*Call for Papers: From the Wall, to the Press, to the Streets*

College Art Association 101st Annual Conference

New York, 13-16 February 2013

Session convenors: Eve Kalyva (e.m.kalyva@gmail.com) and

Ignaz Cassar (ignazcassar@yahoo.co.uk)

The divide between art and language has historically functioned as a metaphor of the division between high and low culture. Many artistic practices have challenged this binary, where the concept of gallery enclosure can be understood as a literal and figurative qualifier of art: a space that is distinct from, yet exists within, the wider social sphere.

Especially in twentieth and twenty-first century art, the use of language has facilitated a material and discursive transgression beyond the traditional art-object and its institutional isolation. Works that combine image and text have appeared on gallery walls, the popular press, and other public sites such as billboards and pavements. Such activities widen the engagement with art and open new channels of communication and participation. They also challenge, and often alter, the traditional hierarchies that underline the artworld, from the production of art to its display and consumption.

Acknowledging the manifold social practices of contemporary art, as well as the diversity of scholarship that IAWIS-AIERTI embraces, this session wishes to address the presence of image and text in the public sphere from both a historical and critical perspective. In what ways can the use of language in art practices transform the domain of the artworld? How have art institutions shifted their policies in response to such practices? With this session, we also hope to consider the sociality of art, as this becomes evident by artistic practices that transgress the gallery enclosure of art.

We invite papers that discuss the social interaction and contact with works that manipulate the visual and the textual beyond the traditional frame of art – a frame that can be understood in material, institutional, and theoretical terms. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Subversive displays of word and image: public readings and private gaze

• The rhetoric of public art: using language to challenge the divides of private/public, elitist/communal

• Working around the frame: spatial transgression as institutional critique

• Open-access art in new sites: from art magazines and postcards to billboards, the internet, and social networking sites

• Institutional responses and marketing: copyright laws and ethical restrictions

Please send your paper proposals of maximum 250 words (for a conference paper of 20 minutes) to the session convenors Eve Kalyva ( e.m.kalyva@gmail.com) and Ignaz Cassar (ignazcassar@yahoo.co.uk) by the deadline *1 June 2012*.

Membership of IAWIS-AIERTI is not required. In accordance with CAA guidelines, please include a current CV, institution (if any), home or office postal address, email address, and telephone number. Final abstracts for selected papers will be due September 2012, and paper drafts by December 2012. Further information and conference particulars, including submission guidelines, can be found at http://www.collegeart.org and http://www.iawis.org/home.php.