Foucault: Art, Histories, and Visuality in the 21st Century

OCAD University, Toronto
29-30 May 2024

This event was made possible by the generous support of the following sponsors: OCAD University, NSCAD University, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University, the French Embassy in Canada, the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga, the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Organizers: Anton Lee and Catherine M. Soussloff

Collaborator/Local Host: Charles Reeve

PROGRAM

Day 1
Biopolitics & Subjectivities
Introduction: Anton Lee

Gabrielle Moser, Charles Marco Diokno Manzo, and Jeffrey Newberry
Doubly Exposed: Listening for the Resonance of Foucault’s Biopolitics in Contemporary Photography
Andrew Gayed
An Alternative History of Sexuality: Diaspora Consciousness and the Queer Diasporic Lens

Speech, Governance, Ethics
Introduction: Catherine M. Soussloff
Hentyle Yapp
The Aesthetics of Governance: Debility and Speech within Autocracy
T’ai Smith
What Is a Model? Foucault’s Author Question Revisited

Art, Artist, Aesthetics
Introduction: Anton Lee
Michael Kelly
Foucault, Black Aesthetics, and Scintillating Leaps of Imagination: And Yet, Here and Now, Not Yet
Catherine M. Soussloff
To Be an Artist, According to Michel Foucault
Meleko Mokgosi
Spaces of Subjection and Subjecthood

Day 2
Foucault in Toronto
Introduction: Hadrien Laroche
Steven Maynard
The Art of the Collective: Foucault, Queer Art, and Politics in Toronto, 1982
Dot Tuer and Andy Fabo
Sighting Foucault: Technologies of the Body, Bathhouse Spaces, and Local Legends
John Greyson
Pulped by the Paste Processor

Heterotopias? Dream, Museum, Spirit
Introduction: Anton Lee
Sharon Sliwinski
Foucault Dreaming
Titilope Onolaja
A Question of Cultural Domination: Heterotopia in the Nigerian Museum Creation History
Louis Kaplan
“L’Apparition de l’invisible”: Reflections on Michel Foucault, Duane Michals, and Spirit Photography