The Art of Hospitality
“The Art of Hospitality” invites explorations of the possibilities and limits of hospitality, belonging, and gathering through human and non-human entities, mobile and fixed bodies, temporary and permanent spaces. The sites, gestures, acts, and relationships of welcoming or gathering contain power dynamics that reflect financial, social, political, speculative, or imagined currencies, often with burdens and expectations of reciprocity and gratitude. Sites and gestures of hospitality can be found in life, work, art, architecture, design, theater, performance, leisure, and study: these places and acts invite and even demand critique. “The Art of Hospitality” solicits contributions that interrogate these dynamics.
Join us in Pittsburgh, the Steel City, whose three rivers have hosted humans in friendship and conflict for centuries, and whose ongoing occupation of Indigenous land invites reflections on sovereignty and power.