[spectre] CFP: "Video Art and Africa" at AAH Annual Conference 21 (Birmingham, 14-17 Apr 21)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Date: Jul 9, 2020
Subject: CFP: 4 Sessions at AAH Annual Conference 21

Birmingham, July 14 - April 17, 2021
Deadline: Oct 19, 2020

[4] Video Art and Africa

Session Convenors:
Katarzyna Falęcka, Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT), 
Falecka.Katarzyna at caorc.org
Gabriella Nugent, UCL, gabriella.nugent.14 at ucl.ac.uk

This session invites paper proposals that explore the deployment of 
video art by artists from Africa. Developed in the 1960s, video art 
emerged in the era of decolonisation, and its accessible technologies 
were later taken up by many people who had stories to tell. It is a 
medium of relative historical recentness and today favoured by artists 
operative in global contemporary networks. However, in comparison to the 
vast and growing literature on African cinema, there is relatively 
little scholarship on video art from Africa. This session seeks to 
explore how artists from Africa have specifically employed the languages 
enabled by video, such as montage, the loop, repetition and duration, to 
work through both the distant and more recent pasts in Africa.

We are particularly interested in video works that explore histories of 
colonialism, decolonisation and nation-building projects. The archival 
turn in art has led artists to rework historical documents through video 
to elucidate local experiences and to contest old and clichéd 
assumptions with something previously unthought, unheard or unseen. 
These practices raise questions as to who owns history and how 
historical documents can be performed within the distinct needs and 
expectations of the present. Simultaneously, video has stepped in to 
address feminist histories, questions of labour, race and class, as well 
as transregional alliances. The panel thus invites proposals for papers 
which explore the potential, as well as possible shortcomings, of video 
art for addressing these histories.

Abstract max. 250 words. Deadline 19 October 2020.

Please email your paper proposal to the session convenors using the 
Paper Proposal Form (https://bit.ly/3eVYWZu).

Link to the session information: 
https://eu-admin.eventscloud.com/website/2065/video-art-and-africa/

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: 4 Sessions at AAH Annual Conference 21 (Birmingham, 14-17 Apr 21). 
In: ArtHist.net, Jul 9, 2020. <https://arthist.net/archive/23395>.

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Post COVID-19 plans
Whilst it’s difficult to know for certain how the current and future 
situation around COVID-19 might evolve, the Association for Art History 
does intend to host a 2021 Annual Conference. This will either be as a 
physical event in Birmingham, as a virtual event or, most likely, as a 
hybrid combination of physical and digital. We will be monitoring 
government guidelines and the situation closely and will look to make a 
decision on physical or virtual no later than 1 December 2020. A 
physical conference would adhere to all government and university health 
and safety rules, and we are already working towards a programme that 
takes existing social-distancing measures into account. If we have to 
pursue a virtual-only event it would not be compressed into the exact 
same four days, so as to accommodate different time zones and minimise 
screen fatigue.