Centering the Margins JAG Symposium
UCLA, Royce Hall, May 25-6, 2024
I am pleased to announce JAG’s first major post-pandemic event! “Centering the Margins” is a conference event occasioned by the publication of three mutually-informing books that reshape our understandings of postwar art, culture and politics.
KuroDalaiJee (a.k.a. Kuroda Raiji)’s groundbreaking and monumental tome, Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance in 1960s Japan, is now available in English translation thanks to the Art Platform Japan project; our event, featuring a keynote by the author, is co-sponsored by their current institutional support, the National Center for Art Research (NCAR). The availability of KuroDalaijee’s meticulous documentation and analysis of a wealth of ephemeral works will make this transformative work available to a broader community of art and performance scholars. A keynote by KuroDalaiJee will be followed by professors Judith Rodenbeck (UCR), Markus Nornes (U Michigan), and Rosemary Candelario (U Texas Austin) discussing the work’s implications.
Art and Street Politics in the Global 1960s: Yoshio Nakajima and the Global Avant-Garde brings together scholars from Japan, Belgium, Denmark and the US to address the work of this “Japanese artist from Sweden,” in the words of Professor Tania Ørum. In ways that challenge our imaginings of the role, place, and possibilities of art, Yoshio Nakajima’s storied career has traversed an astounding range of locations, scenes, and movements as well as media and performance modes. The paradox of Nakajima’s work is that, despite its apparent exemplification of art’s potential to move and to transform, it has largely fallen out of accounts in which its impact might have justifiably featured. Professors Bert Winther-Tamaki (UC Irvine) and Chris Nelson (UNC) will comment and lead a panel with several of the authors.
Dr. Yoshiko Shimada’s Omae ga kimeru na!: Tōdai de ryūgakusei ga manabu “han-dōtoku” feminizumu kōgi is based on noted artist and researcher Shimada’s lectures at Tokyo University on postwar radical feminism and art. This work also informed her recent exhibition at Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, and her attention to suppressed legacies of feminist resistance. Professor Anne McKnight (UC Riverside) will add commentary following Dr. Shimada’s keynote.
In honor of the mammoth achievement of the translation of KuroDalaiJee’s monumental work, we will also feature a panel discussing translation, moderated by Michael Emmerich, and featuring Claire Tanaka, Andrew Maerkle, Alice Ashiwa, Yoshiko Shimada and Ken Shima along with the author himself.
Through in-depth explorations of such overlooked work, facilitated by these volumes and their authors, “Centering the Margins” will consider the relations of art and possibility, and politics, and the relations between discrete, local events and global connections. The event will feature lectures, panel discussions, and our signature JAG breakout groups and group discussions. We thank the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, the Yanai Initiative, the National Center for Art Research (NCAR), the UCLA Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities Deans, and especially the JAG member institutions for their generous support!
See the event page for further details and schedule!