Anglia Ruskin University

An International conference organised by the Fine Art Research Unit at Cambridge School of Art.

Date: Thursday 3 November 2011
Time: 11.00 - 19.00
Venue: Whitechapel Gallery

 

This one-day conference, through the prism of contemporary artists' practice, looked to re-examine the role and influence of the peripheral and the marginal upon art production and the frameworks of its reception. The conference took its starting point from the notion of marginalia and the importance of this for the so-called 'Invisible College' of the 17th century.

Their idea of culture as a 'meta' structure - that is, commenting in the margins and yet through this procedure, attempting to create knowledge afresh, leads to a correlation with much of contemporary art practice. Likewise, if we think more broadly of what is peripheral (which, through information saturation becomes questionable) we are led to the statement 'there is no outside anymore' (A. Negri). The notion that an artist or artwork may still be able to make insertions into ideological networks of one kind or another is immediately defused by such a conclusion.

This conference, therefore, proposed a reconsideration of these territories and suggested that if there is 'no outside' and only 'inside' then what might this 'inside' be composed of? Pure narrative? Endless marginalia? What are its conditions? And how might art now separate itself from the purely informational. This has crucial implications for art-production, its dissemination and pedagogy.

Speakers included:

• Caleb Kelly (Cracked Media MIT Press 2009/ 'Sound' MIT/Whitechapel 2011), an international writer on sound art, who discussed the re-use of technologies, sampling and 'sonic commentary' on pre-existent materials. (Keynote Speaker)
• Brian Dillon, (Sanctuary, Sternberg 2011 and Ruins, MIT 2011), who talked about the relationship of objects to 'curiosities' and 'tweeness'. (Keynote Speaker)
• Maeve Connolly (The Place of Artists Cinema Intellect 2009) who examined the peripheral position of television within discourses of film and video, taking as its starting point the work of Dara Birnbaum.
• Sean Dockray (Cal Arts, USA) who discussed perceptions of the city and its relation to networks and exchange.

 

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