Reminiscing/Reinventing Graduate Conference

Date: Friday, October 26th , 2018

Time: 09:00 a.m. – 05:30 p.m.

Location: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 37 S Wabash Ave. Room 327 

School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism is pleased to present its graduate symposium, “Reminiscing/Reinventing”.

This symposium coincides with the exhibition, Recipes for Madeleines, at SAIC’s SITE Gallery. The exhibition brings together artists of various disciplines whose works critically engage the relationship between nostalgia and media. Although nostalgia as a psychological, social and political phenomenon has existed for centuries, the current emergence of nostalgic aesthetics starts to constitute nostalgia as a contemporary condition, a side-effect of technological advancement and political uneasiness.

“Reminiscing/Reinventing” serves as an occasion to open up a discussion around our contemporary experiences of remembering, the aesthetics of which is heavily mediated by the technological apparatus that record and manifest the past. Russian-American critic, media artist and novelist Svetlana Boym sees nostalgia as a kind of “defense mechanism in a time of accelerated rhythms of life and historical upheavals,” a process of working through and coping with the irreconcilable ideal and reality. We hope to use the opportunity of this symposium to reflect upon the role of media not only as platforms for re-imagining the past, but also as ways of working through history for the present.

For the complete schedule, please visit our website: https://reminiscingreinventing.wordpress.com/