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Submission Number: 369
Submission ID: 436
Submission UUID: a23106f7-a711-48fb-a533-8a7ff8f5fe1e
Submission URI: /ga/form/submit-contribution
Cruthaithe: Mon, 2 Mar 2026 - 08:58
Déanta: Mon, 2 Mar 2026 - 11:04
Changed: Wed, 13 May 2026 - 09:05
Remote IP address: 83.82.135.20
Submitted by: Anonymous
Teanga: English
Is draft: Níl
Current page: webform_confirmation
Flagged: Tá
| Given name | Joseph |
|---|---|
| Surname | Steele |
| joesteele@alumni.harvard.edu | |
| I understand that by submitting this form, I consent to the use of my data for the purposes of the 2026 Forum on Artistic Research'. | Tá |
| I agree to the terms of service. | Tá |
| Title | Loose Conceptualism: Deadpan Strategies and the Figure of the Migrant |
| Format | Performance |
| Main language | English |
| Abstract | This paper examines strategies of deadpan affect and withholding in conceptual and documentary practices, proposing "loose conceptualism" as a framework for thinking conceptual strategies that operate through elasticity rather than closure. It centers on Renée Green, Christopher Cozier, and Glenn Ligon, bringing together works produced around 1970 and the early 1990s in which migration functions both as socio-political condition and as structuring metaphor for aesthetic movement, translation, and displacement. Grounded in Lauren Berlant's 2014 writing on deadpan, particularly what Berlant describes as "showing up to withhold" in their "reading-with" William Pope L.'s exhibition at the Renaissance Society U. Chicago, the paper shifts attention from migration as a fact or one occupying a figure position to one of potentiality. Loose conceptualism asks how itinerancy is inhabited through a series of historically sedimented figures: the traveler, the dandy or bohemian, flâneur, maroon, nomad, or other types of mobility and their relations. These inhabitations allow artists to explore non-catharsis, questions of subjunctivity and belief, and holding the tension between opposites–– such as concept/material, staying/migration, and performance/document. Across transmedial forms of documentation, these works inhabit migration obliquely, through figures that register movement, precarity, and displacement without reduction, staging a distinction between resistance and refusal, which highlights incompleteness of story, and the ongoing nature of narrative identity. Situating these practices within longer avant-garde histories of intermedial experimentation, the paper considers how a post-conceptualism gives way to an ana-performativity or non-performance, and proposes ‘loose conceptualism’ as a way of thinking how impure strategies migrate across media and historical moments. By presenting the talk as a lecture-performance with slides, the oblique engagement is tested. |
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| Short biographies of the presenter(s) |
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| Previous presentations or iterations of the research | This is a relatively new piece for me. It's not directly related via the subject but in terms of the presentation method it's related to two other presentations I have given at RAI Film Festival (Bristol UK) in 2021 and presentations in Amsterdam between 2021 at the Amsterdam School for the Arts, DAS Theatre Master program in Performance and Dance and Eye Filmmuseum Academic Conference (2025)./ The topic is related to my dissertation (PhD thesis) and a publication on the work of Renée Green. |
| Additional information | It's a lecture performance where I am performing a paper and showing examples of itinerant artists, the use of novels and other texts, and re-routing of conceptualism. The lecture and academic conferences themselves are taken up as a medium and the audience's attention (e.g., the percipient of a work of art) is used as a medium. |
| Spatial and technical requirements | Table, projector and projector screen [or alternatively a monitor on wheels]. Space on the floor to walk around, lav mic with transmitter or wireless microphone [except if I can project enough for all to hear me]. Ability to darken the room. Speakers, since I might play one video clip. |
| Potential risks or ethical concerns | no known risks, nor anticipated. Primarily developed together with the artist Christopher Cozier of Alice Yard and my dialogue with Green, her studio and archive. The artists are public figures and advanced in their careers. |
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