From Post-Identity Discourse to Concepts of Communality and Participation in Contemporary Art
Convenors:
Benjamin Greenman, University of Essex. btgree@essex.ac.uk
Merav Yerushalmy, University of Essex. myerus@essex.ac.uk
The term ‘post-identity’ has been used to describe a general tendency in the 1990s to rethink questions of identity. It designates a shift from an analysis of social processes in which the subject is constituted to a theorisation of identity as an open process of iteration and deconstruction.
In discourses on art the question of identity has been articulated alongside such concepts as intersubjectivity and performativity. Interpretation itself has been conceptualised as a process of identity formation. The intensive debate around such issues in art history and cultural theory has spurred much criticism, especially with regard to its polarisation of the research field. In the past few years, however, there has been a notable fatigue with such concerns and a manifest desire, in both theory and practice, to find new critical approaches not only to the conceptualisation of the subject but also to that of larger social and political structures.
In recent debates there has been a growing emphasis on notions of communality and participation. A desire has been expressed to find renewed ways to speak of plurality – the ‘we’ – beyond the concept of identity. The performance of participation has been discussed as one potential way of producing open ended, fluctuating forms of communality. Similar concerns have also been voiced within the discourses of relational, dialogical, situational and other socially engaged art practices.
The session explores current concerns within both post-identity discourse and practices and theories of communality, pointing to broader questions about their relationship and the nature of a shift between the two.
Speakers:
Ignacio Estella Noriega (Universidad Carlos III)
BEYOND DEMOCRACY: Fluxus and the dilemmas of pluralism, individualism and ‘common front’
Katarzyna Kosmala (Heriot-Watt University)
Resisting identities and their utopias in new Europe
Silvia Casini (Queen’s University of Belfast)
Questioning MRI identities through curatorial practice
Toni Ross (University of New South Wales)
Models of Communality in the Art of Lucy Orta
George Lovett (Artist in Residence, Ayuntamiento de Huesca)
interCambiArquitectura (iCA): Relational Architecture?