Invitations are extended to those scholars and practitioners in the creative disciplines, education, history, anthropology and sociology, to attend the Subjectivity, Creativity and the Institution conference to be held at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth on the 9th and 10th of February 2009, during the UWA Perth International Arts Festival.

The conference has been convened by the Chinese Australian Studies Research Centre to examine the ways in which the creative self, tradition and the modern institution are bound together. It is the second of two linked conferences; the first, held in Guangzhou in 2007, examined the effects of globalisation on traditional Chinese visual practices.

The conference committee is pleased to announce that the distinguished scholar Professor Raewyn Connell is the keynote speaker. Professor Connell’s book Masculinities has had a worldwide influence on the study of gender and men’s subjectivities, while her most recent book Southern Theory opens new perspectives in the debate about creating a democratic, international culture in the human sciences.

At the centre of the conference is the premise that, in what Ulrich Beck calls Second Modernity, and in the conditions of what Zygmunt Bauman calls Liquid Modernity, the need for a reflexive cosmopolitanism is paramount. How does this then impact upon the creative individual when negotiating tradition and the institutions of modernity? How important is the subjective realm as a space for creativity and how relevant is the social realm for creative engagement? The conference aspires to facilitate constructive, high-profile discussion around these issues.

Selected papers will be published post conference by the organisers in both book and electronic formats.

Dr Christopher Crouch
Director, CASRC.

Professor Ted Snell
Dean of Art, John Curtin Gallery.