networks of experience: art and (dis)embodiment

March 15-16, 2019

Any encounter between an audience and a work of art is experiential. Beyond this universal dimension, much of contemporary art asks more of its viewers than just viewing. These works engage multiple modes of observation, sensation, participation, reflection, and (dis)embodiment that have the power to affect and engage bodies in new and adaptive ways. Art that demands physical attention, emotional labour, or visceral reactions crosses into new territory and invites varied modes of experience, including those of memory, haunting, and tradition. It can lead the audience to a deeper understanding of practices that affirm experiences from the past, as well as experiences of the Other that aim to dismantle Western colonialism.

In this context, experience turns from an act of recognition of a meaning intrinsic to the object, to a meaning that is grounded in the encounter between the artist’s experience and that of the spectator. Keeping open the multiple threads of experience , this conference invites investigations of experience in contemporary art, across its various embodied practices: artists’ lived/personal experience as embodied in their art; the experiences of spectators and audiences; and experience as cultural legacy/history, including experiences of colonialism and decolonization.