TrAIN Open Lecture: Historiographies of the Contemporary: Modes of Translation in and from Conceptual Art

This lecture launches this year’s activities of the Contemporary Art and Latin America thematic strand at TrAIN. These include the ‘Historiographies of the Contemporary’ reading group for PhD students and the Latin America and Contemporary Art study group, where invited scholars share their research with their peers.

This lecture draws on historiography and theories of translation departing from the following question: If contemporary art is ‘post conceptual art’, as is often asserted, how should we account for current practices that emerged from art historical genealogies outside that paradigm?

The question problematises terminologies such as ‘conceptualisms’ and the broader notion of ‘global art’, in order to identify how such terminology arose, how to understand the contradictions they invoke and how art historical narratives may respond to such findings.