The Animal Gaze: Contemporary Art & Animal/Human Studies

** The Animal Gaze: Contemporary Art & Animal/Human Studies **
An international symposium at London Metropolitan University: November 20-
21st, 2008.

2009 is the bicentenary of the birth of Darwin, whose work established the
continuum of human and animal existence, acknowledged the emotional status
of animals and advocated a humane approach to animals.

To celebrate Darwin's stance, reaching as it does now across the academic
disciplines, London Metropolitan University has organised an important
symposium and exhibition on contemporary art and animals, as part of a
continuing programme of practice-led research into theory and praxis in art
today.

This two-day symposium proposes a think-tank for a new cultural approach to
animals and allows interested parties - artists, academics and commissioners
from across the world - to gather for informal networking.

Delegate places at the symposium are limited. Vegetarian/vegan lunch and
refreshments are included in the delegate fee. On the evening of the first day,
all delegates are invited to a private view for 'The Animal Gaze' - a concurrent
exhibition of contemporary art around animals, from over 40 artists, later
touring to 5 galleries in Plymouth and Exeter. The symposium takes place on a
Thursday and Friday, giving delegates the option of staying in London for the
weekend. Accommodation packages are available.

Themes explored in the symposium (http://www.animalgaze.org):

1. Representations of animals have changed in the last decade. This university
event seeks to uncover such changes, ignores conventional
anthropomorphisms to examine new ones through paradoxes in conservation,
absences of animals, animal surfaces, animals in self-portraiture and
experiments in Deleuze & Guattari's 'becoming-animal'.
2. In recent times, some art has offended animal welfare campaigners,
creating political flashpoints - Evaristti and goldfish in liquidisers; Vargas and a
dog starving in a Nicaraguan gallery; Abdessemed's videos of animal slaughter
by bludgeoning. The symposium is a forum for debating ethics and aesthetics
around the animal as subject in art today; transgressions, shock art,
consumerism and animal rights.
3. Marcus Coates, Henrik Hakansson and the collaboration
Snaebjornsdottir/Wilson, all contemporary artists noted for their work around
animals, talk about their practice and how animals have altered the way they
work.
4. Animal/human studies is a field flourishing throughout the humanities and in
the sciences. Proposed cross-disciplinary projects look at developing art
specifically for other animals, using digital media, pheromones, sonic and
haptic art; at the same time, the emerging field of zoosemiotics examines art
among animals, evinced through dissimulation, play and aesthetic decision.

Keynote speakers at 'The Animal Gaze' symposium are Steve Baker, Emeritus
Professor of Art History at UCLAN and Dario Martinelli, Docent of Semiotics and
Musicology at the University of Helsinki. A summary and overview will come
from Professor Kate Soper of London Metropolitan University (Institute for the
Study of European Transformations).

Beside the artists Coates, Hakansson and Snaebjornsdottir/Wilson, other
speakers include:

Clive Adams, Director, Centre for Contemporary Art & the Natural World,
Exeter;
Ron Broglio, Professor of Literature at Georgia Institute of Technology, USA;
Dr Hilda Kean, of Ruskin College, Oxford;
Matthew Fuller, Reader in Digital Media at Goldsmiths;
Emily Brady, University of Edinburgh;
Rikke Hansen of Tate Britain;
Giovanni Aloi, Editor of Antennae, the Journal of Nature in Visual Culture;
Matthew Poole, Programme Director at the Centre for Curatorial Studies,
University of Essex.

For the delegate booking form and further details, please see the website
http://www.animalgaze.org.

Rosemarie McGoldrick, r.mcgoldrick [at] londonmet [dot] ac [dot] uk
'The Animal Gaze' Symposium Organiser & Exhibition Curator
London Metropolitan University