Heated Conversations by Radhika Subramaniam | 19 July | 6pm

Heated Conversations
(the full semester two program is here)  

Radhika Subramaniam will speak on

Footprint: An Itinerary

Click here for paper

The footprint is one of the fundamental artifacts of walking. As both metaphor and material imprint, it signifies mobility and occupation, inquiry and imperialism, absence and presence, trace, and impact. Written as a series of narrative itineraries, the essay explores the contradictory forensics of the footprint through a series of cultural and material histories. The migration of the footprint, far in front of the sign of the walker into a primary metaphor for our times, raises questions about the ways in which histories are used to guide our steps into the future. As it marches forward, the footprint seems to get less capacious and more consumptive. Even as we find the image of footprints on a stretch of sand tranquil and dreamy, we worry about our carbon footprint and its implication for the future of the planet. The essay asks what the implications are of making the human foot bear responsibility for the planet.

Radhika Subramaniam is an Associate Professor of Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design/The New School where she was also the first Director/Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center from 2009-2017. Previously, she was the Founding Executive Editor of the the art/politics journal, Connect: art.politics.theory.practice (Arts International) and the Director of Cultural Programs at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2005-2008).  She has a Masters in Anthropology and a PhD. in Performance Studies. Radhika is a curator and writer with an interdisciplinary practice. Through text, exhibitions, and public interventions, she explores the poetics and politics of crises and surprises, particularly cities and crowds, migration, walking, art and human-animal relationships. She is the recipient of a Culture and Animals Foundation grant, an International Visiting Curatorship at Artspace, Sydney, a SEED Foundation Teaching Fellowship in Urban Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, and artist/writer residencies at The Banff Center, Canada and the Hambidge Center. In 2018-2019, she was a fellow at the Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography and Social Thought. She is presently working on a book on a medieval elephant embassy as well as a series of essays on the footprint as a metaphoric and material artifact.

Wednesday, 19^th July 2023
6pm

https://wits-za.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwlcO-srzgtHN3ITaJ6sNJr2gTmvz2xKOWl

Heated Conversations  is a new seminar series convened by Isabel Hofmeyr and Sarah Nuttall

        As global warming produces rising seas, falling dam levels and excessive droughts, generating new levels of multi-crisis in the world-now, so too are our conversations and discourses heating up in multiple ways. This seminar series takes up these questions of anthropogenic escalation and pedagogical shifts of gear. It does so in a context in which strengthening Southern bodies of knowledge is ever more crucial to engaging collectively with and comprehending these complex new rubrics and material dimensions. A forum broadly dedicated to the literary and cultural humanities, the seminar is hospitably open to wide participation from as many parts of the world as possible and will invite speakers to offer generative interventions for discussion and debate.

Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor Emeritus at Wits University; Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at WiSER, Wits.