CALL FOR PAPERS

Uncommon Senses is dedicated to exploring the modalities of sensory experience and expression within art and culture and in particular, to investigating the aesthetic life of the often neglected "lower senses" of smell, taste and touch.

While striving to deconstruct the authority of vision, current critiques of ocularcentrism - by their very emphasis on visuality - tend to confirm the priority of sight over the other senses. Uncommon Senses seeks to redress this sensory imbalance by bringing to the fore the cultural, political and aesthetic significance of non-visual modes of sensorial engagement. By so doing the original meaning of the term aesthetics, that of sense perception, is recovered in its full sensorial capacity.

The cultural construction of the senses is a subject of multidisciplinary interest and investigation, which brings together the humanities and the social sciences. Historical and anthropological studies reveal the distinctive sensory underpinnings of social systems in different time periods and cultures. Literary studies bring out the sensory values encoded in written texts. In the fine arts, the non-visual senses have been employed by a number of artists since the late nineteenth century to animate antiseptic gallery spaces, question assumptions about the objecthood of art, and address the subtle but powerful links between the senses, lived experience and cultural meaning. The cooking performances of Rirkrit Tiravanija, the tactile sculptures of Mona Hatoum, and the aromatic installations of Ann Hamilton are only a few of the more salient examples in contemporary art.

Drawing inspiration from recent research on the senses in the social sciences, literature and art, Uncommon Senses will pose a series of questions: What lies beyond the scope of the aesthetic gaze? How do artworks involving taste, touch and smell transgress and reconceive definitions of art? What models of sensory aesthetics exist in non-Western cultures? How is technology reinventing the senses? What are the historical roots of contemporary sensory paradigms? How are the senses engaged (or manipulated) in popular culture? In what manners can difference - whether based on culture, class, gender or sexuality - be mobilized to counter and reconfigure hegemonic understandings of the senses?

The following are some of the panel topics for the conference:

• Innovative and non-traditional uses of the senses in visual art architecture, music, performance, film and other media
• The role of the senses in non-Kantian aesthetics
• The history and practice of "total artworks" (Gesamtkunstwerk)
• The cultural history of the senses
• Cybersenses: technology and the future of perception
• Synaesthesia/anaesthesia: shock, mixing, numbing and disruption of the senses
• Popular entertainments: affect and sensationalism
• Postmodern culture and sensory saturation
• Non-western aesthetics and the anthropology of the senses
• Cultural difference/sensory difference
• Explorations and critiques of ocularcentrism
• The sensory politics of class, race and nationalism
• Engendered senses: feminism, perception, and the body
• Queering the senses
• Design and the senses
• Writing the senses: literary and theoretical approaches
• "Untrained" sensibilities: outsider, folk and children's art
• Perceptual challenges: art by the blind and other differently- abled individuals

If you are interested in presenting a paper at "Uncommon Senses," please fill out the attached Registration Form and send it along with a 150-word abstract to the address listed below.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the organizing committee and, if approved, assigned either to one of the existing panels or one of the new panels created to accommodate emergent themes. The organizing committee will respond to your submission within three weeks of receipt. If you are interested in organizing a panel, please submit a 150-word abstract describing the theme of your panel, and the names of the participants, as well as the Abstract Submission Form, to "Uncommon Senses" at the below address.

The deadline for abstracts and for proposals for panels is 1 November 1999.

The organizing committee can be contacted at: senses@alcor.concordia.ca. We would be pleased to answer any questions you have. You may also send your Abstract Submission Form directly via e-mail to this address.

Do visit the CONSERT website at site listed below address.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM

"Uncommon Senses: An International Conference On the Senses in Art and
Culture", April 27-29, 2000 at Concordia University, Montreal.
Name:  ______________________________________________________________

Institutional Affiliation:
_________________________________________________

Address: _____________________________________________________________

telephone: ____________________________  fax: ___________________________

e-mail: _______________________________

Title of Presentation: ___________________________________________________

You may also submit the Form and abstract directly via e-mail to email below.