CfP for IAWIS conference: “Word, Image and Social Dynamics”
Date: 24-28 August 2026
Location: Amsterdam
The Keynotes are confirmed for “Word, Image and Social Dynamics”, the triennial International conference of the Association of Word and Image Studies, which is to take place at the end of August 2026 in Amsterdam: T.J. Clark, Jesse Darling, Maria Fusco, Nicoline van Harskamp, and Geert Lovink (please see bios below).
The Call for Papers closes on 2 June 2025. Please see details at:
Www.Iawis2026.humanities.uva.nl
J. Clark is the author of several books, including The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers (1985), Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (1999), The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing (2006), Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica (2013), Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come (2018), and If These Apples Should Fall: Cézanne and the Present (2022). His most recent book, Those Passions: On Arts and Politics (2025), unpicks the nature of capitalist societies since the fifteenth century and the art produced within them. Widely regarded as a foundational scholar on the social history of art, Clark taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley. In recent years, he has been teaching a series of seminars on Poetry & Painting at Keble College, Oxford University.
Jesse Darling (b. Oxford, UK) is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, theorist, curator, mentor and teacher. One of the most influential British artists working today, he is best known for his disruptive, humorous and empathetic sculptural installations which repurpose familiar objects, creating strange and uncanny encounters. Recent works stand as the ruined relics of crumbling empires, picking up on how the (aesthetic and symbolic) pillars of (what understands itself as) western civilization converge around ideologies of the border and exclusion.
Selected solo exhibitions include Petit Palais, Art Basel Paris (2024); Turner Prize, The Towner, UK (2023); Camden Arts Centre, London (2022), Modern Art Oxford, UK (2022), Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany (2022), Triangle France Astérides (2019), and Tate Britain (2018—2019). Recent group exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo (2023), CAPC Bordeaux (2022), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2022), and Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2021). Darling also participated in the 58th Venice Biennale, and was the winner of the Turner Prize 2023.
Maria Fusco is an award-winning working-class writer. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, she now lives and works in Scotland, where she is Professor Interdisciplinary Writing at the University of Dundee, previously holding posts at the University of Edinburgh and Goldsmiths, London. Her work is protean in nature, characterised by critical attention to intersectional socio-economic circumstances through an experimental lens. Working across performance and theoretical writing, she is the author of eight books and four largescale performances, her writing is translated into ten languages. She has been invited writer-in-residence at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and in 2023 will be Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her most recent projects are History of the Present, an avantgarde opera-film about the legacies of defensive architecture in Belfast, co-directed with artist Margaret Salmon with new music by Annea Lockwood, and Who does not envy with us is against us, a book of essays about working-class-ness as method (both 2023). mariafusco.net
Nicoline van Harskamp is an artist whose work considers acts of language and solidarity. Her live works were staged, among other places, at the M HKA in Antwerp, Tate Modern in London, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, New Museum in New York, Arnolfini in Bristol, Urbane Künste Ruhr in Oberhausen, steirischer herbst in Graz, Project Arts Centre in Dublin, Serralves Museum in Porto, Kaaitheater in Brussels and If I Can’t Dance in Amsterdam. She has exhibited her video and installation works internationally, such as at Kadist Foundation in Paris, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in Montréal, Edith-Russ-Haus in Oldenburg, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, HKW in Berlin, MUAC in Mexico City, Manifesta 9, and the biennials of Gothenburg, Limerick, Sydney, and Taipei. Nicoline van Harskamp is the professor for performative art at the University of Fine Arts (Kunstakademie) in Münster, Germany.
Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organization after Social Media (with Ned Rossiter, 2018), Sad by Design (2019) and Stuck on the Platform (2022). He studied political science at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and received his PhD from the University of Melbourne. In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures (www.networkcultures.org) at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). His centre organizes conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), The Future of Art Criticism and MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects deal with digital publishing experiments, critical meme research, participatory hybrid events and precarity in the arts. From 2007-2018 he was media theory professor at the European Graduate School. In December 2021 he was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the UvA Art History Department. The Chair (one day a week) is supported by the HvA. Since early 2022 he is involved in support campaigns for Ukrainian artists, in particular UKRAiNATV, a streaming art studio network, operating out of Krakow.