Symposium: "Encoding/Decoding: Thinking through Art and Design Practices" May 17th-18th, 2013.

Studio practices have become more complex than ever before, more deeply embedded in layers of conceptualization and signification. As a result, the task of interpretation is now highly specialized, and the public display of work is often a rarefied, rather than quotidian, experience. How do we reconcile the multiple discourses of art – studio process, theory, review, criticism, curatorship, and academic research – with public engagement? How do we measure the success of a work? From these larger questions, three areas of focus become apparent: pedagogy and art historiography; spectatorship and the social conditioning of visual culture; and the process and production of visual material in relation to artistic intent.

We welcome submissions from current or recent Graduate students on any topic relating to visual or material culture which addresses the theme of Encoding/Decoding. A 300 word abstract and CV must be submitted by January 31st, 2013.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Lucian Gomoll, Wesleyan University.

Exhibition: "ENCODING IDENTITIES: SPECTATORSHIP AND THE SUBJECT" May 2013

We are seeking innovative and challenging artworks from current and recent graduate students that explore any of the following topic possibilities:

-The ways in which subjects are constituted through perception and viewership
-Performative personhood and the act of becoming: gender roles, race, size, class, sexual identity, age and/or disability
-Codification through artistic and technological media
-Simulacra and the virtual
-Genetics, biotechnology, mutation and/or transcoding
-Semiotics; visual or linguistic communication sign-systems

Please visit our website for submission guidelines and contact information: adgsa.wordpress.com