Latin American Studies Past Event - Highlights
Latin American Events 2010-11
Autumn term 2010
August - Film: Inside the Revolution: A Journey into the Heart of Venezuela (Dir. Pablo Navarrete, 2009), Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS, London
October - Mexican artist Florencia Guillén will be artist-in-residence at the University during the autumn term.
December - writer Richard Fleming will be on campus reading from and talking about his book, Walking to Guantánamo.
December - Performance by Mexican artist Felipe Ehrenberg, in the Lakeside Theatre
December - the British Academy will host a conference called Alexander von Humboldt and America convened by Marina Warner and Peter Hulme.
News
Dr Todd Landman, Political Scientist and International
Consultant of the Department of Government, University
of Essex, will be one of the consultants working in
Santiago, Chile, on a democracy assessment project
sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) as part of the bicentennial celebrations of
Chile's independence from Spain.
Latin American Events 2009-10
Spring Term 2010
25 February 2010: Project Space: Antarctica (education)
26 February 2010: Chris Dobrowolski: Antarctica (exhibitions)
25 March 2010: The War in Afghanistan: Discussion
Summer Term 2010
01 May 2010: Derek Walcott, Caribbean author in conversation
Events at Essex 2008-2009
Autumn Term 2008
October
Sat 4 Writer's talk Derek Walcott, Ivor Crew
Lecture Hall 4.30
Wed 8 Film Fitzcarraldo (Herzog, Peru/W.
Germany, 1982) LTB10 7.30
Sat 11 Conference on Slavery, Senate Room Room 4.722
10.00 a.m.
Programme (word doc)
Wed 29 Film Carandiru (Babenco, Brazil, 2003)
LTB10 7.30
Thurs 23 Artist's talk Graciela Sacco 5A108 4.00
November
Wed 5 Writer's Talk Anna García Bergua LTB8
6.00 further details
Wed 5 Talk on memory and violence in highland Bolivia
5N.7.23 at 4.30 Further details
Wed 5 Human Rights Symposium on the Pinochet case 2.00 -
7.00 Programme
Mon 17 Brazilian Video Art Lakeside
Theatre 7.00
further details
Wed 19 Talk Spotlight on Latin American Art Library 1pm
Thurs 27 Artist's Talk Nadín Ospina,
further details
Fri 28 Latin American Day Symposium IC Lecture Hall A
3.30
further details
December
Wed 3 Talk Spotlight on Latin
American Art Library 1pm
Wed. 3rd. Dec Film El aura (Bielinsky,
Argentina, 2005) LTB10 7.30
Wed. 10th. Dec Film La antenna (Sapir,
Argentina, 2007) LTB10 7.30
Wed 10th Human Rights Day, freedom of speech in
Colombia, University Gallery, 4pm
further details
Winter/Spring Term 2008-09
January
Wed 14 Film Lucía (Solas
1968) LTB 10 7.30
Wed 21 Talk Spotlight on Latin American Art Library 1.pm
Thurs 22 Seminar paper Moacir dos Anjos 'Where all
places are: Space and politics in
Cildo Meireles' work' 6.106 4.00
February
Sat 7 Music Adriano Adewale
(African-Brazilian ensemble) Lakeside Theatre 8.30
Wed 11 Talk Spotlight on Latin American Art Library 1.pm
Thurs 26 Exhibition Francisco Toledo: Zoología
Fantástica University Gallery
further details
March
Mon 2 Film El Violín (Vargas
2006) Lakeside Theatre 7.30
Wed 4 Talk Spotlight on Latin American Art Library 1.pm
Wed 4 Film Chronicle of an Escape (Caetano 2006)
LTB 10 7.30
Mon 9 Film Los Albañiles (Fons 1976) Lakeside
Theatre 7.30
Mon 16 Film El lugar sín límites (Ripstein 1977)
Lakeside Theatre 7.30
Fri 20 JISLAC Seminar Middle America: Visual Culture
in Mexico and Central America
further details
Spotlight on Art in Latin America and Europe
Professor Fraser has been awarded funding from the AHRC for the project Meeting Margins: Transnational Art in Latin America and Europe 1950-1978. This 3-year research project is a collaboration between the Art History department at Essex and the TrAIN Research Centre, University of the Arts London.
Meeting Margins proposes a new approach to the study of art from Latin America that questions the role traditionally ascribed to New York as the dominant force in modern art in the post-war years. Funded by the AHRC, it is a three-year research project jointly hosted by the University of Essex (Department of Art History) and the University of the Arts London (TrAIN Research Centre). Focusing on artistic encounters between Europe and Latin America, as well as on intra-Latin American exchanges, it will explore contacts between individual artists and critics, and the movements, groups and institutions as well as the wider geopolitical and cultural contexts that supported and provoked them. This in turn will allow for a review of the forms of artistic practice that these transnational exchanges generated. The decision made by artists from Latin America to continue to favour Paris over New York was in part based upon a long-standing tradition of transatlantic intellectual exchange. Via internationalist movements this tradition remained active in Latin America and Europe during and after WW2. Later, repressive regimes such as those in Brazil in the 1960s and Argentina in the 1970s forced artists into exile, some to other countries within Latin America and some to Europe, where the politicized milieu of cities such as London and Paris proved both attractive and sympathetic. Repressive governments also provoked collaboration between artists remaining in Latin America, with relatively stable institutions becoming urgent foci for exhibitions and meetings, allowing new allegiances to be formed, and for debates to be conducted concerning the particularity of a Latin American avant-garde and its restricted possibilities for action.
