We are delighted to publish the programme for the upcoming conference: The Aesthetics of Politics and the Politics of Aesthetics in Contemporary Venezuela.
Online registration has been extended until Sunday September 14th via this link.
Organisers: Dr Lisa Blackmore (Zurich), Rebecca Jarman (CLAS), Penélope Plaza (City), Venezuela Research Network
Contact: vzlaconf2014@gmail.com
This conference has been made possible thanks to valuable support from the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) and the Centre of Latin American Studies (CLAS)
The Aesthetics of Politics and the Politics of Aesthetics in Contemporary Venezuela
Keynote: George Yúdice
Alison Richard Building, University of Cambridge
Thursday 18th September, 6pm,
Pre-conference film screening: La clase (Dir. José Antonio Varela, 2007) 90 minutes, Producer: Fundación Villa del Cine, Director: José Antonio Varela, 2007
Tita is a promising young violinist, from a poor neighbourhood of Caracas. As part of a symphony orchestra, she realises that the high life of a musician sits uneasily with her family’s social-economic situation. With a chance to escape into a very different world, Tita will reach a crossroads which relates to the destiny of her country.
Location: Alison Richard Building, Sidgwick Site (http://map.cam.ac.uk/Alison+Richard+Building)
Friday 19th September
9:00-9:30 Registration & Coffee
9:30-11:00 Panel 1: Memory, Heritage and History in National Discourse
Erik Del Bufalo (Universidad Simón Bolívar) ‘Aesthetics of restraint: the imagination of an enclosed society in Bolivarian Venezuela’
Raquel Rivas-Rojas (Independent scholar) ‘Memory and Horizons of Affect in Mirtha Rivero’s Historia menuda de un país que ya no existe’
Desiree Domec (University of Essex), ‘Conservation and Assets of Cultural Heritage in Venezuela: From Social Participation to Governmental Policies and the Case Study of Armando Reverón’s Castillete’
Marco Cupolo (University of Hartford) ‘Caudillo grandfather, oil rentier son, beggar grandson, and Venezuela today’
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11:30-1:00 Panel 2: Ideological Inscriptions and the Body
Paula Vásquez (CESPRA- CNRS France) ‘The Sacrificial Logic and the End of Citizenship: The Three Bodies of the Bolivarian Revolution’
Juan Peraza Guerrero (Universidad Del Salvador), ‘The True Face of Simón Bolívar. Televised Exhumations and other Necrophiliac Tendencies in Contemporary Venezuela’
Natalia García Bonet (University of Kent) ‘The Indian within: negotiating indigenous identity among dominant images of indigeneity in Venezuela’
Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols (Drury University), ‘The War of Silicon: Aesthetic Surgery, Consumption and Physical Beauty in Venezuela’
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-4:00 Panel 3: Divine Intervention and Political Performativity
Colette Capriles (Universidad Simón Bolívar) ‘Ser visto, ser hablado. Lecciones de poder en la Venezuela Bolivariana’
Isaac Nahón-Serfaty (Ottawa University), ‘Por una estética del discurso esperpéntico: el caso de Hugo Chávez’
Daniel Esparza (New School for Social Research), ‘Theological revolutionary representation: a philosophical approach to political chavista identity’
Javier A. García (University of Cambridge) ‘“Chávez, el Nuevo Cristo: The Aesthetics of Popular Religion in Venezuela from Chávez to Maduro’
4:00-4:30 Coffee break
4:30-6:00 Panel 4: Territorialities, Landscapes and Urban Narratives
Elizabeth Barrios (University of Michigan) ‘Dead Landscapes, Living Nation: Nature and The Limits of National Narratives’
Santiago Acosta (Columbia University), ‘Territoriality and Representation in Posthegemonic Times’
Jacinto Fombona Iribarren (Independent Scholar), ‘Venezuela está candela, When is chaos rhetoric not rhetorical?’
Gonzalo Chacón Mora (University of Kent), ‘Imagining the Malandro: Anti-politics and the representation of the Malandro in Venezuelan Cinema’ç
6:00 Pre-dinner drinks, Selwyn College Bar
7:00 Conference Dinner
Selwyn Formal Hall (for those who pre-book at registration)
Saturday 20th September
10:30-12:00 Panel 5: Socialist Symphonies/Sympathies?
Geoff Baker (Royal Holloway), ‘Politics and El Sistema’
Wilfredo Hernández (Allegheny College, Pennsylvania, USA), ‘La política de la música en La clase (2007), de José Antonio Varela’
Hazel Marsh (University of East Anglia), ‘Popular music and politics in Venezuela in the Chávez period: ‘New Song’ and 21st century Bolivarianism’
Yana Stainova (Brown University), ‘A Sonorous Silence: the Polyphonous Politics of Classical Music in the Youth Orchestras of Venezuela’s El Sistema’
12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:30 Panel 6: (Trans)National Identities
Manuel Silva-Ferrer (Freie Universitaet Berlin) ¿Hegemonía comunicacional? Nuevos escenarios de la cultura y la sociedad venezolana
Katie Brown (King’s College, London) ‘Manifiesto: País – a response to the prescriptive nationalism of Bolivarian cultural politics?’
Wesley Beaver (University of Oxford), ‘Transnational Collective Action in the Digital Age: the Venezuelan diaspora and the SOS Venezuela Movement’
María Teresa Vera-Rojas (Universitat de Barcelona), ‘Rethinking Venezuelanness through Disenchantment: Exile and National Identity in Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles’ Los Desterrados’
2:30-3:00 Coffee break
3:00-5:00 Keynote address & questions: George Yúdice
5:00-5:30 Closing comments
5:30 Drinks
