Fall 2013,Conference

Thursday 12/12/2013

Lawrence Weschler giving his keynote lecture "A Typology of Convergences: Towards a Unified Field Theory of Cultural Transmission.”

Critical Information Conference 2013


School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents Critical Information, an interdisciplinary graduate student conference examining the contemporary dialogue between art, media, and society. Sponsored by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department at SVA, the Critical Information conference provides a critical forum for current scholarship exploring the juncture of media, theory, criticism, and the visual arts. Lawrence Weschler, Director Emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, will deliver the keynote address, “A Typology of Convergences: Towards a Unified Field Theory of Cultural Transmission.”

Weschler was for over twenty years (1981–2002) a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award (for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992) and was also a recipient of Lannan Literary Award (1998). Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; and a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney. His latest addition to “Passions and Wonders,” the collection Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, came out from Counterpoint in October 2011.

Under the keynote address theme “A Typology of Convergences,” the conference’s international roster of participants from a wide cross-section of disciplines, will present papers and projects on the following six panels: Of the Word; Indented Margins; Artwork/Network; The Aesthetics of the Sentient ObjectIdentity: Construction, Transmission, Rejection; and Communication/Isolation/Retaliation: Our Responses to the Age of Information.

More information on the panels and papers, as well as the full schedule of events can be found at http://criticalinformationsva.com/2013-schedule.

 

CRITICAL INFORMATION ORGANIZATION

Graduate Student Organizing Committee 
Rabia Ashfaque
Sabrina Mandanici
Alexandra Nicolaides
Tori Potucek
Egor Sofronov
Eric Sutphin

Faculty Advisor
Russet Lederman

MFA Art Criticism & Writing Chair
David Levi Strauss

MFA Art Criticism & Writing Administrator
Annette Wehrhahn