The Life of Objects across Disciplines

Speakers:
Prof Adam Knee, Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Media & Creative Industries, LASALLE
Prof Michael Earley, Dean of Performing Arts at LASALLE
Milenko Prvacki, Senior Fellow, LASALLE

Plants and Other Objects in Cold War Science Fiction
Prof Adam Knee

After a brief commentary on the status of objects in the science fiction film more broadly, this presentation will turn its attention to one particular class of items which may or may not be ‘objects’—plants—and offer an analysis of their significance within the 1950s US science fiction film in particular. Issues to be discussed include the aesthetic, narrative, and sociopolitical dimensions of plants in the US films as well as possible differences in representational tendencies in non-US science fiction films.

The Materiality of Shakespeare: The Playwright Objectified
Prof Michael Earley

Since the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio in 1623 (the first printed collection of Shakespeare’s play), this single volume swiftly achieved the status of a sacred book, on a par with the Bible, the Quran, the Analects of Confucius and any sacred book we care to mention. It is a ‘word of God’ text, endlessly analysed and debated over like no other book. And from the First Folio’s publication—and over succeeding centuries—all aspects of Shakespeare’s life have become objectified and, indeed, fetishised. Everything he might have uttered, signed, touched, read or witnessed has become part of material by which we know (and will never know) about this consummate writer. My short talk will look at what James Shapiro in a recent book called ‘contested will’; the objects and centuries of objectification connected with the life of Shakespeare and the industry that has grown around the accumulation of this materiality.

The Materialisation of Ideas
Milenko Prvacki

How do ideas, hunches and intuitions become artifacts? What is the relationship between one's existing body of work, perceptual habits, knowledge, cycles of creativity and imagination? Artistic practice shows that neither ideas nor artifacts come pre-formed. They are in a continuous process of co-construction and dissolution. Drawing on forty-five years of grappling with objects - in painting, sculpture and installation - in this talk, I will attempt to articulate the co-dependence of materiality, artistic method and history.