The last summer, the volume Notions of Temporalities in Artistic Practice was published by Degruyter: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110720921/html.

The contributions to this publication explore concepts of time and temporality within the context of historical and contemporary artistic practices. The striving for the situational, the processual and the actual as well as reflections on anachronistic practices, questions of community building and the ephemeral nature of sound are the central issues of the volume. The conference Artistic, Architectural and Political-Economic Performance within the Interplay of Productivity and Temporality aims to draw on these reflections to discuss the related question of productivity:

What ideas of productivity underlie concepts of time? How do these notions influence the formation of networks of relationships and positions as well as aesthetic and conceptual practices?

These questions will be approached from a transdisciplinary perspective. The investigation of the interrelations between artistic form, political-economic ideas and spatial settings is intended to open the field for the imaginative potential of deconstruction and the emergence of a critical-reflexive position on the question of productivity. The interlocking strands of thought are meant to challenge, confront and reflect each other. The deconstruction of established mechanisms and the possibility of collage, folding, overlapping, which enables a different pictorial structure and a multi-layered composition, are placed here in a relational context. For example, thinking about work in terms of the effective input-output ratio or in terms of freedom of consumption is confronted in the cinematic work of Harun Farocki with the moment of happiness of leaving the factory. This stimulates an examination of the question of forms of monetarisation of time and the associated idea of productivity.

The motifs examined and discussed in the publication Notions of Temporalities in Artistic Practice , such as the choir as a community figure, processes of ageing, the question of the symbiosis of architecture and nature, the question of historiography and that of speculation, should be enlarged by further aspects and discussed under the perspective of the question of productivity. The conference Artistic, Architectural and Political-Economic Performance within the Interplay of Productivity and Temporality, explore these questions from the fields of art theory, architectural theory, artistic practice, political economy, urban theory, sociology, history, etc. :

  • What are the notions of productivity within social networks and community relations today?
  • What kind of work(s) have been considered "productive" today and in the past?
  • What ideas of productivity underlie the relationship between architecture and nature in modernity? How is this relationship shaped today?
  • What ideas of productivity underlie the conception of historiography?
  • What are the future visions of productivity?

For the forthcoming conference, we invite scholars and researchers from the artistic field, political economy, architecture, urbanism, history, philosophy etc. to submit proposals that address historical and contemporary forms of productivity and its social and asthetical manifestations, both on a practical and theoretical level.

Please submit abstracts of up to 500 words and a biography of 100 words to [email protected]

until 10 July 2023

The conference is a cooperation between the Mozarteum University and the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, initiated by the Mozarteum University.