Event overview
This presentation will be given by TJ Demos, Reader of Modern and Contemporary Art at UCL.
This presentation addresses recent artistic proposals regarding the politics of climate change and the financialization of nature, with discussion of how Marxist political theory, activism of the Occupy movement, and the speculative realist philosophy of ecology help to structure the debate.
T.J. Demos writes widely on modern and contemporary art and his essays have appeared in journals including Grey Room and October. He is also a critic, writing for magazines such as Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, and Art Press, and recently completed a term on the editorial board of the quarterly Art Journal. His published work centers broadly on the conjunction of art and politics, examining the ability of artistic practice to invent innovative and experimental strategies that challenge dominant conventions, whether representational, aesthetic, or social and political. His books include: The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press, 2007), which places Duchamp’s installations and mixed-media projects - including his “portable museum,” La Boîte-en-valise - in relation to geopolitical and aesthetic displacement during the early twentieth century’s periods of world war and nationalism; and Dara Birnbaum: Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (MIT Press/Afterall Books, 2010), which examines Birnbaum's art practice in relation to postmodernist appropriation, media analysis, and feminist politics, and explores the artist's pioneering attempts to open up the transformative capacities of video as a medium.
T.J. Demos’ current work focuses on contemporary art, investigating in particular the diverse ways that artists have negotiated the recently emerging conjunction of political sovereignty and statelessness. He is presently completing two book projects: the first, provisionally titled Migrations: The Politics of Documentary Art During Global Crisis (Duke University Press), explores the relation of contemporary art--including practices from North America, Europe, and the Middle East--to the experience of social dislocation and political crisis, where art figures in ways both critically analytical and creatively emancipating; the second, entitled Return to the Postcolony: Spectres of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press), addresses the recent returns of select artists to former colonial states in Sub-Saharan Africa and the resulting art--predominantly photography and film--that investigates postcolonial conditions. Attendant to developments in poststructural and postcolonial theory, his present research considers new ways of comprehending photographic and video-based practice, contemporary art and the politics of ecology, socially-engaged art, and the recent restructurings of art institutions.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 24 Jan 2012 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
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