Hybrid event, in-person and virtual

Inspired by the exhibition, Smart to the Core: Medium / Image, this symposium traces the philosophical and aesthetic debates that examine the dynamics of media, mediums and mediation. Undergraduate and graduate student speakers will delve into questions of mimesis and indexicality, systems of value and reception, and the gendered and racialized gaze. In doing so, the Medium / Image symposium seeks to interrogate the structures that underpin perception and explore the social impact of visual culture. 

This workshop is organized by the Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry at the Smart Museum of Art and is moderated by Yiran Chi, Graduate Curatorial Intern and a student of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. 

Registration 

• RSVP to attend in person
• Register for the Zoom link

Schedule

Session 1
Meta-reflections on media
4–5:25 pm

• Katie Ambrose (AB '24) and Navid Mazidabadifarahani (AB '24), “z revival: the aesthetic potential of nostalgia in digital capitalism”  
• Audrey Liu (MAPH '22), “teamLab: A New Experience of Immersive Art through Digitization” 
• Andrea Oranday (PhD Student), "Film as Mind: The Continuing Contributions of C.S. Peirce to Photographic Media" 
• Hindley Wang (MAPH '22), "The Eye, the Wound, and On Not Looking Away" 

Session 2
Subjects and bodies in media
5:40–7 pm

• Jixin Lawrence Jia (MAPH '22), "(Dis)embodied Narrative: Surveillant Anxiety and Surveillant Pleasure in Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes and Zhu Shengze’s Present.Perfect." 
• Maria Kuran (MAPH '22), "Mona Hatoum: Surveilling the Body"
• Seth M. Nguyen (AB '23), "Touch: Encountering Sophie Thun"

Image: Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Optical Parable (Parábola óptica) (detail), 1931, Gelatin silver print, mounted. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of Joel Snyder, 1981.83.