Is there anybody out there? UFOs, UAPs, and American Art

In 2017, Leslie Kean reported in the New York Times that the U.S. government has taken U.F.O.s. seriously for decades. Resembling something out of “The X-Files,” her article, “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,” was the first of several intelligence disclosures, rekindling the public’s interest in otherworldly technology and beings. Kean’s article appeared seventy years after the famous “Roswell incident.” Between those two events, American culture has been rife with art and imagery about U.F.O.s. This session examines artistic responses to Ufology. Papers should center the perspective and interpretations of “experiencers” – makers who believed that they or others had first-hand encounters. How did they translate encounters with a creature, being, intelligence, or technology that derived from beyond Earth? What does renewed interest in U.F.O.s say about our relationship to the planet’s ecological crisis; what does it say about our trust in or fear of technology or government? How have these concerns shifted over the past eighty years? A vast and growing Ufology literature in the humanities is full of interdisciplinary convergences. Art history has barely scratched the surface. Scholars such as Jeffrey Kripal have led the way, stewarding the Archives of the Impossible at Rice University, a center for studying this phenomena. Possible artists/subjects: Macena Barton, Peter Charlie Besharo, Rev. Howard Finster, Budd Hopkins, Mike Kelley, Paul Laffoley, John McCracken, Howardena Pindell, Sun Ra, Prophet Royal Robertson, Diego Romero, Ionel Talpazan; Indigenous nations long engaging this subject; ex-voto imagery that include U.F.O.s and extraterrestrial encounters.