Gremlins from the Kremlin, in the land of inflated rent and bong resin



If curiosity strikes any in the SC region, I'll be speaking tomorrow, with a number of friends and collaborators.  I'll give a version of the talk I gave in London last week, on hostile objects, sabotage, comedy, hoarding, gremlins, evil steam presses, spoiled soup, and frozen exchange.  A number of very sharp people will be talking - Erik's thinking on behaviorism alone is worth the trip.

Aesthetic Revolutions: Workshop and Symposium

Saturday, November 20 9AM-6:30PM
Cowell Conference Room

This workshop is associated with a collaborative book in progress comparing different historical moments and national / linguistic / cultural contexts of aesthetic revolutions.  As we define it, an “aesthetic revolution” designates a particular sort of historical formation in which radical artistic and political agendas converge, with both being conflated in a holistic utopian vision or project.  As key examples of heteronomous art movements reaching beyond the confines of the institution of art we are considering Italian Futurism, Surrealism, Russian post-October avant-garde, Situationist International, American culture of the sixties, the Neue Slowenische Kunst movement in Slovenia, and recent Chinese art.  The co-authored book will seek to analyze these avant-garde phenomena historically and critically, revealing common characteristics and the situations and processes underlying them. This is the third of  three workgroup meetings, following meetings in Koper, Slovenia in June 2010 and Beijing in August 2010.  The draft papers for the workgroup sessions are available in advance; please request via email from tyrus@ucsc.edu.  The oral presentations cover additional topics related to the theme of aesthetic revolutions.


9:00 Introductory remarks


Morning workshop sessions (short presentations and discussion of papers circulated in advance):

9:15-10:15: Aleš Erjavec (Ljubljana) "Introduction: Aesthetic Revolutions"
10:15-11:15:Sascha Bru (Leuven), “From Book to Party: The Futurist Re-Definition of Art” (via videoconference)

11:15-11:45:  coffee break

11:45-12: 45: Raymond Spiteri (Wellington), “The Automatic Message: Surrealism and the Limits of Aesthetic Revolution”

12:45-1:45: Lunch

Afternoon workshop session (short presentations and discussion of papers circulated in advance):

1:45-2:45:  Tyrus Miller (Santa Cruz), “All Along the Watchtower: Aesthetic Revolution in the United States during the 1960s”

2:45-3:15: Coffee break

Oral presentations: 3:15-5:45

Session 1: 3:15-4:30
Evan Calder Williams (Santa Cruz), "Hostile Objects"
Kelly Anne Brown (Santa Cruz), "Balanced Tension: The sculpture and performance of Alexander Calder's Circus"
Discussion

Session 2: 4:30-5:45
Erik Bachman (Santa Cruz), "How to Misbehave as a Behaviorist (If You're Wyndham Lewis)"
Hunter Bivens (Santa Cruz), "From the Crisis of the Novel to Socialist Realism--an Aesthetic Counterrevolution?"
Discussion


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