Objects in Circulation
The panel examines historical cases of the migration of images and knowledge across cultures and temporalities.
Global Resonance, Belonging, and the Artist Abroad: Okamoto Tarō in Paris
Okamoto Tarō recollects his experiences in Paris between 1929 and 1940, discusses the Abstraction-Création movement and reflects on his time at the Sorbonne and Musée de l’Homme.
Poema Colectivo 2020
In the spirit of collectivity despite geographical distance, post invited contributions to create a “collective poem” based on the 1981 project Poema Colectivo Revolución by the artists’ group Colectivo 3.
Incommensurability and Untranslatability
The move to diversify art historical narratives is often accompanied by a search for commonalities. Instead addressing a need to acknowledge radical difference and untranslatability, each presenter in this panel approached the question of the incommensurable, interrogating tensions between a global approach and site-specific study.
Restitution and Return
The discussion raises contemporary questions of restitution of cultural property taken during periods of colonial expansion.
Anthropology and I: My Time at the University of Paris Department of Ethnology
This source is an English translation by Stephanie M. Hohlios of a compelling 1971 memoir-essay by Japanese artist Okamoto Tarō—“Watashi to jinruigaku: pari daigaku minzoku gakka no koro (Anthropology and I: My Time at the University of Paris Department of Ethnology)”. Okamoto’s essay “Anthropology and I” sheds light on a widely recognized but little understood…
New York, Site of International Crossings
The session explores New York as a site of intersections of artists from around the world who have passed through or settled in the city.
The Multiplication of Perspectives: Opening Keynote
In the keynote lecture, Zdenka Badovinac introduces her concept of the “sustainable museum,” and explores possible translocal approaches to exhibition practice from the so-called periphery, nevertheless situated within the neoliberal global network of art museums and biennials.
Borders and the Barrier of the Skin
A key contradiction of globalization is its facilitation of the movement of goods while the movement of people is increasingly restricted. Furthering this tendency, biometric technologies have expanded the traditional notion of the border, regulating the circulation of gendered, racialized, and classed bodies.
Documenting Migration in Contemporary Art: Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project
How to raise awareness of the most recent refugee crisis in the Mediterranean in a way that does not spectacularize human suffering? Beginning with Bouchra Khalili’sThe Mapping Journey Project, this essay addresses how the present crisis has manifested as image and has made its way, across a variety of methodological and ethical approaches, into works of…
Breathing
Song Dong’s 1996 Breathing—a work that zeroes in on the act of breathing in two charged public spaces in Beijing—speaks to art as intertwined with the practice of living, resistance as well as futility.
Xu Bing’s Cropland (1987)
In Xu Bing’s Cropland, part of the Series of Five Repetitions (1987-88), Chinese characters double as landscape depiction, creating a liminal work that resonates between word and image, representation and abstraction.