Meeting Margins International Conference
Transnational Art in Latin America and Europe 1950-1978
Speaker Biographies
Click on a speaker name to read their biography.
Suzana Vaz
Suzana Vaz is currently a PhD candidate at TrAIN (The Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation), at the University of the Arts London, under the supervision of Michael Asbury. Her research analyses segments of the Brazilian and Japanese avant-garde of the 1950's, particularly Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica and the Gutai group, looking into their creative accomplishment as the search for the existential situation of "absolute beginning". The enactment of the "absolute beginning" by means of the creative experimental practice of these artists is evinced through a recurrent typology of primordial (archetypal) images. This imagery also illustrates a concrete, universal, psycho-physiological embodied resource that enables the return to an unconditioned situation, represented by the accomplishment of an original creative command: the ascension of the kundaliní (libido is an aspect of the kundalin energy). The projection of this concrete, albeit mostly unconscious program of emancipation is a reminder issued whenever the individual condition demands the reassertion of one's creative teleology, in response to an engulfing inner conflict or before a radical creative challenge.
Aquiles Pantaleão
Aquiles Pantaleão holds a PhD in Acousmatic music composition from City University, London. Particularly concerned with spectral morphology, texture, gesturality and spatial movement, his compositional work has been widely diffused, being awarded a number of mentions and prizes, including a compositional prize in the 1998 edition of the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica for digital arts. His compositional works can be found published by Fundação RioArte (BR), INA/GRM (FR), ORTF (AT), and Paradigm Records (UK). Aside from his own concert music he has also engaged in many collaborations for film, theatre and gallery/exhibition work.
Research interests and creative activities include among others the history, composition and aesthetics of acousmatic music, sound diffusion/spatialisation, live electronics, digital signal processing, sound and image interaction, and interactive systems responsive to ambiental/environmental changes.
Aquiles is a lecturer at the London College of Communication - UAL for the Sound Arts Dept. (since 2000), and Film&TV Dept. (since 2007).
Read Aquiles Pantaleão's abstract
Sergio Martins
Sergio Bruno Martins is currently a PhD candidate at University College London (UCL), under the supervision of Professor Briony Fer. His thesis explores ways in which the Brazilian postwar avant-garde has constructed itself with recourse to experiences of non-identity, and the way this process can be historiographically accounted for. He has published articles and reviews both in Brazil and internationally, on artists such as Hélio Oiticica, Antonio Dias and Renata Lucas. He has also been editor of the journal "Object", and is currently organizing a collection of interviews by the Brazilian artist Antonio Dias and editing a special issue on Brazilian art for the journal Third Text.
German Alfonso Adaid
German Alfonso Nunez holds an MA in Digital Arts from Camberwel College of Art, is currently a PhD student at the TrAIN Research Centre at the University of the Arts London and is a member of the collective art group maiszero.org since 2008. He has performed and shown his artistic projects at many venues and festivals in Brazil, including: FILE São Paulo and Rio; MIS São Paulo; 7th Mercosul Biennale; 2nd International Performance Manifest in Belo Horizonte; 2nd Symposium of Cyberculture at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Rodin Museum in Salvador and others. His theoretical research focuses on the legitimating processes of artistic discourse and institutions in early digital art.
Read German Alfonso Adaid's abstract
Olga Fernandez
Olga Fernandez is Course Tutor in "Curatorial Strategies - Past and Present" in the department of Curating Contemporary Art (Royal College of Art) and a freelance curator and writer. She also lectures at Universidad Autnoma de Madrid and Universidad Nebrija (Madrid). Prior to this, she worked at Museo Patio Herreriano (Valladolid, Spain) and Colección Arte Contemporneo (Madrid, Spain).
Read Olga Fernandez's abstract
Zanna Gilbert
Zanna Gilbert is an AHRC Collaborative PhD student with the Tate and the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on the transnational circulation of art through the mail, artists networks and their relationship with conceptual practice. In 2009, she organised an exhibition of Felipe Ehrenbergs work, drawn from the Tate Archive, as well as a symposium at Tate Modern, "Outside the Material World", in conjunction with the exhibition "Pop Life: Art in a Material World". She is currently planning the exhibition "Intimate Bureaucracies: Art and the Mail", which concerns art that appropriates the postal system for its circulation. She is co-editor of the journal ARARA (Art and Architecture of the Americas) and a member of the Study Group on Latin American Art and Theory (University of the Arts, London).
Fernando Davis
Fernando Davis is a researcher and curator, and professor at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina. He is a member of UNLPs Institute of Latin American and American Art History and has been associated with the Red Conceptualismos del Sur (Conceptualisms of the South Network) since its founding in 2007. He is currently developing research about Edgardo Antonio Vigo and the construction of alternative networks in the sixties and seventies. Davis participated in the workshops of the project "Vivid Radical Memory" (MACBA, Barcelona; WKV Stuttgart, 2007) and in a series of conferences associated with the Red Conceptualismos del Sur (MAC-USP, São Paulo, 2008, 2010; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2009). He has curated exhibitions with artists including Juan Carlos Romero, Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Horacio Zabala, and was co-curator of the projects "Inventario 1965-1975: Archivo Graciela Carnevale" (Centro Cultural Parque de España, 2008) and "Subversive Practices. Art under Conditions of Political Repression 60s 80s / South America / Europe" (Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, 2009).
