Visual Culture in the New Millennium

Two of the world's leading art historians, Carol Mavor and Nicholas Mirzoeff (right), will give the lead presentations in a one-day conference on Visual Culture at the University of Canterbury on July 23. The Art History and Cultural Studies programmes are organising the event, which is open to the public as an unofficial contribution to the Christchurch Arts Festival. A dozen leading Australasian scholars in the field will also talk on topics ranging from cyber-tourism to the mechanical reproduction of angels, but all relating to the question "What is the Contemporary Now?", asking whether the concept of the contemporary still means anything in today's "haunted and disjointed times."
Visual Culture in the New Millennium

Two of the world's leading art historians, Carol Mavor and Nicholas Mirzoeff (right), will give the lead presentations in a one-day conference on Visual Culture at the University of Canterbury on July 23. The Art History and Cultural Studies programmes are organising the event, which is open to the public as an unofficial contribution to the Christchurch Arts Festival. A dozen leading Australasian scholars in the field will also talk on topics ranging from cyber-tourism to the mechanical reproduction of angels, but all relating to the question "What is the Contemporary Now?", asking whether the concept of the contemporary still means anything in today's "haunted and disjointed times."
Carol Mavor is Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina, and author of Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs (1996) and Becoming the Photographs of Clementina , Viscountess Haywarden (1999). At the conference she will speak on 'Happiness with a Long Piece of Black Leader: Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, 1982.' That film will screen at the university the previous evening.

Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor of Art and Art Professions, New York University, author of Bodyscape: Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure (1995), Diaspora and Visual Culture (1999), Introduction to Visual Culture (1999), The Visual Culture Reader (2nd ed.) (2003) and most recently Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture (2005). He will speak on 'The Place of the "South": Minority and Visual Rights'.

A dozen leading Australasian scholars in the field will also talk on topics ranging from cyber-tourism to the mechanical reproduction of angels, but all relating to the question "What is the Contemporary Now?", asking whether the concept of the contemporary still means anything in today's "haunted and disjointed times."

The fee of $60 and $40 (unwaged) includes lunch. Individual sessions are $10. Full details are online at www.fina.canterbury.ac.nz or by ringing 3642224.