Art and Frontier


A frontier is an imaginary boundary that divides space into two: that which belongs to you and that which does not. It is the edge of your own human cognition; it creates a theoretical (and sometimes physical) line between the known and the unknown, designating a geographic realm where the rules of conduct and cultural practice differ from the center. Ultimately, a frontier offers ways to question conceptualizations of self and identity through geographic proclamations of alterity—mapping personal, social, and political perspectives onto the visible world. By looking back into conceptualizations of the outsider and its agenda of spiritual and economic domination via varied technologies of art and material culture, we can glean an understanding of how personal and cultural identity can play out spatially and materially and result in a fraught legacy of colonialism.

Field of Study:






Chair:
Ittai Weinryb,Bard Graduate Center - weinryb@bgc.bard.edu
Discussant:
Nancy A. Um,Binghamton University - nancyum@binghamton.edu

That Silver Lining
Ittai Weinryb, Bard Graduate Center
The Sociability of the Signature in Northern New Spain
Aaron M. Hyman, University of California-Berkeley
Picturing Each Other
Jennifer Raab, Yale University