Fernanda Nogueira
Fernanda Nogueira is a researcher, translator and literary critic. Since 2008 she has been a member of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur (Conceptualisms of the South Network), collaborating on the project "Alternative artistic networks: the editions of visual poetry and mail art". She is currently researching - for her PhD - connections between the practices of the wide "Poema/Processo" group (whose members were situated across Brazil) and other participants of the mail art network that have used different poetic tactics to politically resist military dictatorships in Latin America. She has an MA in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the University of São Paulo (2010) and in Museums Studies and Critical Theory from the Independent Studies Program at MACBA (2008-2009), for which she received a scholarship held by the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for the Development (AECID). In 2005-2007 she received a grant from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) to research the conceptual art collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo. In 2007 she interviewed artists participating of the 27th Biennial of São Paulo (2006) for its catalogue, and in 2009 she translated the book "Conceitualismos do Sul/Sur" (São Paulo, Annablume, USP-MAC and AECID, 2009) edited by Cristina Freire and Ana Longoni. Her articles have been published in magazines such as "ramona" (Buenos Aires) and "Arte&Ensaios" (Rio de Janeiro) and she is a correspondent for "Artecontexto" (Madrid) magazine.
Read Fernanda Nogueira's abstract
Miguel A. López
Miguel A. López (Lima, 1983) is a writer, artist and art historian. He is a regular contributor to "Ramona" and "Artecontexto", and has also written for "Afterall", "Papers d'Art", "Papel Alpha", "Juanacha", and other periodicals. A former curator of the Office of Visual Arts and two public art spaces in Lima (Sala Luis Miró Quesada Garland and Sala Raúl Porras Barrenechea, in Miraflores). He is co-author of "Post-Ilusiones. Nuevas visiones. Arte crtico en Lima, 1980-2006" (Lima, 2006), and co-curator of exhibitions and projects such as "Peligrosidad Social. Minorías deseantes, lenguajes y prácticas en los 70-80 en el Estado español" at MACBA, Barcelona (2010), "Subversive Practices. Art under conditions of Political Repression. 60s-80s / South America / Europe" at WKV, Stuttgart (2009), "La Persistencia de lo Efmero. Orígenes del no-objetualismo Peruano: Ambientaciones / Happenings / Arte Conceptual (1965-1975)" at Spanish Cultural Center, Lima (2007), among many others. López is an active member, since its foundation in 2007, of the "Red Conceptualismos del Sur", and from 200608 was a member of "Espacio La Culpable" (20032008), an artist-run space and artistic collective in Lima.
Read Miguel A. López's abstract
Jaime Vindel
Jaime Vindel (Madrid, 1981) is an art historian and Master of Philosophy and Social Sciences. He has written in several periodicals such as "Ramona", "Concinnitas", "El Río sin Orillas" and "Transversal". Currently, he is developing research focused on the relationship between art and politics in Argentina from the beginning of the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía in the 60s to the economic crisis of 2001. He's member of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur since 2008.
Read Jaime Vindel's first abstract
Read Jaime Vindel's second abstract
Eduardo Grüner
Eduardo Grner holds a PhD in Social Sciences and is Full Professor of the Anthropology of Art, Literature, Film and Political Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires. He has been invited to teach by several Latin American Universities (in Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, etc). He has led research teams in the fields of Critical Theory, Literary Theory, Aesthetics, and the Philosophy of Culture. He was Vice Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Buenos Aires) and is currently member of the Academic Commitee of the IEALC (Instituto de Estudios de América Latina y el Caribe). He is the author of six books on related to these subjects, and co-author of two dozen other books. He has co-founded several cultural and political magazines (Sitio, Conjetural, Cinegrafo, El Cielo por Asalto, Pasajes, Confines, Diatribas, etc) and has received the Konex Prize for Philosophical Essays (Argentina, 2004) and the First Mention of the Libertador Prize for Critical Essays (Venezuela, 2006).
Read Eduardo Grüner's abstract
Oriana Baddeley
TrAIN - The Research Centre for Transnational Art Identity and Nation
University of the Arts London
Oriana Baddeleley is Professor of Art History and Director of Research at Camberwell College of Arts, Deputy Director of TrAIN, a member of the International Advisory committee of UECLAA, the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art, and an advisory editor of the Oxford Art Journal.
She completed her doctorate at the University of Essex and her thesis "The Cacaxtla Murals" later formed the basis for the 1992 Hayward exhibition "The Art of Ancient Mexico". She has written and published extensively on contemporary Latin American art, including "Drawing the Line: Art and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin America" co-authored with Valerie Fraser (Verso 1989), and collaborated with Gerardo Mosquera and inIVA in the production of "Beyond the Fantastic" (inIVA/MIT 1996).
Recent publications include an essay on ancient Mexican sources within early modern architecture in the catalogue for "Art Deco" at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A, 2003), and an essay on contemporary responses to Frida Kahlo for the Tate Modern exhibition "Frida" (Tate, 2005).
Read Oriana Baddeley's abstract
