52 Yannan Yuan,Peking University Beijing 100871,P.R.China Tel: 86-10-62767071/62769591 Fax: 86-10-62759721 E-mail:cmaa@pku.edu.cn Web:www.cvspku.org
September 1, 2013
Dear Mr. Jean-Charles Agboton-Jumeau, We take great Pleasure in inviting you to attend The Third CHINA CONTEMPORARY ART FORUM which will be held in Beijing from October 14 to 16, 2013. China Contemporary Art Forum (CCAF) is a non-governmental organization for academic exchanges initiated by China Contemporary Art Foundation and Chicago Research House for Asian Art. From the Second forum in 2010, Centre for Visual Studies of Peking University became one of the organizers and began to host the academic project for this forum. This year, the third CCAF conference is organized by China Contemporary Art Foundation, Center for Visual Studies of Peking University and Wallonie-Bruxelles International, Belgium. The theme of this conference is “Images and Words” which comes from an exhibition with the same name held in National Art Museum of China last year. The conference can be seen as an extension of this exhibition which focused on a special subject in modern and contemporary time, namely the relationship between words (including writing) and plastic art (including its development vein) established by the artists. The attention for this subject can be traced back to December of 1929; the illustrations and pictures filled article “Words and Images” wrote by Magritte on and continues till now. We can find certain trail in the forefront of modern art exploration. From Magritte, surrealism to Cobra group, Broodthaers to the creation of concept art and mixed media, we can see the rich possibilities contained in the course of meaning presenting by the artists. This richness reflects in the unending tension between images and words, form and thinking, writing and art trend, poetic language and its modeling and extends to the contemporary creating and getting richer. For the conference to be held in 2013, the Chinese scholars’ studies are planned to focus on five general topics: 1) Symbiosis of Images and Words; 2) The pictorial character of words; 3) The semiotic character of words; 4) Thirdspace between Words and Images ; 5) Structures of Arts and Words.