Art as Shifting Knowledge?: Histories of Science, Medicine, and Sinophone Art

This session invites papers that examine Sinophone art in relation to the dynamic histories of science and medicine from the pre-modern to the contemporary. How have art and artists engaged with and shaped historical discourses of science and medicine? How can a focus on specific moments in the histories of science and medicine—certain inventions, debates, campaigns, epidemics—reframe our understanding of corresponding art histories? How might this lens help us deepen our understanding of “the political” in Sinophone art?

We aim to bring art-making into dialogue with the historically situated theories, practices, imaginaries of science and medicine, particularly as approaches to reevaluate histories and historiographies of Sinophone art. Who are the subjects of science and medicine discourses, and are they the same as art’s subjects? How might we understand art both as knowledge itself, and as a technology for knowing? Generally, what role does art play in the transformation of epistemic modes from the classical learning (gewu zhizhi) to the modern discipline-oriented kagaku (science) to the contemporary efforts at interdisciplinary knowledge production? Acknowledging the historical and etymological challenges of ideas such as science and art in the Chinese language, we encourage consideration of histories and disciplines in flux.

Potential themes include, but are not limited to:

• Experimental art, avant-garde, and the institution
• Theory and practice of experiment in art
• Affect, experience, and disaffection
• Disease, contagion, and illness
• Health, public health, and hygiene
• Disability and debility
• Reality, truth, and (R)ealism
• Politics of science and medicine