Welcome to ASAP/1 Conference 2009!

Welcome to the ASAP/1 Conference site! ASAP/1 is running October 22-25, 2009 in Knoxville, Tennessee, and is the launch conference of the new international society A.S.A.P.: The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present. Information about our plenary speakers is located below, and we will be adding content to the ASAP/1 site throughout the pre-conference months. If you have any questions, email us at info@artsofthepresent.org.
Welcome to ASAP/1!
ASAP/1 Conference Staff

The conference will feature an opening night reception and plenary talk, "Exhibition as School," by Anton Vidokle at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Vidokle is an installation artist whose work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Lyon Biennial, Dakar Biennale, Lodz Biennale, and the Tate Modern, London.

Sianne Ngai, our second plenary speaker, will be presenting a talk entitled "The Zany Science." Sianne Ngai is an Associate Professor of English at UCLA and the author of Ugly Feelings (Harvard University Press, 2005), which has generated energetic discussion in literary critical circles.

Our keynote speaker, presenting a talk entitled "Language in the Arts of the Present," is Ngugi wa Thiong'o. An internationally recognized writer from Kenya, Ngugi is the author of Weep Not, Child (1964), the first novel in English to be published by an East African. He is the author of ten novels, eight major books of postcolonial theory, a collection of short stories, three plays, three children's books, and numerous interviews, and his most recent novel, Wizard of the Crow, was published in 2004 (2006 in English) to international acclaim.