MCLC: Contemporary Art and Radical Democracy panel

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Bo Zheng <mr.bo.zheng at gmail.com>
Subject: Contemporary Art and Radical Democracy panel
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A panel we are presenting at College Art Association's annual conference
next week. If you cannot make it but are interested in this topic, please
email me (bozheng at cityu.edu.hk) -- we plan to organize a larger conference
and edit an anthology.

Contemporary Art and Radical Democracy in AsiaTime: 2/13/2014, 9:30
AM—12:00 PM
Location: Hilton Chicago, 2nd Floor, Boulevard C, 720 South Michigan
Avenue, Chicago

Chairs: Bo Zheng, City University of Hong Kong; Sohl Lee, University of
Rochester

Contemporary Art through the Collective/Polemic Interventions in Radical
Art and Democracy in Asia: With Focus on Indonesia
Thomas J. Berghuis, Guggenheim Museum

Polylectical Resistance: Contemporary Art and the Pursuit of Radical
Democracy in “Reform Period” China
Paul Gladston, University of Nottingham

Performance, Belonging, and Radical Democracy in Samudra Kajal Saikia’s
Disposable House Project(2012) in Guwahati, Assam
Melissa Rose Heer, University of Minnesota

Failure, Trauma, and Radical Art in South Korea
Young Min Moon, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

How has the idea of democracy motivated radical art in Asia? How have
Asian artists imagined radical forms of democracy? We will reflect on how
artists in Asia have engaged with, reinvented, and radicalized the notion
of democracy since the 1960s. This panel will not only cast a much-needed
theoretical perspective to the study of contemporary Asian art; it will
also enrich global discussions on critical art and the renewal of
democratic ideals.

The question of political representation has always been one of the key
driving forces behind artistic productions in Asia. Whether in
authoritarian regimes or democratized states, art has provided a fertile
ground to imagine alternatives to existing political orders. We will
consider these questions: How did Chinese artists work with the idea of
daminzhu (mass democracy) during and after the Cultural Revolution? How
have Indian artists conjured radical enclaves in the world's largest
democracy? How did artists in South Korea contribute to minjung undong
(People's Movement) in the 1980s, and how have they continued to
reinvigorate the notion of publics after the country instituted a
democratic system in 1987? What can we discern in the recent surge of
activist art in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Japan? And how are new
media artists in Asia using online technologies to push the political and
conceptual boundaries of democracy?

In recent years, the theory of radical democracy put forward by Chantal
Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau in the mid-1980s has inspired lively discussions
on "antagonistic art" (Bishop), "dialogical aesthetics" (Kester), and
"social practice" (Esche, Sholette, Jackson) in Europe and North America.
Building on these discussions, this panel also aims to draw insights from
the writings by Asian theorists such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, Wang Hui, and
Karatani Kojin.