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SupraSpace: On the Concept of Space and Place in Art and Visual Culture
International Conference
Tel Aviv University, Art History Department

June 3 – 04, 2012
Deadline CFP: Jan 15, 2012

Keynote speaker: Prof. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Department of Art and
Archaeology, Princeton University

Space has been subject to aesthetic, art-historical, philosophical,
anthropological, geographical and political investigations, each with
its idiosyncratic definitions. Space maintains a close relation with
illusionism, narrativity, and the performative qualities of art.  Space
is especially interconnected with time, making it impossible to
separate one from the other. In the current dynamic reality in which we
live, it is hard to remain confined to just one modality of spatial
thinking that will capture all of its complexity; yet this problem is
not limited to our contemporary globalized moment, but is also relevant
to different historical periods. Consequently, in order to engage
effectively with the problem of space, recent studies have demonstrated
multiple methods of conceptualization, while emphasizing the
dialectical relations and tensions between them.
Within the realms of art and culture, the discourse on space has often
engaged with problems of representation (artistic genres such
landscape, narrative space, chronotopos, interior/exterior, etc), or
with political issues relating to territorial conflicts and borders.

This conference seeks to investigate the dynamic formation, throughout
history and art history, of sites, places, and environments, in which
interactive relations, identities and signs are ceaselessly rewritten
and redefined. These kinds of processes produce spaces that hover
between the specific and the generic, the local and the global, the
historical and the contemporary, the real and the virtual, along with
the symbolized and the abstract. At the same time, these modalities
emphasize the fact that any designation of places and sites is
inseparable from the different ways in which they are experienced,
perceived, imagined, and represented.

We invite papers that consider diverse conceptualization of space and
forms of representations, as well as the varied ways in which lived
environments trigger different forms of interventions and
reconfigurations: legal, political, social, aesthetic and technological.

Abstracts are invited by 15 January 2012 and should be sent to:
supra.tau.conference@gmail.com.
All abstracts must be in English and should be limited to 300 words.
Head your abstract with your name, professional affiliation, and the
paper’s title. Submit with the abstract a one-page curriculum vitae,
home and work addresses, and e-mail address.
Each paper should be limited to a 20 minute presentation, followed by
dialogue and questions. All applicants will be notified of the
acceptance or rejection of their proposal by 28 February 2012.

For more information or any further inquiries please contact the
Conference Chairs: Prof. Hana Taragan (taragan@post.tau.ac.il) and Dr.
Tamar Cholcman (cholcman@post.tau.ac.il).

Suggested topics for papers (but not limited to):
Space before and after Giotto
Liturgical space
Sacred spaces
Medieval non-space
Perspective/Camera Obscura
Space and (non) rationalism in post-Albertian art theory
Emotional space
Pictorial space and voyeurism
Islamic space and its absence
Place and non-place
Art and culture in public space
Urban Planning and Architectural Space
The absence of place
Spatio-temporal dimensionalities
Memory and monuments
Narrative, meta-narrative and space
De-territorialization and Re-territorialization
Finite – infinite space
Information technology and space
Body and territory
Cosmopolitanism and globalization
Spaces of display
Heterotopia and utopia

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