CFP: Reflection on Digital Art Practice session at the Association for Art History Conference 2025

CFP: Association for Art History Annual Conference
9–11 April 2025, University of York
Session: Disruption and Progress: Reflecting on Digital Art Practice
Deadline: 1st November 2024

(You do not need to be a member of the AAH to submit a proposal for the conference)

Artists are often seen at the forefront of innovation in using emerging technologies as they seek to reflect on society and disrupt established norms, from the early experiments of Nam June Paik’s video art in the 1960s to the contemporary explorations of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s interactive installations. However, with the ubiquity of digital technologies, it is increasingly important to be aware of the contradiction between disruption and progress. This entails recognising that whilst new technologies initially promise innovation and progress, it is crucial to acknowledge the ‘bias of the machine’ (Steyerl and Vikram, 2023) and the ‘digital divide’ (Mukhopadhyay and Thompson, 2021) that have caused global disparities in digital production and access.

Therefore, this session invites researchers and artists to reconsider the tension between disruption and progress, exploring digital art’s relation to the dilemmas, stereotypes, and hierarchies accelerated by rapid technological development. This includes questioning social norms, traditional concepts, representations, and ways of seeing and thinking. We also welcome proposals that consider how art historians and artists throughout history have confronted these questions in connection to changing technologies of image-making and how these may inform and aid us in current debates. 

This panel will feature 20-minute presentations, each followed by 5 minutes for questions. This will be an engaging session that brings together academics and practitioners, integrating both research by theory and practice. Alongside academic papers, we actively encourage proposals from artists for presenting practice-based research in various formats.

To submit a proposal, You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any).

Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the digital programme.

Please email your proposals to the session conveners: 
Georgia Gerson, georgia.gerson@york.ac.uk
Man Li, ml2585@york.ac.uk
Yuxuan Xiao, yuxuan.xiao@york.ac.uk