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CFP: Artists and Writers

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Relationships between artists and writers have long played an integral role in the dissemination and shaping of artistic, literary and critical reputations. This session will investigate the relevance of Derrida’s statement (in The Politics of Friendship) that ‘between talking to them and speaking of them there is a world of difference’, and the ways in which proximity between writers (not necessarily art critics) and artists has proved not only commercially convenient but has also fostered other forms of exchange and engagement. Examples of such reciprocity might be demonstrated through texts or artworks which exhibit varied degrees of rupture, interruption, proximity, presence and familiarity. Potential formats include:

• correspondence
• interviews, conversations and questionnaires as forms of deliberation
• portraiture
• text-image collaborations
• artists’ interventions in critical writings and translations
• writers’ involvements in artists’ statements and titling of artworks
• transcriptions from oral interviews/conversations to text.

How do such relationships develop, what are their benefits and limitations, and how have they changed over time in relation to artistic and literary innovations, distribution networks, and changing socio-political contexts? What new forms of knowledge result from these exchanges between the verbal and the visual? What is their relevance to artistic production and art writing today? Alert to the dangers of normalising a binary ‘fraternal’ dynamic, we are particularly keen to encourage contributions addressing feminist, queer and postcolonial perspectives on this topic.

Email paper proposals to the session convenors by 9 November 2015.

http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2016/session13