AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

2010 CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The 4th annual UCIRA State of the Arts Conference
Future Tense: Alternative Arts and Economies in the University

November 18-21, 2010
University of California, San Diego
__________________________________________________________

2010 CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Deadline: May 28, 2010

The University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA)
and the University of California, San Diego are pleased to announce the
4th annual UCIRA State of the Arts conference, to take place at UCSD
November 18-21, 2010. Proposals are currently being accepted which
address the theme Future Tense: Alternative Arts and Economies in the
University.

The Conference Theme
The last two years have witnessed an unprecedented crisis on college
campuses around the world, as the social compact that governed higher
education in the United States and Europe for the past half century has
begun to collapse. Universities from London to Sussex, from Athens to
Vienna, and from Berkeley to Santa Cruz, have experienced protests,
occupations, walkouts and other actions directed against the
encroaching privatization of public education. This crisis has been
particularly acute at the University of California, the flagship public
university system in the United States. Dramatic funding cutbacks,
layoffs, furloughs, and fee hikes have been combined with an upsurge in
the sort of racist and sexist attacks that often accompany periods of
economic turmoil, as the perception of dwindling resources leads to the
predictable search for scapegoats.

This complex mix of economic, cultural and social forces places
particular pressure on the status of the arts within research
universities, and the very notion of the university itself as a haven
for liberal arts education. New tensions have opened up, between the
arts and humanities and engineering and science, and between public and
private funding sources and priorities, even as new solidarities have
emerged, among and between staff and faculty, graduates and
undergraduates, disciplines and departments. This conference seeks to
address the following questions:
o How can the arts respond to this crisis?
o What new alliances can we form both within the university campus
and the communities beyond its walls?
o What alternative economies exist for the support of artistic
research?
o What new pedagogical models and new forms of knowledge production
can the arts offer as our educational mission is both threatened and,
potentially, transformed?
o And what forms of creative practice have been mobilized by the
protests, walkouts and occupations?
o As the campus itself becomes a field of symbolic resistance and
contestation, from swastikas at UC Davis to Klan hoods at UC San Diego,
what are the limits and the political implications of freedom of
expression?

We seek proposals for presentations, performances, projects, workshops,
conversations or panels that address the past history, present moment
and future possibilities of the arts in a university setting.

Application:
All applications must be submitted in pdf form to ZouZou Chapman
(zchapman@ucira.ucsb.edu) by 5pm on Friday, May 28th, and should
include:

(1) a fully completed cover sheet (downloadable from the website)
(2) a c.v. for each of the lead applicant(s)
(3) A detailed description of proposed activities (1-2 pages
single-spaced)
(4) [optional] work samples (3 @ 250k or smaller, jpeg format) or links
within your application to external image/video hosting services (i.e.
Vimeo,YouTube, etc.) and/or personal or departmental webpages as
appropriate.

Participants may choose to submit written papers before or after the
conference for possible inclusion in the UCIRA project publication
series.

____________________________
Dr. Holly E. Unruh
Associate Director
UC Institute for Research in the Arts
UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
805.893.7799
805.893.4336 [f]
www.ucira.ucsb.edu

from LA Culture Net