PASC 2020 Symposium
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AD ABSURDUM
The Politics and Poetics of Absurdity in Avant-Garde Art and Thought
Friday, Dec. 4, 2020

Having a laugh: the great Italian theater-makers Franca Rame and Dario Fo.

#pascarts
#phillyavantgarde

Samuel Beckett in 1977; photo by Roger Pic

Albert Camus with Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Photo: Jan Ehnemark

Text from Jenny Holzer's "LIVING" series, photographed at Museum of Modern Art, New York, by Marcin Wichary (2009).

David Thomas of Pere Ubu, Manchester (2013). Photo: "Manchester" Jake

Call for Papers
The Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium invites you to participate in its Symposium:
“Ad Absurdum: The Politics and Poetics of Absurdity in Avant-Garde Art and Thought”
Friday, December 4, 2020, 1 to 4 p.m. (live-stream/Zoom)

Proposals by: Sunday, November 1, 2020 (at 4 minutes and 33 seconds
after the top of any randomly chosen hour that day)
 
  
Ad Absurdum:
The Politics and Poetics of Absurdity in Avant-Garde Art and Thought
 
The Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium (PASC) is seeking proposals for papers, lightning presentations, performances, and exhibitions for its 2020 Symposium, “Ad Absurdum: The Politics and Poetics of Absurdity in Avant-Garde Art and Thought,” which will be held as a live-streaming event/Zoom room Friday, Dec. 4, 2020, from 1 to 4 pm, hosted by Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts in the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library. All works/presentations will also be archived on our website.

The symposium program is being developed, and there's still time to send in your proposals for papers and presentations to join featured presenters from The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, and Cheryl Harper, Theodore A. Harris, John Heon, Laurel V. McLaughlin, Orchid Tierney, and more.

The topic of the 2020 Symposium was perhaps inevitable. It’s been a banner year for absurdity, and the contemplation of the absurd has been one of the most salient features of avant-garde art and thought from the nineteenth century to the present. From Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, to Camus, Sartre, and Baudrillard; from Jarry, Stein, and Kafka to Ionesco, Beckett, Artaud, and Kathy Acker; from Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Baroness Elsa, and Dali to Bruce Nauman, Carolee Schneemann, and Jenny Holzer; from Schoenberg, Cage, and Glass, to Frank Zappa, The Talking Heads, and Père Ubu (the band), the modern mind has grappled with life in an increasingly entropic and violent world that seems to crush meaning, justice, and individual agency. With a history of bewilderingly rapid social, economic, and technological change alongside global war, genocide, and political oppression, the modern/postmodern era has often induced a sense of fragmentation and futility. This has led to philosophical and artistic views of absurdity as both a problem and a solution, ranging from humor noir satires of the laughably evil to zen-like meditations on the mind-bending, contradictory nature of existence. In certain cases, the embrace of the absurd can also be a “logically illogical” reaction against the blind adherence to scientific rationality that spawned nuclear proliferation and the game-theory strategy of mutual assured destruction, à la Dr. Strangelove.

We are seeking presentations from individuals, groups, and collaborating artists and/or scholars in four major categories: scholarly papers (max 20 minutes); lightning presentations on artistic and scholarly projects (max 7 minutes), small-scale exhibitions, and brief performances (max 10 minutes). In examining your avant-garde figure, group, theory, or movement (roughly 1875 to the present; local, national, or global), you might consider one or more of the following questions: What events, historical, political, personal, intellectual, or aesthetic, gave rise to a particular artist’s, thinker’s, or movement’s presentation of the absurd? Did the absurd induce depression, liberation, paralysis, revolt, nausea, or some combination of these? How did the celebration or rejection of the absurd influence the form and content of the work? Does the artist/thinker believe that meaning is still possible in the face of absurdity? What is the relationship between absurdity and humor in the work of this artist/thinker? What role did science and technology play in this artist or thinker’s use of absurdity?

If you would like to participate in the Symposium, please send a proposal (150-300 words) by November 1, 2020 (at 4 minutes and 33 seconds after the top of any randomly chosen hour that day), to pascinitiative@gmail.com with the subject line, “2020 Symposium Proposal.” If you know of others who might like to participate, please feel free to pass this CFP along to them.

PASC symposia are always free and open to the public.

Zero Mostel in Eugène Ionesco's "Rhinocéros," likely photographed by Leo Friedman.

Franz Kafka, aged 5, in 1888

Franz Kafka's "Das Schloss," photographed by antiquariat Dr. H.-P. Haack, Leipzig

"Claude McRay (i.e., McKay) and Baroness v. Freytag (i.e., Von Freytag-Loringhoven," Bain News Service, Library of Congress Catalog (public domain)