Seung-woo Back, RW001-001, 2004, from the series Real World I, 2004, Digital print, Courtesy Gana Art Gallery, Seoul, Minneapolis Museum of Art

More Real? Simulation and Hyperreality in Contemporary Art and Culture

This colloquium, convened by Elizabeth Armstrong, Assistant Director of exhibitions and programs/curator of contemporary art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), gathered an interdisciplinary team of scholars and curators at the Clark for a two-day workshop to frame the foundational questions posed by the exhibition, More Real? and to establish the organizational direction and content of the accompanying publication. The Minneapolis Institute of Art’s exhibition, More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness, will explore contemporary manifestations in art and mass media of once-theoretical, and now more popular, notions of “the real” and “hyperreality”. The project features an international selection of contemporary artists whose work explores, in diverse media and unexpected ways, the power of simulation in art and everyday life. This colloquium was generously sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation's grant to the Clark.

Participants included:
Natasha Becker, The Clark; Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Seton Hall University; Catherine Deepwell, University of the Arts, London; Chuck Henry, Rice University, Fondren Library; Godehard Janzing, Deutches Historisches Museum, Berlin, Germany; Bill Kelly, Jr., LatinArt, Los Angeles; Christine Kuan, Oxford University Press; Teresa Lai, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Max Marmor, ARTstor; Jon Prown, Chipstone Foundation; Didier Rykner, La Tribune de l’art, Paris, France; William Tronzo, University of California, San Diego; Corinne Welger, Université de Paris I, Institute Michelet, Paris, France; Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Sweet Briar College

Program:
In order of discussion

Welcome and Introductory Remarks
Michael Ann Holly, Natasha Becker and Liz Armstrong

Art of the More Real from Trompe l’oeil to Truthiness
Moderator: Alex Bortolot
Presenters: Kaywin Feldman and Liz Armstrong

Cinema, (Deceptive) Simulations, and Speculative Reality
Moderator: Bruce Jenkins
Presenters: Tom Gunning, Mark Hansen and John Gerrard

Unreliable Narrators, Docufables, and Double Agency
Moderator: Bill Horrigan
Presenters: Bruce Jenkins, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle and Shuddhabrata Sengupta

Illusionist Culture and the Ontology of the Real
Moderator: Natasha Becker
Presenters: Norman Klein and Carrie Lambert-Beatty

Please click here for additional information on the ‘More Real?’ colloquium.

*For information on the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s exhibition, More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness, please click here.