Fifteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society - Virtual Conference
- 2020 Special Focus - Against the Grain: Arts and the Crisis of Democracy
- 24-26 June 2020
- NUI Galway, Galway, Ireland
Fifteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society - Virtual Conference
The arts in its many forms play many important roles in society. They allow us to discover, reinvent, and interrogate our imagined and real concepts of society, community and the individual. They are also a vehicle for us to celebrate, present, and critique our past, our present, and our future.
The arts emanate from the society of which they are a part, and as such they can be a reflection of that society and its many layers, reflecting differently as we move from generation to generation, from gender to gender, from one age group to another, through different socioeconomic groups, across different cultures, nationalities and languages, through different historical and current political and environmental crises and, in more recent times, across different mediums of delivery.
The practice of art also allows the artist to question our representations and reflections of our self in many - sometimes strident, sometimes subtle - different ways. Thus, although the arts are shaped in many ways by the societies from which they emanate, the arts are also a force in shaping society.
As we approach the end of the second decade of the third millennium, new and old forces are beginning to shape our societies in different ways, including inter alia changes in the ways we access news and other media, access to and various levels of education among the population in general, levels of income and disparities in levels of income, how we interpret political movements at local, national, and geopolitical levels, and the impact of technological advances on how we communicate, how we work, the number and types of jobs available, and the ability of government, businesses, and other organizations to gain access to our life preferences, patterns, and personal information. These challenges are contributing to a perceived or real crisis regarding democracy in contemporary society.
How does the Arts engage these changes? How has the practice of Art and the role of the Arts in Society been changed by these forces? How do the Arts interpret these changes? What normative assumptions exist in the Arts about what democracy is or should be, and of what the role of the Arts as a force in democracy should be?
This provides the scope for the 2020 Arts in Society Conference, which invites submissions from artists and academics across all artistic and academic disciplines which will contribute to the discourse on how the practices of art and our ways of interpreting art have shaped and is shaping society and how we present, critique, and engage with the forces defining our current understanding of the nature of and the challenges facing the future of democracy as a core organising principle of society.
Joe Mac Donnacha, Academic Coordinator, College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Rióna Ní Fhrighil, Lecturer, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Anne Karhio, Postdoctoral Fellow, Irish Research Council, Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Charlotte McIvor, Lecturer, Drama and Theatre Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Gregory Sholette, Professor and Co-director, Social Practice Queens MFA Concentration and Certificate Program, Queens College, City University of New York, New York, United States
Burren College of Art is an Irish non-profit independent art college specializing in undergraduate and graduate fine art education. We thank the following individuals for their valued contributions:
Join Marisol D’Andrea, PhD, as she explores the potential of artistic thinking, demonstrating the untapped power of this awe-inspiring process. A visual artist herself, D’Andrea shows you how artists think and what we can learn from them, drawing on her own experience and those from others who embrace this passion. You’ll find a treasure trove of information about how the arts influence innovation and increase the opportunity for artistic practices that encourage you to self-transform and to live life “like a work of art.” D’Andrea takes you on a journey of exploration, expanding on the existing literature and scholars’ perspectives. She examines the prominent and distinctive characteristics of the artist’s thought process, supported by interviews and dialogues with artists, scholars, and leaders. D’Andrea distils artistic thinking into a number of common elements: passion and obsession; imagination and belief; observation and connection; visualization and pondering; learning and explore; and practice and repetition. They all provide the spark for self-transformation and innovation. Following her lead, you’ll have plenty of fodder for starting the conversation and ripening your thinking. Says D’Andrea, “Through the arts, I learned—and I hope you will learn, too—how to prioritize your thinking (i.e., follow your passions), how to think (e.g., imagine), when to think (e.g., explore), and to discover who you are (e.g., self-transform) … It was artistic thinking that empowered me and spurred me on to write this book.”
For each conference, a small number of Emerging Scholar Awards re given to outstanding graduate students and emerging scholars who have an active academic interest in the conference area. The Award, with its accompanying responsibilities provides a strong professional development opportunity for early career academics. The 2020 Emerging Scholar Awardees are listed below.
Virtual Posters present preliminary results of work or projects that lend themselves to visual representations. View the posters below.
Virtual Presentations are grouped by general themes. Each presenter's formal, written paper will be available to participants if accepted to the journal.