The Center for Art of Africa and Its Diasporas (CAAD) at The University of Texas at Austin announces the CAAD Conference series, a biannual interdisciplinary event dedicated to publications, discussions, analysis, investigations, explorations, presentations, collaborations, and performances relating to the art of Africa and the African diasporas. The CAAD Conference serves as a forum for critical discourse on artistic practices and histories of art.

With the conference series, CAAD is building an engaged community of scholars, artists, curators, critics and gallerists, to interrogate, stimulate, and translate Africana art within the continent of Africa, and throughout the diasporas.

For its inaugural meeting, CAAD invites rigorous considerations of the notion of “place” and the relationship between particular political, social, and geographic locations, and the visual cultures of Africa and the African diasporas. The notion of “place” simultaneously serves as a physical and a conceptual framework, an action and a location, a site and a citation.

Conceivably, what can “place” reveal about the body in stasis or motion? How may “place” trouble usage of categorical usage like “African” and “African Diaspora”? Where may one situate both real and imaginary places in context to wanderlust? Likewise, what may it reveal about traditional methodologies and discourse? In an increasingly globalizing world, how does one grapple with the alternative spaces created by displacement, international travel or social media?

Possible subjects relating to the theme of “place” include but are not limited to:

– new media: sound, image, and text

– collecting, collections, and collectors

– immigration, emigration, and borders

– sexuality, gender, and bodies

– praxis, creative process, and products

– new directions, reviews, and innovations

– architecture, archaeology, and landscapes

– historiography, methodology, and theory

– race, ideology, and origins

– two-, three-, four-dimensional spaces, and beyond

– ecology, environment, and sustainability

– ethnicities, kinships, and societies

– education, design, and pedagogy

– the institutional, alternative, and contested

– performance, production, and installation

– the political, economic, and cultural

– religion, gnosis, and philosophy

– globalization, localization, and mapping

– cities, empires, and kingdoms

– cyberspace, futurism, and cyborgs

They welcome artists, collectors, curators and scholars to submit a 150-300-word abstract, CV/resume to: caadconference@austin.utexas.edu by April 30, 2015.

Notification of accepted abstracts and panels will be announced by May 31, 2015 upon which time a non-refundable $75 registration fee is due. The registration fee covers admission to all panels and events including the opening and closing receptions

http://caad.finearts.utexas.edu