Call for papers - Tintin Wulia's AAANZ panel
elly kent
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How aesthetic objects reassemble publics: Dissensus and things-in-common in socially engaged art
Aligning with the conference’s focus on unruly objects, this panel invites contributors to consider how objects act within socially and politically engaged art practices, by reassembling publics through aesthetic encounters. Building on recent work on “things-in-common” (Wulia 2021; 2024) that extends Susan L. Star and James R. Griesemer’s notion of boundary objects, this panel explores how objects not only mediate difference, but reconfigure social formations through aesthetic reassembling—a rearrangement of perceptions and imaginaries provoked by sensory experience.
Things-in-common resonate with Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of being-in-common, highlighting the fragile, evolving nature of community as being-with—being exposed to and affected by others. As in Bruno Latour’s Dingpolitik and John Dewey’s concept of publics formed around issues rather than identities, we invite contributors to contemplate how objects can aesthetically reassemble relations without presuming consensus. One possible focus is on how—by proposing further mechanisms of aesthetic reassembling—objects generate Jacques Rancière’s dissensus, redistributing the sensible.
Contributors might engage these ideas through specific objects across a broad range of geographical and temporal perspectives, such as Taring Padi’s contested banner at documenta fifteen, Khaled Sabsabi’s past works amid the Venice Biennale controversy, or historical examples like the Balinese dance Oleg Tamulilingan’s evolving role in cultural reimagining since its creation in 1952. We encourage practitioners to analyse their own practice, since proximity offers valuable insights for theorisation.
Fostering diverse forms of scholarly exchange, we welcome lecture-performances, artistic interventions, multimedia and unconventional approaches that critically engaged with both theories of socially engaged art and of objecthood within the conceptual frameworks proposed.
We welcome lecture-performances, artistic interventions, multimedia and unconventional approaches that critically engaged with both theories of socially engaged art and of objecthood within the conceptual frameworks proposed.
Contact Tintin Wulia, University of Gothenburg