Material Meanings

Third EAM Conference, 7. -9. September 2012, University of Kent, UK

David Ayers, Professor for Modernism and Critical Theory, University of Kent ist preparing this third biennal conference of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM).

Conference Topic: ‘Material Meanings’

This conference investigates the avant-garde’s reconfiguration of matter and materials in the quest to generate new meanings and effects.

Its particular focus will be the manner in which different artistic disciplines adopt strategies, theories and techniques from each other, and how they translate, transform and integrate conceptions and modes of expression from other sign systems.

Contribution to all aspects of avant-garde activity were presented: arts, literature, music, architecture, film, artistic and social movements, lifestyle, TV, fashion, drama and performance, activism, design as well as technology.

a ViennAvant-panel „Concrete Signs & Traces of Matter: Challenging the Material Limits of Media in Post-war Avant-gardes” presented the following lectures
Thomas Eder, “Concrete Poetry and Matter: Exemplification and weak synaesthesia.”
Gabriele Jutz (chair) “Trace, Gesture, Relic: Echoes of the Index in Experimental Cinematic Practices.”
– Wolfgang Müller-Funk “Quad, square and the salient point. Semiosis in the oeuvre of Friedrich Achleitner.”

Thomas Eder reported great interest in Austrian Post-war Avant-gardes especially in the british Research community. Translation of key works are planned.

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