Research Organization Guidelines & Deadlines

Last updated: 1/25/05

Failure: Ethics and Aesthetics

University of California, Irvine

March 3 and 4, 2006

The Visual Studies Graduate Student Association at the University of California, Irvine, calls for papers from a wide-range of areas of study that investigate and critically explore, contest, engage with, the concept of "failure."

The concept of failure has always remained closely tied to that ofprogress: economically, morally, culturally, and politically. In an effort to denaturalize this binary, we would like to examine what failure means through papers that deal critically with its various forms in both historical and contemporary circumstances, not only because this will help us understand how narratives of success and progress operate, but also because we wonder what potential "failure" as a political and aesthetic tactic may offer. Might we discover a "loser theory"? We ask for papers that do not just explore failed visions or failed experiments, but that examine what those particular failures mean, generate, expose. In

addition, we recognize that in the past two decades a new archetype of success has emerged in popular culture, in the figure of the slacker-for example, MTV's Jackass and the musician Beck's "Loser," while politics and art provide other examples-the media image of President George W. Bush as an "average guy" and the video art of Tony Oursler. At these moments, failure functions as a hollow gesture, a style. On the other hand, the discourses of deconstruction and poststructuralism show us that failure-failures of understanding, of communication, of translation, of domination-might have radical political potential. The binary of success and failure translates into an economic realm as well, with success equated with financial accumulation and failure with poverty. What has this meant for colonial projects of emancipation and their postcolonial

entry onto the international stage? With this in mind, how might failure provide a location for revolutionary activity, political critique, or aesthetic experimentation? How does visual culture mobilize the concept of failure beyond empty aesthetics? Might the concept failure provide an ethics of its own?

In addition to academic papers, we invite participation from practicing artists, filmmakers, and videomakers. We are committed to opening our community to intellectual and creative producers who critically and rigorously engage in rethinking "failure," regardless of artistic or academic identification.

Possible essay topics include, but are by no means limited to:

Failure and Aesthetics: Ephemeral art; Invisibility as tactic; Deconstruction and the task of the translator/Miscommunication; "Bad" painting; "Pitiful" art (as described by Paul Virilio); "Pathetic" art (coined by Ralph Rugoff); Medium conservation/deterioration; Death of the author; Documentary film; Forgetting; Entropy; Problems of access; Design

issues; The failure of modernist utopias

Sexuality: Camp; Critiques of heteronormativity; Failures of "proper" gender identification; Adolescence; "Failures" of social assimilation

Failure and Theory: European avant-gardism and the question of elitism; Alternative discourses of failure; Loser theory; What is the role of critical theory today? Has it failed? What does that mean?; Postructuralim and the critique of the subject

Politics and Failure: Fantasies of success and the American Dream; Failure as ethics; Colonialism and Liberation; Collectivism and Communalism; Revolutionary success as overall failure (Stalinism) versus immediate failure as potential future success (Zapatistas); Martyrdom and messianicity; Failure of the nation-state; Human rights and social justice

Economic Breakdowns: Reaganomics/Thatcherism; Monetary policies of the IMF

and the World Bank and/or strategies of resistance; Specific policy failure-No Child Left Behind; Failed nations; National "security"

Popular Culture: Punk rock; Sports films; Box-office failures, eg. Waterworld; Self-help and the Culture of Betterment; Critiques of slacker culture and the cooptation of failure

Please submit 250-500 word abstracts along with your name, institution, email address, and phone number to Vuslat Demirkoparan (vdemirko@uci.edu), by January 15, 2006.

For general questions about the conference, please contact Heather Murray

(murrayh@uci.edu) or Mark Cunningham (mkcunnin@uci.edu).