 9th, 2011

Time: 10am - 6pm

Place: Roosevelt House, Hunter College CUNY

47-49 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10065

Conference Program

10:00 AM – Conference Opening Address


10:15 AM - Introductory Remarks
Jonathan H. Shannon,
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY


 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM Panel 1: Collectivist Aesthetics

 Discussant: Mary N. Taylor, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

 Presenters:

Corina L. Apostol, Rutgers University,
On Chto Delat/What is to be done? and the Politicization of Art Practice

Salvatore Giusto, University of Toronto, La Fabbrica dei Sogni: Italian Cinematography, Collective Memory, and National Identity 

Douglas S. Ishii, University of Maryland, College Park, this baggage of essentialist expectation: Race, Music, and the Kantian Aesthetic 

Miki Kaneda, University of California, Berkeley, The Unexpected Collectives: Experimental Assemblages and the Sogetsu Art Center 

 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM Panel 2: Landscape and Memorialization 

Discussant: Neni Panourgiá, Columbia University

 Presenters:

Christopher Fraga, New York University, Landscapes of Necropower 

Karen Frostig, Lesley University and Brandeis University, Fascism and Graffiti: Opposing Systems

Pwyll ap Stifin, University College London, Material Culture Group, The Resonating Voice: Sound and Community at Ground Zero 

Abe Walker, CUNY Graduate Center, Remembering Through Forgetting: Stan Douglas's Abbott and Cordova and the Social Functions of Art-as-Monument 

12:00 – 1:00 PM – Lunch 



 1:00 – 2:30 PM Panel 3: (Re)productive Technologies

 Discussant: Erin Siodmak, The Graduate Center, CUNY

 Presenters:

Keegan Goodman, Stony Brook University, Creatures Don’t Have to Work: Censorship, Imagination and the Films of Jack Smith 

Helen Panagiotopoulos, Hunter College, CUNY, Angels, Donors and Gifting: How Children's Books Frame Third-Party Assisted Reproduction 

Russet Lederman, School of Visual Arts, Fanta, Sprite and G.I. Joe: Depictions of Postwar American Military in Japanese Photography 

 1:00 – 2:30 PM Panel 4: Embodied Narratives

 Discussant: Klara Seddon, Institute of Cultural Research, NY

 Presenters: 

Elizabeth Adan, California Polytechnic State University, Double Vision: Reconstituting Race, Vision, and Representation in Paul Pfeiffer’s Long Count Series 

Park McArthur, Whitney Independent Study Program, A Soft Limp Key

Luke White, Middlesex University, Towards a Radical Aesthetics of Kung-fu Cinema: Authenticity and the Pedagogy of Performing Bodies in Lau Kar-leung’s Shaolin Cycle 

Cheryl Thompson, McGill University, From Mammy to Oprah: An Historical Analysis of the “Fat” Black Female Body as Cultural Product 

2:45 – 4:15 PM Panel 5: Space and Environment 

Discussant: Andrea Blum, Hunter College, CUNY

 Presenters:

Vanessa Grossman, Princeton University School of Architecture, Arquitetura Nova and the quarrels of Marxism, architecture and modernity 

Anna P. Sokolina, Ph.D., Independent scholar, Executive Editor, Alternative Spaces, Environment as Sociopolitical Spectacle: New Utopia Bubble for Reuse of Abandoned Diamond Mines 

Stephan Moore, Brown University, David Ogawa, Union College, and Scott Smallwood, University of Alberta, Metafiscal Services in the Middle of Nowhere 

 2:45 – 4:15 PM Panel 6: Sound, Listening, and Technology

Discussant: Patricia Ticineto Clough, Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

 Presenters: 

Amos Toussaint, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, L’allégoricité esthétique de la politique dans les sphères de la diffusion (publique/privée) de l’action (identité) morale et politique  

*Note: This paper will be presented in French, with a pre-circulated English translation. An English-French translator will be present during the discussion. 

Godfre Leung, Gwen Frostic School of Art, Western Michigan University, Listening and Event: Medium-Specificity in Christian Marclay’s Record Without a Cover 

Chuck Johnson, Conservatory of Music, University of the Pacific, World on a Wire: Towards a New Theory of Emergence in the Sonic Arts 

Aliza Shvarts, New York University, Mimesis, Metal, and the Politics of Doom 

4:30 – 6:00 PM Panel 7: Cultural Politics and the Rethinking of Social Movement History

 Presenters: 

Elizabeth Sine, University of California, San Diego, Dance and the Performance of Politics in Depression-Era Los Angeles 

Amanda L. Higgins, University of Kentucky, A Primer of Resistance: The Vietnam Comic Book

Cutler Edwards, University of California, San Diego, Community Organizing, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Styles of Politics in New York City, 1968-1980 

 4:30 – 6:00 PM Panel 8: We come alive: making exilic spaces for remixing social life

 Larisa Mann, DJ/Legal Anthropologist, Jurisprudence & Social Policy Dept.,
UC Berkeley Law 

In the cracks of coloniality: Jamaican street dances

D’hana Perry, DJ, promoter and fine artist

LOOSE: Problematizing Documentary Practices & Explorations in the Nature of Being

Brian Friedberg, DJ, writer, producer and curator

Jazmin Venus Soto, DJ, scholar, and producer