The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, Europe 1100-1800 presents:

What are the Politics of Contemporary Art?

This paper explores the last Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) in Brisbane, which I take as symptomatic of a broader tendency of contemporary art museums superficially to embrace the language of critique – an embrace that unfortunately hollows out critique’s central function: the recognition of the social and economic conditions of the institution in which art is produced and exhibited. Why, we might ask, despite the celebration of the museum as a site for progressive (if not even subversive) politics, does the art exhibition sometimes end up producing only a ‘simulacrum’ of critique?

Paolo Magagnoli is Lecturer in Art History at The University of Queensland. He writes widely on modern and contemporary art and visual culture. He is the author of Documents of Utopia: The Politics of Experimental Documentary (Columbia University Press, 2015). His essays have been published in such journals as The Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Afterall and Philosophy of Photography.

This event is one of a series of seminars inviting debate upon the merits and consequences of a return to ‘critique’ in aesthetic criticism.

Date: Friday 17 June 2016
Time: 4:00pm
Venue: Boardroom (Room 601),
Advanced Engineering Building (Building 49),
The University of Queensland, St Lucia.

All welcome.
RSVP: uqche@uq.edu.au

Venue

Boardroom (Room 601), Advanced Engineering Building (Building 49), UQ St Lucia