Calls for Papers found here and there (but not endorsed) by African Diaspora, Ph.D.
(Last updated: July 9, 2009)
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Sponsored by the Grande Rue Sculptors of Port-au-Prince, Haiti
From the website:
The Grand Rue Sculptors are a community of artists living in a downtown slum neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This is the newest art community to have emerged in the last ten years. They have produced art that reflects a heightened, Gibsonesque, Lo-Sci-Fi, dystopian view of their society, culture and religion, and have dragged Haitian art into the 21st century. Jean Herard Celeur, Andre Eugene and Guyodo are at the core of the movement, which contains seven or eight other younger artists, all producing powerful sculptural works. Their work has opened entirely new vistas into the creative possibilities of the Vodou-inspired arts of Haiti. Their muscular sculptural collages of engine manifolds, computer entrails, TV sets, medical debris, skulls and discarded lumber transforms the detritus of a failing economy into deranged, post-apocalyptic totems.
In 2009 the ‘Sculptors of Grand Rue’ plan to hold their first ‘Ghetto Biennale’. They are inviting fine artists, filmmakers, academics, photographers, musicians, architects and writers, to come to the Grand Rue area of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, to make or witness work that will be shown or happen, in their neighbourhood. In the words of the writer John Keiffer it will hopefully be a “’third space’…an event or moment created through a collaboration between artists from radically different backgrounds”. ‘
‘The artists use all the detritus of a post-industrial global economy which uses Haiti as a dumping ground. They return the compliment, creating astounding bricolages and assemblages which express both the despair and the seemingly endless creativity of Haiti and Vodou. I have visited their ateliers on Haiti’s Grand Rue on several occasions over the last four years. I have had a chance to see their sculptures as they were being wrought from their desperate materials in a scrap yard on this wreck of a street, in this wreck of a city, in this wreck of a country. Saying all that, I would also have to add that, like Haiti, their sculptures seem to express the boundless creative energy of a people who are simultaneously the economically poorest, and artistically richest culture in the New World.’ Professor Donald Cosentino, World Arts and Cultures, University of California-Los Angeles.
Forging a successful arts career is difficult for a downtown Haitian. Refused US entry visas, the Grand Rue sculptors were excluded from a private view of their work in a major museum in Miami. A lack of government support makes them economically excluded from all major biennales. The artists have responded by hosting the ‘Ghetto Biennale’, the first arts festival located in a shantytown in the developing world. The event will explore what happens when artists from radically different backgrounds come together. When first world art objectives encounter third world artistic reality, and when Western artists try to make art in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Haitian artist, Andre Eugene says, ‘the Ghetto Biennale represents positive change in my area and gives us the chance to show another face of life in the ghettos of Port-au-Prince. I think we have much to offer and much to learn.’
Malaysian artist, Simryn Gill, has said of her potential involvement in the ‘Ghetto Biennale’. ‘The making of things, in the way that you describe Haitian artists doing, is very energising and attracting for me. Sometime it feels like we have left so behind us the acts of actually making, forming, transforming materials with passion and courage, and art has become a kind of domain of cleverness, even timidity, in case we somehow show ourselves up in too much eagerness or insufficient wit or skill by making forms.’
Kathy Acker, Andre Breton, Maya Deren, Katherine Dunham, Graham Greene, Jerzy Grotowski, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, & Genesis P.Orridge have all visited Haiti and made work inspired by their visit.
DVD available on request ‘Atis-Rezistans: the sculptors of Grand Rue’
http://www.atis-rezistans.com
Enquiries & questions contact:Leah Gordon at Leahgordon@aol.com or
44.7958.566791 cell (UK)
44.20.8533.1250 landline (UK)Myron Beasley at performbrazil@gmail.com or
207.786.6437 (US)
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Courtesy of Repeating Islands:
YoSoyElOtro [IAmTheOther] together with Grupo Koré de Estudios de Género [Kóre Gender Studies Group] and Carlos III University of Madrid extend a call for papers for the Congreso Internacional sobre el Caribe: El mito de la mujer caribeña [1st International Congress about the Caribbean: The Myth of the Caribbean Woman]. The conference will be held November 16-19, 2009, at Casa de América and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 126 Ortega y Gasset, Getafe (Madrid), Spain.
The organizers invite you to reflect about the “myth of the Caribbean woman,” in order to open a space for academic, artistic, and socio-cultural exchange through the meeting of researchers, specialists, artists, and others interested in Gender and Caribbean Studies. This congress is designed to examine–beyond the limits of the Hispanic Caribbean (continental and insular) and reaching out to the rest of the Antilles— the poetics of historic, literary, artistic, and affective relationships between the European space and the sea that borders this part of America. The main purpose is to explore, from the “space” of the Caribbean woman in-the-world, “not how she is, but how she wants (or is wanted) to be performed or represented.”
Lorna Goodison (Jamaica/United States) and Gisèle Pineau (Guadeloupe/France) are two of the featured writers confirmed for this activity.
The deadline for this call for papers is July 15, 2009.
For full description, call for papers, suggested topics, workshops, and information on the new “Caribeando” and “CuentaCaribe” projects, see http://www.yosoyelotro.org/
Also see the YoSoyElOtro blog at http://yosoyelotro-asociacion.blogspot.com/
Art work (used for YoSoyElOtro logo) by Teresa López, http://www.teresalopez.org/
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32nd Annual Conference
“Africa in a restructuring world”
September 30 – October 2 2009
University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Since 1978, the annual African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AFSAAP) conference has brought together Africa-focused scholars, students, government and diplomatic staff, business, industry, and individuals. The goal of these meetings has been to critically address the social, cultural, health, political, legal, economic and environmental issues facing Africa. At the same time, the AFSSAP also wishes to encourage discussion of the issues and challenges African migrants encounter in Australia and elsewhere.
The African Studies Association of Australasia and the University of Queensland are now inviting papers for the forthcoming 32nd African Studies Conference – “Africa in a restructuring world”.
The 32nd AFSAAP conference will be held from September 30 to October 2 2009 at the University of Queensland’s St. Lucia campus. The conference web site is located at HYPERLINK “http://www.afsaap.org.au/” http://www.afsaap.org.au/
Given the cross-institutional and in this case, cross-continental nature of the AFSAAP Conference, we will welcome papers on any topic relating to Africa, but suggest the following as focus areas:
HIV/AIDS in Africa
Peace and conflict studies in Africa
African migrants and refugees
Africans in Australia
Aspects of African society and culture
African literature, music and drama
Business and Economics in Africa
Africa and China
Africa, climate change and sustainable development
Education
Donors and recipients: issues in development and humanitarian aid
Health issues in Africa
For further information and to contact the conference committee please visit the AFSAAP web site http://www.afsaap.org.au” http://www.afsaap.org.au
DEADLINES
Abstract submission Monday, 15th July
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