2018 Conference | The Arts in Society Research Network

Workshop, Thirteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada, 27–29 June 2018

Thirteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society, Emily Carr University of Art + Design Vancouver, Canada 27–29 June 2018

Conference Closing Reception, Thirteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society, Emily Carr University of Art + Design Vancouver, Canada 27–29 June 2018

Parallel Session, Thirteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society Emily Carr University of Art + Design Vancouver, Canada 27–29 June 2018

Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

2018 Special Focus: How Art Makes Things Happen—Situating Social Practice in Research, Practice, and Action
27–29 June 2018
Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada

3

Days of paper presentations, workshops/interactive sessions, posters, and colloquia.

280+

Delegates from all over the world who attended the Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society.

29

Countries represented.

Click to Download the Final Program

Social Practice endeavours to model, perform, and enact new and more just ways to live in the world together. It provides an active site from which to investigate the intentions and capacities of social activations mediated by artistic processes. Social Practice takes form in public spaces, community sites, and relational settings, drawing upon a wide range of material, conceptual, and transdisciplinary approaches. As this area of practice continues to expand into academic and cultural institutions around the world, hosting this special focus within the context of this conference presents the opportunity to explore the field at an international scale.

Within the conference, guests, attendees, participants, and presenters had the opportunity to explore this special focus and more through a range of engaging discursive and experimental gatherings. These opportunities include but are not limited to: perambulating dialogical spaces; discursive forms of hospitality and sustenance; agonistic exchanges; off-site and time-insensitive forms of sharing and archiving; and public tracings and mappings of key questions and concerns.

Cissie Fu, Dean, Faculty of Culture + Community, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada; Co-Founder, Political Arts Initiative

Dr. Cissie Fu is Dean of the Faculty of Culture + Community at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Co-Founder of the Political Arts Initiative, which invites 21st-century imag-e-nations of the political through digital technology and the creative and performing arts.

After an AB in Government and Philosophy at Harvard University, Cissie explored public interest law in Washington DC before moving to the University of Oxford for an MSt in Women’s Studies, an MSc in Political Research and Methodology, and a DPhil in Politics and International Relations. She lectured at Oxford and University College London prior to serving as Senior Tutor and Director of Studies at Leiden University College in Leiden University’s Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs in The Hague. Having returned to Canada in August 2016, she continues to be a regular guest curator and performer at art institutions in and out of Europe.

Cissie’s research sits at the nexus of politics, philosophy, and performance, with a focus on contemporary manifestations of the political through individual and collective action and expression. Suspending divisions of theory/practice, contemplation/action, and analysis/performance, Cissie seeks common ground where thinking, making, and acting are equally foundational to being human, which, when taken as the starting point of political theorising, casts performance—of identity, will, and responsibility—as a powerful source for political awakening and a robust realisation of citizenship.

On the premise that the aesthetic refracts the ethical and the political, Cissie draws from artistic practices for her current book project on the politics of silence, towards resuscitating silence as a positive political concept which can articulate and embrace the constructive ambiguities between attachment and detachment in political practices of speech and action.

The Thirteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society featured plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field.

For each conference, a small number of Emerging Scholar Awards are given to outstanding graduate students and emerging scholars who have an active interest in the conference area. The Award, with its accompanying responsibilities provides a strong professional development opportunity for early career academics. The 2018 Emerging Scholar Awardees are listed below.