Transnational exchanges were also supported by the movement of artworks during this period. Large scale international exhibitions played an important role in bringing artists and writers into close contact and collaboration, but this role was not unchanging; the most prominent amongst these, the Bienal Internacional in São Paulo (founded 1951) was at first considered an exemplary modernist achievement but was to become an international focus for boycott, protest and intervention under Brazil's military rule. In addition to exhibitions, the circulation of ideas by post, from post-war journals to conceptual art works, supported transatlantic and intra-Latin American networks and became vital to sustaining these connections under constrained circumstances. Focusing on case studies from the period 1950-78, the research questions that this project will address include: What particular contribution did artists from Latin America make to avant-garde activity in Europe after the perceived ascendance of New York over Paris? How did exchanges between Latin America and Europe relate to contemporaneous intra-Latin American exchanges? What role did the US play in provoking or supporting such connections and how did this role shift according to political circumstances? What methods and media were used to sustain these connections? Which countries, artists or practices might have been excluded from such an approach?
The project will include an international graduate research forum at the University of Texas at Austin (2009) and a public conference in the UK (2010). Following the conference, research from the project will be published as a volume of essays, with contributions from Europe, Latin America and the USA, edited by Michael Asbury, Valerie Fraser and Isobel Whitelegg.
Spotlight on Latin America in the 19th Century
In April 2009 the Latin American Centre is hosting a symposium as part of the Leverhulme-funded Text and Image in19th Century Spanish America project directed by Dr Rebecca Earle of the University of Warwick in collaboration with the University of Essex and the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. Further details online.
Spotlight on the American Tropics
An international conference as part of the AHRC-funded research project American Tropics: Towards a Literary Geography will be held at the University of Essex in July 2009. Confirmed speakers include Barbara Ladd, Richard Price, Sally Price, Susan Castillo, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Sharon Monteith, Gordon Brotherston, Neil Whitehead, Selwyn Cudjoe.
Munex Conference January 2008
In January 2008 the Latin American Centre supported a hugely successful Model UN Conference on Human Trafficking organised by students at Essex and attended by students from around the world.
Human Rights in Latin America
As part of the programme of events to mark the 25th anniversary of the Human Rights Centre at Essex the University Gallery mounted an exhibition of art addressing issues of human rights drawn largely from the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art. The exhibition was timed to coincide with the Human Rights Centre alumni conference. Further information about the Human Rights conference is available online.
Latin American Art in the UK Symposium
Over 60 people attended a symposium to mark the end of a year-long AHRC-funded investigation into the presence of Latin American art and artists in the UK since the 1960s, Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art and the UK: history, historiography, specificity. The University of Essex has played a leading role in the field since Professor Dawn Ades first introduced Latin American art into the curriculum in 1969, and went on to curate the ground-breaking exhibition Art in Latin America at the Hayward Gallery London in 1989. She and the critic and curator Guy Brett, another pioneer in the field, were among the participants. Other speakers included Michael Asbury (University of the Arts), Rocío Aranda-Alvarado (Jersey City Museum), Professor Oriana Baddeley (University of the Arts), Isabel Plante (Universidad de Buenos Aires), Joanne Harwood (University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art), and Latin American artists resident in London Jaime Gili, Ana Laura López, Eduardo Padilha, and Ofelia Rodríguez. At the end of the day everyone enjoyed a glass of wine at a reception in the Hexagon marked the start of a campaign to convert this beautiful building into a permanent gallery for the University's unique collection of Latin American art. Music was provided by Luzmira Zerpa who sang and played the Venezuelan cuatro. A graduate of the Latin American Studies degree, Luzmira is now a highly-successful free-lance musician. The occasion also marked the launch of a new limited edition UECLAA print by Jaime Gili.The project was led by Professor Valerie Fraser. The researchers were Dr Isobel Whitelegg, who has taken up a post at the University of the Arts, London and Taína Caragol, who has returned to New York as archivist at the Museum of Modern Art.
President Michelle Bachelet awarded Honorary Doctorate.
In April the University of Essex confirmed an Honorary Doctorate on President Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile. The event took place in Lancaster House, London, in conjunction with the Canning House Annual Presidential Lecture. Professor Valerie Fraser, Director of the Latin American Centre, gave the oration. During her speech the president made reference to the important role which the University of Essex has had in training Chilean political leaders.
