2010 UCIRA STATE OF THE ARTS CONFERENCE CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The 4th annual UCIRA State of the Arts Conference
Future Tense: Alternative Arts and Economies in the University
November 18-21, 2010
University of California, San Diego
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2010 CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Deadline: May 28, 2010
The University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA) and the University of California, San Diego are pleased to announce the 4th annual UCIRA State of the Arts conference, to take place at UCSD November 18-21, 2010. Proposals are currently being accepted which address the theme Future Tense: Alternative Arts and Economies in the University.
The Conference Theme
The last two years have witnessed an unprecedented crisis on college campuses around the world, as the social compact that governed higher education in the United States and Europe for the past half century has begun to collapse. Universities from London to Sussex, from Athens to Vienna, and from Berkeley to Santa Cruz, have experienced protests, occupations, walkouts and other actions directed against the encroaching privatization of public education. This crisis has been particularly acute at the University of California, the flagship public university system in the United States. Dramatic funding cutbacks, layoffs, furloughs, and fee hikes have been combined with an upsurge in the sort of racist and sexist attacks that often accompany periods of economic turmoil, as the perception of dwindling resources leads to the predictable search for scapegoats.
This complex mix of economic, cultural and social forces places particular pressure on the status of the arts within research universities, and the very notion of the university itself as a haven for liberal arts education. New tensions have opened up, between the arts and humanities and engineering and science, and between public and private funding sources and priorities, even as new solidarities have emerged, among and between staff and faculty, graduates and undergraduates, disciplines and departments. This conference seeks to address the following questions:
· How can the arts respond to this crisis?
· What new alliances can we form both within the university campus and the communities beyond its walls?
· What alternative economies exist for the support of artistic research?
· What new pedagogical models and new forms of knowledge production can the arts offer as our educational mission is both threatened and, potentially, transformed?
· And what forms of creative practice have been mobilized by the protests, walkouts and occupations?
· As the campus itself becomes a field of symbolic resistance and contestation, from swastikas at UC Davis to Klan hoods at UC San Diego, what are the limits and the political implications of freedom of _expression_?
We seek proposals for presentations, performances, projects, workshops, conversations or panels that address the past history, present moment and future possibilities of the arts in a university setting.
Application:
All applications must be emailed in 1 single PDF to ZouZou Chapman (zchapman@ucira.ucsb.edu) by 5:00pm on Friday, May 28th, and should include:
(1) a fully completed cover sheet (downloadable from the website)
(2) a c.v. for each of the lead applicant(s)
(3) A detailed description of proposed activities (1-2 pages single-spaced)
(4) [optional] work samples (3 @ 250k or smaller, jpeg format) or links within your application to external image/video hosting services (i.e. Vimeo,YouTube, etc.) and/or personal or departmental webpages as appropriate.
Participants may choose to submit written papers before or after the conference for possible inclusion in the UCIRA project publication series.