[Anthropgrad] Work-in-Progress Seminar - 14 November - Flaudette May Datuin

[Sharon Komidar]

The Research School of Humanities presents,
 Work-in-Progress Seminar Series 

1- 2.30 pm, Friday 14th November, Theatrette, Old Canberra House

UNCOMMON SENSE: TRAUMA AND CONTEMPORARY ART 

Associate Professor Flaudette May Datuin, 

University of the Philippines.

 

In her essay "Against Interpretation," Susan Sontag wrote that nowadays
we are "stuck with defending art," and we quarrel among ourselves on how
to justify art and this we do by asking of a work of art what it says -
about identity, about culture, about context - rather than what it does.
"What is important now," she says, "is to recover our senses. We must
learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.'*

 

A/Professor Datuin will respond to Sontag's call by speaking on the
general topic of trauma in the visual arts, an underdeveloped field of
investigation in art history and feminist art history in particular.
Drawing on her recent research and curatorial projects in the
Philippines and Australia, and informed by the analytical frames on
trauma, sense and sensation by Jill Bennett, Griselda Pollock, Brian
Massumi and Gilles Deleuze, among others, Datuin will provide examples
of how selected contemporary artists contribute to Sontag's critical and
theoretical call to recover what Datuin calls our "uncommon sense."

 

Associate Professor Flaudette May V. Datuin
(www.trauma-interrupted.org/datuin) is currently a Visiting Fellow at
the Research School of Humanities, ANU

 

*Susan Sontag 'Against Interpretation' in Susan L. Feagin and Patrick
Maynard (eds.) Aesthetics (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press)
p.295

 

Convenors: Ken Taylor and Stephen Foster
For general enquiries please contact: 
Phone: 6125 2434
Email: administration.rsh at anu.edu.au 
Web: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/
All Welcome