CFP: Concept & Future of Nature in Contemporary Art (Paris, 31 May-1 Jun 10)

Redefining the Concept & Future of Nature in Contemporary Art

Symposium, 31st of May and 1st of June 2010, université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, INHA.

In December, the United Nations will host its 15th Conference on climate change in Copenhagen. In this same city, the Staten Museum for Kunst opens its exhibition entitled Nature Strikes Back, twinned with an international symposium addressing the relationships between art, nature and technology. This follows a precedence set by the Barbican Art Gallery, London, which recently looked back over the last few years of artistic production. The Barbican’s exhibitors were also faced with the notion of an endlessly changing planet, and included Land Artists, active environmentalists, experimental architects and representatives of the new generation. Paris followed with (In)habitable ? L’art des environnements extrêmes, heldat the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. The exhibiting artists tried through various means, and by exploiting new technologies, to explore and re-appropriate with humour, the poetry and utopia inherent within the concept of Nature.

The idea of questioning the idea of Nature is far from original, nevertheless when confronted with increasing ecological problems and the emergence of new science; the concept is constantly renewed and forced to take on new forms. Paradoxes appear when damaging new technologies, such as the perpetration of mass industrialisation, simultaneously hold the answer to healing their own assaults on our ecology. Public opinion becomes lost in these paradoxes and finds no answer, whether we have faith in science, or are supporters of sustainable de-growth. Up until the 1980s, artists were united under their wish for a return to original Nature, whereas our contemporaries are no longer gathered under a common banner.

Nature is then not uniquely used for promoting ecology, but as a material to reflect the wide ranging scope of society’s problems. This has lead Kin Levin, in the catalogue Trans’Plant : Living vegetation in contemporary art (Hatje Catz Publishers, 2000), to conclude: ‘Artists using plants today have little in common except they share the crucial anxieties of our time.’ Anxiety for the deterioration of our environment, fear for new sciences which, by dint of helping humans dominate nature, their nature, have lead to its uncontrollability. The question is how can we define Nature, or rather redefine it, confronted as we are with these new forms of creation, hybridisation and manipulation?

This symposium will aim to propose a new and/or completed definition of the idea of Nature by focusing all papers on contemporary art. Firstly, it will take issue with an idea of contemporary nature, evoking nations of cultural landscape alongside the metamorphosis of society’s problems.
Secondly, it will question the relationship which binds us with Nature, even whilst genetic manipulations proceed apace, frequently blurring the lines between human beings and the animal kingdom.

Topic may include but are not
limited to:
- cultural landscapes/emerging landscapes
- relationship art/Science Fiction
- decadence and attraction to new technologies
- disenchantment
- ecology

Abstract (300 words) should be submitted to Marion Duquerroy
(marionduquerroy(at)yahoo.fr) before the 28th of February 2010.
Presentations will be expected not to exceed 30 minutes.