After Fiction: Patrick Jagoda

After Fiction: Patrick Jagoda

Symposium
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CWAC 157
Add to Calendar 2019-11-02 11:00:00 2019-11-02 12:30:00 After Fiction: Patrick Jagoda After Fiction “That which, or something that, is imaginatively invented; feigned existence, event, or state of things; invention as opposed to fact.” This is the OED definition of fiction. In modern art studies, this understanding of the divide between the fictional and what is real is essential to a number of fundamental concepts such as representation, imagination, invention, plot, fantasy, and many more. Fiction, indeed, is a fundamental tenet in the basic understanding of what art is – whether as something superior to mere facts, or as something that is dispensed of conforming to the reign of the factual. However, this understanding is also challenged in today’s culture. In the realm of art, we are witnessing a rapid growth of works and events that overtly and provocatively use and display non-fictional forms, claims and materials. Inversely, the social realms of information, politics and economy are getting still more dependent on forms and ideas that bear more resemblance to fictional phenomena than to actually assignable facts on the ground. Information is instrumental in strategic warfare agendas, political claims address affects of imaginary scenarios, assessment of bonds and stocks becomes relative to a finely tuned set of values, faith professions and expectations, and so on. With this symposium, we will discuss how the neatly delineated “realms” of the invented and the factual become entangled, blurred, contested, negotiated or recast. November 2nd Keynote Patrick Jagoda: "Media Fictions and Alternate Realities" Patrick Jagoda is Professor at the Dept. of English at the University of Chicago, working in the field of new media studies and twenty-first century literature and culture. He is the author of Network Aesthetics (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and is currently working on a book on experimental games and gamification. Jagoda is also the co-founder and manager of the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, which uses digital storytelling, videogames, and emerging new media forms to explore social, emotional, and sexual health issues with marginalized and sexual minority youth on the South Side of Chicago. After Fiction is a graduate symposium with keynote lectures open to the public. Paper sessions are restricted to registered participants. Questions may be directed to Ina Blom at blom@uchicago.edu. Image: Hannah Höch, High Finance, 1923 CWAC 157 Department of Art History drupal@seastar.uchicago.edu America/Chicago public
Hannah Hoch

After Fiction

“That which, or something that, is imaginatively invented; feigned existence, event, or state of things; invention as opposed to fact.” This is the OED definition of fiction.

In modern art studies, this understanding of the divide between the fictional and what is real is essential to a number of fundamental concepts such as representation, imagination, invention, plot, fantasy, and many more. Fiction, indeed, is a fundamental tenet in the basic understanding of what art is – whether as something superior to mere facts, or as something that is dispensed of conforming to the reign of the factual.

However, this understanding is also challenged in today’s culture. In the realm of art, we are witnessing a rapid growth of works and events that overtly and provocatively use and display non-fictional forms, claims and materials. Inversely, the social realms of information, politics and economy are getting still more dependent on forms and ideas that bear more resemblance to fictional phenomena than to actually assignable facts on the ground. Information is instrumental in strategic warfare agendas, political claims address affects of imaginary scenarios, assessment of bonds and stocks becomes relative to a finely tuned set of values, faith professions and expectations, and so on. With this symposium, we will discuss how the neatly delineated “realms” of the invented and the factual become entangled, blurred, contested, negotiated or recast.

November 2nd Keynote

Patrick Jagoda: "Media Fictions and Alternate Realities"

Patrick Jagoda is Professor at the Dept. of English at the University of Chicago, working in the field of new media studies and twenty-first century literature and culture. He is the author of Network Aesthetics (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and is currently working on a book on experimental games and gamification. Jagoda is also the co-founder and manager of the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, which uses digital storytelling, videogames, and emerging new media forms to explore social, emotional, and sexual health issues with marginalized and sexual minority youth on the South Side of Chicago.

After Fiction is a graduate symposium with keynote lectures open to the public. Paper sessions are restricted to registered participants. Questions may be directed to Ina Blom at blom@uchicago.edu.

Image: Hannah Höch, High Finance, 1923