{"id":26,"date":"2025-01-22T09:39:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T07:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/?page_id=26"},"modified":"2025-04-22T09:53:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T06:53:11","slug":"keynote-speakers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/keynote-speakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Keynote speakers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Vanessa Corby<\/strong>, “‘Well I think that\u2019s <\/em>quite sufficient!’ Pan-European Threats to the Arts and the Irresolvable Deadlock of Class Struggle<\/em>“<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n

\u2018Why, when I have written so much about processes of domination, have I never written about forms of domination based on class? Or \u2018Why, when I have paid so much attention to the role played by feelings of shame in processes of subjection and subjectivation, have I written so little about forms of shame having to do with class?\u2019 (Didier Eribon, 2019 [2009]: 19).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This paper offers a provocation to arts-based disciplines shaped by identity politics, to enquire not only into the continued marginalisation of the experience of social class, and denial of opportunity for people from poorer and working-class communities in creative occupations, but to articulate the complex ideological context that impedes, mishears, and misrepresents any attempt to redress that exclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This critique is grounded in an analysis of the curation and reception of the exhibition Lives Less Ordinary: Working Class Britain Re-seen<\/em>. Curated by Samantha Manton at the extraordinary gallery Two Temple Place, London from 25th<\/sup> January \u2013 20th<\/sup> April 2025, this exhibition brought together works spanning five decades made by 60 artists in Britain to address the \u2018crisis of working-class representation and lack of discussion around class difference in the arts\u2019 (Manton, 2025:16). Lives <\/em>attempts to reframe working-class subjectivity beyond \u2018the objectifying middle- and upper-class gaze\u2019 that has determined its representation to date, instead revealing the diverse inflection of ethnicities, genders, and sexualities that inflect the felt experiences of class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This curatorial strategy, while responding to the cultural context of the UK, speaks to the broader, pan-European and US political landscapes divided by populism, where right-wing programmes of austerity and anti-immigration rhetoric go hand in hand with cuts to arts funding. If the arts are to tackle their present precarity head on, it is imperative that they acknowledge the direct correlation between the Right\u2019s claims to represent ordinary people, and its ideological rejection of the arts. Systemic prejudice in the arts does not merely exclude working class modes of being and thinking, but, I argue, its deafness to what \u017di\u017eek calls the \u2018irresolvable deadlock that is the reality of class struggle\u2019 renders, the field culpable in its own socio-economic precarity (\u017di\u017eek, 2023:46). This paper, therefore, takes the cultural hegemony of the arts to task, calling for greater inclusivity not to provide a mere enhancement to the discipline, but as a radical restructuring of its understanding of inclusivity that is imperative to their survival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vanessa Corby<\/strong><\/a> learnt she could paint, think, and write while undertaking her undergraduate degree in Fine Art in the North of England in the 1990s. Her research is the product of a fascination with materials and processes, and their transformation of artistic protocols, culture, history, and society. Her attention to the historical specificity of art making is marked by a desire to read for the way in which artworks negotiate experiences marginalised and\/or silenced by dominant ideologies. As a result, her research draws attention to differences of ability, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social class and their displacement through education, migration, and neoliberalism more broadly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire in 1972, Vanessa holds a PhD in feminism and art history (2002, Leeds). She joined York St John University as Lecturer in contextual studies in 2006 and is now the Professor of the history, theory, and practice of art at YSJU.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tilo Reifenstein<\/strong>, “Work, Guest Work, Out of Work: On \u2018Becoming Homeless\u2019 with Others”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How does the foreigner fit into an understanding of class? Even in specific national or regional settings, the categorization of social class embraces economic, cultural, educational, professional, symbolic and other parameters in such complex and irreducible ways that class belonging is already deeply discursive. The foreigner often plays havoc with this loaded discussion because they refuse to map onto existing frameworks and broach the construct\u2019s presumed isolability and coherence in view of social reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This presentation considers examples of Sung Tieu\u2019s installation practice to explore narratives of contract labour, immigration status and social belonging. Tieu\u2019s work regularly engages with the German Democratic Republic\u2019s history of contract labour from Vietnam in the 1980s. The initially precarious and exploited status of Vietnamese workers in the GDR was thrown into further disarray during Germany\u2019s reunification and, in a climate of economic decline capitalised on by neo-fascist political parties, is marked by outright threat. The solidarity between nations and workers, promised by the \u2018workers’ and peasants’ state\u2019, never materialised and the German Vietnamese community remained first and foremost defined by otherness as foreigners, rather than commonness as workers. Tieu\u2019s work enables a view of workers\u2019 (under)common ground as, what Fred Moten (2013) describes as, \u2018study\u2019: the \u2018talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u2018study\u2019 does not seek to neutralise difference between workers, dancers and\/or sufferers but aims to overcome the presumed antagonism between those not (yet) at home and those who are told that their home is under threat of being overrun by the former. Yuk Hui (2024) has recently returned to Heidegger\u2019s dictum of Heimatlosigkeit<\/em> (homelessness) as the \u2018destiny of the world\u2019 in a response to the threats of capitalism and technological acceleration. \u2018Becoming homeless\u2019 is for him inevitable and a techno\u2011logical result of European ideas, but also offers a pathway for non-Eurocentric thinking. Between homelessness and Rosi Braidotti\u2019s nomadic theory, the foreigner and the worker may even dance together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tilo Reifenstein<\/a> <\/strong>is Senior Lecturer in Critical Studies at York St John University, UK, and deputy editor for the Open Arts Journal<\/a><\/em>, where he co-edited the special issue ‘Between sensuous and making-sense-of<\/a>‘ (2019). Tilo was International Fellow (2022) at the Kulturwissenschaftliche Institut Essen<\/a> (KWI), Germany, and Franz-Roh Fellow (2015-16) at the Zentralinstitut f\u00fcr Kunstgeschichte<\/a> in Munich, Germany. His recent publications explore word-image relations in the photography and writing of Moyra Davey and Teju Cole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milja-Liina Moilanen<\/strong>, “Interpretations of Social Class: Navigating the Norms of Respectability through Artistic Practice”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This keynote examines how experiences of social class and internalized norms of respectability shape artistic work, particularly in the context of moving between class positions. Focusing on the documentary\u00a0My Reality<\/em>, it explores how shame, respectability, and moral judgments intersect in the lives of women who have been publicly shamed after reality TV exposure. The talk considers how artistic practice can make visible the often-unspoken structures of class and gender, and question who is allowed to speak\u2014and how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milja-Liina Moilanen<\/strong><\/a> (b.1989) is a filmmaker and media artist based in Turku, Finland. Her work explores power, class, and identity through a feminist lens. She holds a Master\u2019s degree from the Academy of Fine Arts (2019). Her debut feature documentary\u00a0My Reality<\/em>\u00a0(2024, Tuffi Films) examines shame, identity, and the media\u2019s portrayal of women, particularly those familiar from reality television.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vanessa Corby, “‘Well I think that\u2019s quite sufficient!’ Pan-European Threats to the Arts and the Irresolvable Deadlock of Class Struggle“ \u2018Why, when I have written so much about processes of domination, have I never written about forms of domination based on class? Or \u2018Why, when I have paid so much attention to the role played by feelings … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Keynote speakers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16424,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-26","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/vansoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}