Contretemps: The Tenth Annual Wollesen Memorial Graduate Symposium
When and Where
Speakers
Description
The Tenth Annual Wollesen Memorial Graduate Symposium
October 13–14, 2023 (in-person)
University of Toronto
What brings Walter Benjamin to conceptualize “messianic time”? What is time to a modern, imperial, and colonial power, and what is it to a contemporary multinational “Empire” that has spread across the planet in ever-increasing ways? Through what process do unfoldings or rhythms of temporality, Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s “divine time” and “human time,” diverge from or overlay one another? How does time operate in Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s “Undercommons”—if it looks fugitive, is it ethical to define it? How does time’s orientation reverse its trajectory within moments of culture-shift, as in Francis Dunn’s “present shock”? From Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood’s “anachronism” to Pamela Lee’s “chronophobia,” what gave/gives time its place in art history? How do tropes get appropriated, haunting generations of spectators? If there is “slow cinema,” can there be “fast cinema”? This symposium hopes to convene thoughts on time within a shared plane, recognizing the necessity for power struggles without reinforcing positions of temporal marginality or centrality.
Supported by: Jens Wollesen Memorial Graduate Symposium Fund Donors.
